I recall when the 'news' was encapsulated in 30 minute summaries each evening, and tend to regard the way news is presented and consumed nowadays as a fabrication of the immediacy of media, rather than a necessity of the information. Accordingly, I tend to scan the front page of the NYT and the Guardian each day to keep somewhat abreast of the daily goings-on without frying my attention span on opinions, takes, and the ubiquity of the demand for my attention.

In general, I think a lot of the way news is presented is an obfuscation of the obvious corporate (which is, essentially, now the 'government') interests being represented on one hand, and the shortening of attention and subtlety on the other. Neither looks to be worth my time or attention, outside of basic information that I think can be gleaned in a very short amount of time. I also tend to digest the 'news' as various manifestations of 'we live in an oligarchy', 'late stage capitalism is a death machine with no regard for human life or creativity', or any number of other obvious-isms that I believe to be readily apparent and appear only as iterations of those truths in smaller scale - though always with some attendant human suffering.

I know these motherfuckers already have our lives in hand, in some sense, and I'm not about to give them my brain, too. Or my nervous system. Much like single use plastics, I just think to myself 'I just can't do this' when it comes to the news. Granted, I'm single with no kids and some semblance of financial security, so that certainly informs my behavior and the breadth of my options.

I get my longer term nuanced news on specific subjects from reading the New Yorker, Harper's, NOEMA Magazine, and a few other periodicals. It's almost always a few months after the events in question, but I think that gives journalism time to digest current events, research context, and provide more thorough analysis that isn't coated in the glaze of bullshit that passes for culture and discourse in the present day.

Gramsci wrote: Tue Apr 29, 2025 10:55 am

jirbling rake wrote: Mon Apr 28, 2025 6:04 pm

Gramsci wrote: Sun Apr 13, 2025 12:51 pm Maybe I’m a vulgar Marxist, but to me The Guardian is centrist slightly right leaning paper. It’s still the main paper I read.

What, if any, news sources do you follow that are left-leaning, in your opinion?

That’s actually pretty tough because many can be just as shrill as the rightwing.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/

I guess Jacobin for the US, but they’ve had some pretty terrible blind spots on Latin America.

Jacobin's owner is also had some shady behavior attached to him as well. I've been wary of them since.

The difficulty of naming them is why I asked. Daily Kos, Mother Jones, Talking Points Memo, - all can also hit that shrill tone, and in ways that are less effective than what their counterparts on the right are doing, which is to motivate people. Or at least this person.

Bluegum LaBloat wrote: The Guardian is a cancer and I earnestly hope I live to see its demise.

It has its problems, but its coverage is often better than bootlicking, click-chasing, cognitively-stunted US news coverage. Look how many report Elon's nazi salute around the inauguration as "some people say it resembled a nazi salute". Truly, truly soulless and stupid times we're in.

jirbling rake wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 8:18 pm seriously fuck the NYT and wapo.

someone actually counted the number of corrections NYT had to make:

Dr. Alyson Haslam wrote:There were 576 total corrections for the included 486 articles....
When errors are large or unidirectional, they may constitute misinformation. The spread of
misinformation in addition to correct information during the pandemic has been described by the World
Health Organization as an “infodemic”, and the spread of misinformation is believed to have resulted in
the hospitalization of thousands and death of hundreds during the first few months of the pandemic.
Many have attributed the spread of misinformation largely to social media routes, whereas ascribing the
reinforcement of public health recommendations to primarily news media.
Indeed, as purveyors of trusted public health information, traditional news media sources have been
described as “key” players in combating the misinformation epidemic. Reasons for this include the
perception of journalistic integrity and credibility, and having strict editorial standards...
When compared to non-COVID-19 corrections, we found COVID-19 corrections were
six times more likely to overstate the magnitude of the problem. In other words, when reporters erred,
it was towards engendering greater fear and panic. We also found that individual reporters had different
patterns of error. Eleven percent tended to underemphasize the pandemic, while 28% tended to
overemphasize it before it was corrected. Less than 3% of authors were responsible for almost one quarter of all corrections, and the reporter with the single most corrections [Apoorva Mandavilli] accounted for 7% of all corrections. [how the fuck] Our results suggest that corrections may plague [good one] some reporters more than others, warranting a more careful review of information prior to disseminating to the public.

For actual news:

The Financial Times aka the FT (UK - independent)
The Australian Financial Review aka the Fin (Australian - Fairfax)
Slashdot (\.)

For shits and giggles:

Lots of other stuff, anything really, but not taking any of it seriously.

Gramsci wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 8:19 am I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. After being like most people in 2010s I sort of retreated into online bubbles as social media exploded. Over the past few years I’ve made a conscious effort to read centrist and business “traditional” mainstream media as well as the kind of leftist oped stuff I was consuming. I would add I read this incredibly critically. I’m highly aware the BBC has its own agenda as does the liberal Guardian (not a left wing paper IMO). The Guardian and FT are probably “the best” MSM to understand what we are supposed to see as within the Overton Window. They both have the odd outlier but generally are centrist. The FT has always intrigued me after probably thirty years ago I heard Chomsky speak and he referred to the FT as one of the only trustworthy sources because capital needs unbiased reporting to make decisions. The curtain was always back. That’s changed a lot as more columnists were hired but if you ignore them is still broadly the case.

Have people returned to mainstream media critically now social media just causes brain rot?

I enjoy Janan Ganesh’s columns in the FT greatly

AP is my main source. What are the main criticisms of Associated Press? Just curious.

As of late I've just been checking the Politics thread periodically.