Ask HN: What are your sources for non-sensationalized news? - shawncampbell
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giantg2
The first thing you learn in data science is that everyone has biases.

I get most of my news from HN, Yahoo, and from what others post. These outlets
give me many different sources to choose from. I tend to look for multiple
sources, usually from competing outlets with different biases. So maybe I'll
see an article that originated from Fox and then look at one from Huffpost.
Then I can find what points they agreed on, since those are _likely_ true.
Then I can see what info is conflicting, missing, or recieved more emphasis
between the two.

At this point I might look up the subject that it talks about so that I can
understand the information from a systems-thinking perspective. I might read
scholarly articles/blogs/courses. I might look at studies to understand the
data and see if the study is being misrepresented, like the gender page gap
and BLS study (you may need different sources for these due to biases on
polarising subjects like guns).

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ziddoap
Obviously there are no guarantees that all of the mentioned sources are
completely free of bias or are non-sensationalized, but I find this list
offers a good starting point.

[https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center/)

[https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pro-
science/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pro-science/)

Also, from the same group:
[https://newsfactsnetwork.com/about/](https://newsfactsnetwork.com/about/)

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Dahoon
This will sound strange in an Americans ears but ... state sponsored news for
one. Unlike the US news stations and state sponsored news that is poorly
hidden propaganda, state sponsored news some places are very unbiased and not
full of clickbait. Of course it is rare outside Scandinavia sadly.

~~~
cpach
As someone living in Sweden I somewhat agree. Our state-sponsored media is not
too bad. But I also subscribe to two independent news papers and those are the
ones I prefer.

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clustr
I'm involved with [https://spidr.today/](https://spidr.today/)

Coupled with Google Translate, it's also easy to get a grip on the major
topics in other countries.

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alexmingoia
Financial Times. It’s a paid subscription, and worth the money if you care
about world news with decent analysis and a lack of sensationalism.

~~~
shawncampbell
After a week's exposure to FT, I'm back to thank you for this recommendation.
It's exactly what I've been looking for: news, not sensationalism. Thank you.

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bookshelf11
For general news: WSJ, FT, and Reuters can't be beat imo.

They're the best news orgs in terms of both substance and level-headed
delivery.

Just make sure to skip WSJ's op ed section. It's a dumpster fire, just like
NYT's.

NPR is great too.

For more specific topics I subscribe to smaller media orgs.

These include:

1\. A few local news outlets that provide daily/weekly newsletters. I pay most
attention to this as it has the proportionally largest impact on my daily
life.

2\. A few newsletters on specific issues of interest to me: current affairs
related to China, general finance industry stuff (Matt Levine's Money Stuff),
SupChina, FP's weekly China Briefing.

As others have stated, while news does not need to be sensationalize, it will
always have bias. I don't think it's worth fighting it. Just find people who
have a track record of acting in good faith and listen to what they have to
say.

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sloaken
I use [https://knowherenews.com/](https://knowherenews.com/) they present both
sides to most topics.

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rawgabbit
For local news I subscribe to a daily email from a local TV news station. I
also read voanews.com and asia.nikkei.com.

------
needsbetternews
I usually look at the "enemies" press and my own country's press, then
subtract the difference and somewhere in there is perhaps some truth. Then I
go to foreign policy/political and social/economic journal sites and search
for papers on topics similar to get actual analysis and not just brief talking
points.

For example I'll often watch the Ruptly Youtube channel but before you jump up
and down screaming 'it's Russian propaganda' it is, but at the same time, all
their videos are uncensored they will often take 4 hours footage of something
news worthy with no pundits editing or screaming over top of it. As an example
this silly story from Egypt about a robot waiter
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyuGnCZOwMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyuGnCZOwMo)
notice a few things, you can hear in the background what people are saying,
this is almost always drowned out by a pundit yapping on our news. You can
hear the guy talking in his native language with no questionable translations.
By questionable translations I mean in my country I remember a long time some
Egyptian protest, and the propaganda that passes for state news in my
commonwealth country had edited out the voices of the crowd claiming they were
shouting something different than what they really were shouting when I looked
up the same unedited footage on Ruptly. So yes, it is 'evil state propaganda'
but at least you get unedited footage, can hear what people are truly saying.

Otherwise there are journals you can read that will often have extensive in
depth papers on whatever the socio-political situation of that country is like
Oxford's Foreign Policy Analysis. Here's an example, let's say some new war
breaks out in Africa again. Let's say there is pressure in all our countries
to deploy a peacekeeping force and there is no independent news analysis, we
just have tables of pundits yelling talking points framed in local politics.
How do you know if 'peacekeeping' even works? Well that's when some of these
journals step in to give you some non sensationalist analysis
[https://academic.oup.com/fpa/article/16/3/251/5824326?search...](https://academic.oup.com/fpa/article/16/3/251/5824326?searchresult=1)
which you would have to run through sci-hub to get access to unless you have
unlimited access to these journals through university libraries or something.

So, tl;dr, what I usually do is my local news headlines are dominated by
(event) which is always just framed in national political talking points so
highly sensationalist and pushing talking points that benefit some political
party. When you go looking for (event) in journals you will often find
background and analysis nobody else has to help understand it, like say the
political relationship between Germany and Russia and some kind of trade
conflict breaks out between them. There is background for this in journals you
can read yourself to see why everything is set up the way it is without being
distorted by the talking heads pretending it isn't set up that way and their
preferred candidate X can easily rearrange this agreement.

I have tried "slow news" sources, various state sources in Europe and
commonwealth, commercial news, so-called 'independent' news like AP or
Intercept all of it is inherently biased to frame every story in some kind of
political talking points and stories that do not fit this bias are just not
even reported, so you need to fill in the rest with the "enemies" news like
say, a Chinese newspaper article or even Syrian or Iranian, or Venezuelan, or
whatever 'enemy' news. Sometimes they have different perspectives you didn't
even consider and then can directly research these things yourself if you
really want. To avoid this being a F/T job, which sounds like it is, I just
make an afternoon of going through some Oxford journal articles (and other
universities of course, to avoid the one-sided cultural problem again) and
without fail whenever (event) happens in my local news I remember an article I
already read about this, dig it up and lo and behold I now understand (event)
better than the screaming pundits.

Anybody who knows of a good university, foreign policy type analysis journal
I'd be interested too, like a French or Russian one to counter all the British
and American one's I read just to see things that are left out.

