Filtering the Bullshit for Reliable News
It is intellectually lazy to believe that mainstream media is all fake news or that quality, accurate news cannot be found.
Within the vast amounts of media, there is a lot of disinformation, and a lot of intentional disinformers. However, Trump’s rants that mainstream news is fake news is usually not true.
There are many good news sources following honest, principled journalism practices to publish accurate news. Often journalists take significant risks reporting from dangerous places.
There are web services that aggregate digital content including online newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and video blogs (vlogs) into one location for easy viewing. Some aggregators, for example, Ground News, and Ad Fontes Media, provide assessments of the quality, and the degree of political bias, and factuality of the aggregated media sources.
I find ‘Ad Fontes Interactive Media Chart’ to be the most useful and interesting.
Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart
1) Check out this static image of the Media Bias Chart
This chart plots various media sources.
The horizontal axis is Political Bias going from Left to Right Politics.
More importantly, the vertical axis goes from Less to More News Value and Reliability.
2 ) Check out this link to the Interactive Media Bias Chart
Ad Fontes Interactive Media Bias Chart
“Ad Fontes Media is a public benefit corporation based in Colorado. Being a public benefit corporation means we are a for-profit business with a stated public mission: to rate all the news to positively transform society.
Fundamentally, we want to help bring people together. Misleading, inaccurate, and highly polarizing media content has driven so many of us apart. This affects everything from our familial relationships to our ability to create legislative solutions to our biggest challenges.
Ad Fontes is Latin for “to the source,” because at the heart of what Ad Fontes Media does is look at the source—analyze the very content itself—to rate it.” – Ad Fontes
3 ) Check out this video on using the Interactive Media Bias Chart
Features from the Tutorial:
Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out
Use the ‘More Options’ (button on the left) to open the ‘Customize Chart’ (on the right)
Note: Only 2 of the display switches can be used in this free version, and used individually
4 ) Check out: Display Audience Size
Note: the free version of the Interactive Media Chart requires an upgrade to view many of the audience sizes
Note: the free version of the Interactive Media Chart requires an upgrade to view many of the audience sizes.
Audience size is likely more important than media count in quantifying the degree of influence within the political demographic.
Getty Images
Getty Images has a large collection of images and videos including 21,992 of the Capitol Jan 2021 events. The website is well designed for browsing, particularly for historical or current news events.
This picture shows the results of a Getty Images search feature. The search words are ‘Capitol January 6, 2021’.
The category ‘Editorial’ is selected.
There are 260 photos.
This picture shows the Getty Videos results for the search ‘Capitol January 6, 2021’.
There are 1,475 videos.
This screenshot video is of navigating the Getty Images website. The search is for videos of ‘Inside Capitol January 6 2021’.
Next, scrolling through results.
Next, selecting the video ‘Rioters Destroy Media Equipment as Pro-Trump Protesters Storm…’
A selected video can be saved to a ‘board’ for future viewing.
The people in the selected video are committing a crime. In a related video, they are yelling ‘fuck the fake news’. These people are criminals. Browsing through these videos one finds many people attacking police and breaking into the capitol. Some of them have been convicted, some members of the Oath Keepers have been convicted of sedition These people and are not, as Scumbag Trump claims, ‘hostages’. They are criminals.
Some of the videos show people explaining why they are protesting. I did not find anyone able to state fact-based evidence that the election was stolen.
One of my favorite photos from the Getty Editorial Collection
Former President Donald Trump Indicted In January 6 Investigation
WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 01: Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former U.S. President Donald Trump at the Justice Department on Aug 1, 2023 in Washington, DC. Trump was indicted on four felony counts for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty image)
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a great source of information. Wikipedia provides an overview and a primary source reference list for an enormous variety of topics. I frequently use it. I used Wikipedia to grab snippets for intros to various topics on this website.
I find Wikipedia to be quite accurate for topics I am knowledgeable about. To address the question of Wikipedia’s reliability, a very good source is the Wikipedia article ‘Reliability of Wikipedia’. The article provides an overview of Wikipedia’s reliability and has a substantial reference list (288 items) to browse, as well as links to external discussions.
USA Facts.org
This is the website Steve Ballmer, formerly a founding member of Microsoft created. This is a place for dry, concise facts on the Economy, Crime, Education, Health, Population, Government spending, Defense and Security, etc., as read right off the USA Facts website main menu. USA Facts data is generally from the government.
Fact-Checking
There are numerous good fact-checking websites
Yet another idiotic Internet meme
Politifact
Stand up for the facts!
Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.
Fact Check – Politifact Set to: Speaker = Donald Trump
A POLTIFACT link set to: Speaker = Donald Trump, assuring viewers get a stream of lies every day, all day.
Fact Check – Politifact set to: Rulling = True
A POLITIFACT link set to: Ruling=True, assuring viewers get few Republican statements.
FactCheck.Org
Our Mission
We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship and to increase public knowledge and understanding.
A link to Fact Check Organization – filtering the daily bullshit – and explaining why it is false.
Select Mainstream News Sources
New York Times
The Week
The Guardian
The BBC
Wall Street Journal
DW
“Every story moves us towards an informed world: We are open-minded, rational and straightforward. Find out more about who we are and what we stand for in this video.”
DW is a concise, international, and comprehensive news source.
Media Matters
The National Review
