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Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
-- Daniel Patrick Moynhan, U.S. Senator [quoted on FactCheck.Org]
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
-- Mark Twain, author and social critic
In a New Yorker article on Dan Rather's departure from CBS News (March 7, 2005), I discovered how stories are prioritized by time and placement, filling the 18 minutes of air time in the half-hour news show. Video pieces run from 90 seconds to 2-1/2 minutes, and there are several "tells", described as items read by the anchor. This is not enough time. One needs to search and read widely to be informed. In addition, the major news networks have fewer international resources than previously. Here is an excerpt from that New Yorker article:
Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the networks have devoted more time to overseas news. Yet today Barry Peterson, a CBS correspondent based primarily in Tokyo, is responsible for covering all of Asia. CBS news usually has nine other correspondents based overseas—five in a hub office in London, three in Tel Aviv, one in Rome. It has no permanent bureau in the Arab or Muslim world, in Africa or South America. The network has small offices, although not correspondents, in several countries. Tom Fenton, who is seventy-four and had a thirty-four-year career, mainly as a foreign correspondent with CBS, writes in a new book, "Bad News", that in the late seventies and early eighties "CBS News ran fourteen major foreign bureaus, ten mini foreign bureaus, and stringers in forty-four countries around the world." Now, he told me CBS relies increasingly on information supplied by video wire services and overseas broadcasters. "It's television's equivalent of outsourcing."
What I also find troubling is the inability of cable news anchors and interviewers to clarify what is fact or fiction on either side of an issue. The current interview structure encourages both sides to present their information or analysis and leave it at that. If one side is far from the facts, equal treatment is a serious disservice to those of us working to understand. A committment to do rigorous pre-interview research and to challenge interviewees is needed. The integrity of the news is at stake.
In my regular routine, I check the daily salad bar of news at Google News. After checking a few articles that interest me, I visit BBC News online for its solid reporting. I listen to NPR in the car and also visit its web site. I tend to skip the blogs unless I really dig into a story and cast a wide net for coverage, opinion on both sides, etc.
A resource I use for an overview of an issue, person, or other topic is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia maintained by folks in the Internet community. Because Wikipedia is an emerging technology, it has its flaws. See Wikipedia: Teapot Tempest for a discussion of a recent problem. Several days after that problem came to light, the British journal Nature did a comparison between Wikipedia entries and the Encyclopedia Brittanica. See the BBC article Wikipedia Survives Research Test and Brittanica's analysis (in PDF) of flaws in the study. (Nature responded but you have to pay to read it.) In any case, I find Wikipedia a handy resource and starting point. Entries often have a number of external links for further research and verification from original source material.
This page includes links to network and international or alternative news and left/liberal/progressive and right/conservative advocacy Web sites along with some humor. The final section here, "News About the News", includes links to organizations whose mission is to separate fact from fiction and spin in the news.
The best defense of democracy is an informed electorate.
-- Thomas Jefferson, U.S. president
| Network News | International/Alternative | Political Humor |
|---|---|---|
In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
-- James W. Fulbright (US senator)
Dissent protects the body politic from the virus of totalitarianism.
-- Roger Ebert, ending a review of the film Max
For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change opinions.
-- Ben Franklin
Included here are magazines and organization Web sites from both sides of the ideological divide. These sites feature writers who are passionate about policy development. Be aware that the language used can get a bit coarse, especially in blogs (web logs), as the writers rail against the opposition.
| Left/Liberal/Progressive | Right/Conservative |
|---|---|
Any news organization that presumes to inform, educate and instruct America has a moral and fiduciary responsibility to at least make a 'best faith' effort to provide news and analysis that is really fair and balanced.
Geoff Metcalf, Accuracy in Media
As an example, "AIM Report: Senator Clinton and the Fake News Scandal" is analysis of the issue of "video news releases" distributed, unlabeled by the white house, to news organizations on various topics from the war in Iraq to government programs. AIM found the practice did not begin with the Bush administration.
As an example, read the article "Community Internet: Broadband as Public Policy" to understand how well connected corporations can hamper municipalities efforts to offer Internet access to reduce the digital divide.
For example, the article "A Rigged 'Calculator'" reviews Democratic false assumptions on Social Security private accounts while "Pro-Bush Group Overstates Social Security Shortfall" covers spin from the opposition on how quickly the system's finances will fail.
You can find the top censored stories on their publications page. See the entry on this organization at Wikipedia.Project Censored is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media.
See also the "Issue Language and Media Coverage" section of the Democracy, Electoral Politics, and Accountability page for resources on propaganda, point of view, press bias and values language.