TV and news

[juliet]

I was subjected to TV for the first time in about 5 months today (sat in hostel lounge, which has large TV which other ppl came to start watching). I was not particularly edified by this experience.

However, it did remind me that I've also been paying v little attention to any sort of news, since I left the UK. Whilst I have no intention of getting my news from the TV, now or probably ever (and the 10 min of TV news I saw today merely confirmed this bias), I'm not actually sure what a good source *is*.

Thus I turn to the internets. Where do you get your news from? Bearing in mind that I really want to spend as little time on this as is commensurate with being a reasonably well-informed citizen, and also that I am a cynical hippy-type who mistrusts the media in general[0].

TBH I'm far from sure that it's not better for my mental state to avoid the news altogether unless something is pushed on my awareness (e.g. via LJ/DW, or *really big* newspaper headlines, but see above re informed citizen.

I could of course rely on dogrando going DID YOU SEE over IM when he reads the Guardian alert email, but this seems like cheating.

[0] Ideally of course this would entail seeking out multiple sources & cross-referencing etc etc but see above re time, also IME this just ends up making me cross, especially if any of those sources are e.g. the Telegraph.

Comments

[drplokta]

The BBC news site at http://news.bbc.co.uk/ will certainly cover anything important, and has good worldwide coverage.

[juliet]

Yeah, I've previously used their email alert service, but (before I left the UK) I was increasingly unimpressed by the shallowness of their coverage and tendency to focus on "Were You Affected By X? Tell Us All About It!" side of things.

[flick]

Plus, tbh, the faux news stories that are just plugging a TV show. But it is still where I mostly get my news from.

[azurelunatic]

I follow the BBC World News headline feeds on my reading page on LJ, and a local news feed service on Twitter.

Oh! Also The Register's headlines.

[juliet]

You're the second person to suggest twitter! I should look into this. thanks :)

[karen2205]

Being terribly British and middle class I get a lot of news from Radio 4; I usually find it calmer and less sensational than television coverage. I also use the BBC news website a lot from work - that's mainly inertia as I trust the BBC more than I trust most news organisations and I haven't spent much time looking at other news websites to see what else is available.

[juliet]

I'm no longer as convinced as I was by the BBC (see comment above). I used to listen to the Today programme but found it increasingly infuriating, which seems like an unpleasant start to the day...

I am def not interested in TV coverage; IME it's far too inclined towards the sensational and/or shallow.

[djm4]

I don't check it nearly as often as I should, but Aj Jazeera is excellent for getting a non-UK (and often non-Western) angle on the news.

[juliet]

That's an excellent suggestion, thank you. I might look into their RSS feed.

[londonparticular]

I use BBC News and then Google News (what I like is the ease of finding a large number of articles from different sources) or Guardian it for anything I want to know more of/different views on. RSS feeds from the major UK papers I find useful, just as a headline skim.

I third the Twitter rec, though, subscribing to news feeds on there has turned out surprisingly useful. It's also pretty interesting to search any hashtags for user commentary. A by no means exhaustive list of news outlets on Twitter.

/I should let you know - I subscribed when damned_colonial linked to you in a post. Hello :).

[zebrallama]

I recommend the RSS feed from Richard Stallman's site: http://www.stallman.org/rss/rss.xml

Very ironically (I presume you know who Richard Stallman is, and hence the irony) it's not working at the moment because of a parsing error. But I'm sure it will be back soon.

[zebrallama]

P.S. IMO Stallman covers all the most important issues, with one exception, which is animal rights. I have heaps of other sources for that. The best, if you're (planning to be) in the UK, is probably Compassion In World Farming. But I spect you knew that.

Stallman's coverage is idiosyncratic, but that's kind of the point. I want to know what's important, not what the Establishment thinks is newsworthy. Very occasionally I need to know what the Establishment thinks, and then I ask my dad! (Not that he's very Establishment himself, but he's a news junkie.)

[juliet]

Thanks for the recommendation - I'll try it for a bit & see if the idiosyncracies irritate me too much :)

[zebrallama]

Oh, also, if you're interested in the meta stuff about the state of mainstream news (which is totally not what you asked for, I know), look up John Pilger. He's spot on, and quite entertaining too.

[aquaeri]

I've had RSS feeds of BBC and (Australian) ABC, but like you I'm getting more and more disaffected by the BBC: the triviality, the lack of usefulness in many headlines etc. I'd prefer to just skim the headlines to see what Big Media thinks is important. It sounds like I should have a look at Al Jazeera too.