Americans what news in America is most unbiased?

I once heard a quote from a politician that went “The media is no longer in the business of reporting the news. They’re in the business of creating the news.” I think there is an important message hidden in there somewhere and I think there are very few, if any, unbiased or trustworthy news agencies left in America.

My wife likes to read news at BBC online and she listens to NPR each day. She is convinced these are the last and best bastions of news reporting left on the planet. I don’t know if that is true or not but I’m inclined to agree that the BBC and NPR are respectable and decent sources for news.

I am not an American and therefore should be careful, since I do not want to hurt people’s feelings. I have come to the US about sixty times, though.

Every time I was in the US during the first 8 years of this century, I felt that many if not most Americas were not open for unbiased news. Just hinting at many topics would trigger flaming reactions of ‘defensive patriotism’ or religious polarization. I feel many, if not all, commercial stations have reacted to this by feeding the majority of the people very biased information and editorials in the line with popular opinion. FOX would rank highest in my mind.

In my opinion, 9/11 has destroyed much more in America than we initially felt. It put the people’s mindset into war mode and a feeling of ‘you’re either with us’ or ‘you’re against us’.

In that sense the problem the American people face towards the media is the same as many business executives face towards their staff. Being the boss and in control of their futures, one runs a big risk of not being told what one needs to hear, but rather what one wants to hear. For that reasons courts in Europe entertaines court jesters, and we desperately need those still in modern media.

That being said, I always enjoy NPR and I think that the US still is one of the countries that puts most explicit effort into safe guarding free information.

Fox News… The answer has to be Fox News! After all, they always say they are “fair and balanced!”

The only way to get unbiased news is to watch several news channels, and to get news internationally. That’s what I’ve been doing for years. Our media absolutely loves to sensationalize stories, present stories from a politically biased viewpoint, and conveniently fail to report news that isn’t in line with that media conglomerate’s political or social views. Rupert Murdoch (fox) is, in my opinion, the absolute worst at this… sending out memos to his staff on what stories not to report, what (biased) words to use when referring to certain things, etc. Fox News bias is absolutely intentional… at least with the bias on CNN and other channels, it seems to be out of a failure to realize their own biases are entering into the way they frame the news.

The BBC are reliable, but pandering toward the dominant socio-economic class, that they ultimately depend, in my opinion.

try this

a better contender and a lot sexier.

Try their neighbours to the North. CBC News is pretty unbiased, IMO.

In America, Fox is most biased towards the right, and Huffington Post is most biased towards the left, although that’s not considered “real” by some people.

Publicly funded news such as BBC and CBC (mostly) are very reliable, but the news isn’t always “relevant” to people’s lives and “exciting”. Like most American stations have the cool graphics and music to get people excited and the news is like entertainment. That puts emphasis on certain news stories which gives a slant.

CNN is neutral in the fact that they have people who lean a bit to the left and the right. So if you watch the whole thing (like morning to night) you’ll get a pretty unbiased overall look.

Of the first 3 they’re the least biased.

The Onion, America’s finest news source since 1896.

There is no unbiased news source in America. Even NPR slants towards the left, but not quite as badly as Faux News slants towards the right. I agree with @Jayne, the Onion is probably your best bet.

there’s no such thing as unbiased. an ancient wise man once said “every man is right in his own eyes”.

@marcosthecuban
It’s called just reporting the news and having no other input.

@joooon that’s a worthy goal. but there’s even bias in deciding what is ‘news’ (story selection) and in choice of words, etc.

most news sources are from a for profit corporation and the news itself becomes business & entertainment. Futurist Celente recently lamented that most Americans seem to be getting their information from “News Clowns”....

@marcosthecuban
The BBC focuses on the main stories of the day, yes they are sensationalist but they do that with all their stories.

I trust Neil Cavuto on FOX and Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. That’s about it.

@jonsblond ::vomits::

This is my breakdown:

FOX just makes stuff up so that the right looks good.
MSNBC doesn’t make stuff up, they just only report on the stuff that makes the left look good.
CNN at least tries to be neutral, but they don’t always succeed.
NPR consists of mainly liberal employees, so there is some inherent bias there, but I think that the straight up news that they report is pretty dependable.

I would totally agree with @Ivan. I love NPR to death, but I realize the bias that enters in totally. Television wise, I would probably go with CNN as well.

@Ivan Like this?

I agree with you. I can’t stand MSNBC or Fox for the most part with the exception of the two people I mentioned. I feel they really try to give us an unbiased approach to journalism.

@jonsblond :S I honestly thought you were being sarcastic. Sorry.

@Ivan ‘salright

My vote is for Comedy Central’s news programming. Stewart and Colbert!

It seems strange to me that your whole news system is based around politics. Most people in Britain couldn’t tell the difference between Labour and the Conservatives so it wouldn’t work most of the time and I just don’t think our news can be bothered.

Only the news papers do have agendas.

I can’t seem to get my Mom away fom Fox news ,She is almost 70 and watches it religously all day long. She believes it is the truth and also The problems of George Bush never existed. All that by watching Fox. Am I missing something? Can she be right ? What a world we would live in if everyone believed Fox was reliable

I like “Democracy Now!” because they usually have great guest speakers that add a lot of depth to the discussions on current issues instead of on the typical networks where you get guest on just to astroturf over astroturfed agendas of the popular media which according to the supreme court are not news but actually entertainment organizations that are allowed to use the title “news”. There is a reason news sucks and it’s because it’s been far removed from its original intention of providing a checks-and-balances system to overly powerful financial leaders and legislators.