When it comes to Politicians, and news sources who do you actually trust?

You, like many people, are confusing “opinion” articles with actual news.
Even in high school we learned the “5 Ws” of journalism: Who, what, when, where, why.

The news is: “June 19th at 6:17pm, a man pushed another man on the ground at Willy’s Pub on the corner of 6th and broadway. The altercation appears to have been over a woman who’s attention the men were vying for. Now here’s Tom with the weather.”

Anything other than this basic information and you’re listening to propaganda.

None. It is just entertainment value. I watch different sources for anything important.

NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, PBS.

@kritiper None of the above. Especially CNN in your list.

I generally trust Reuters. I don’t see much bias there one way or the other. There is always a spin though, always.

Not FOX make-believe !

Tucker “I Lie All The TIME!”

I trust the NY Times, the New Yorker, NPR. NBC, CNN, most mainstream outlets like that.

I like CBC, Global,PBS I dislike any that are blatantly bias left or right.

ABC.

Bloomberg TV and CBC radio, and local Edmonton, news/radio. I don’t have cable, except Apple tv.

Reuters, Associated Press, NPR — and not even entirely.

@Blackwater_Park That’s nice…

News sources that I can actually trust?!?

None. Zip. Nada.

So where do you get your news @snowberry ??

I don’t trust any to the point that I would only listen or read that one source. Almost everything is cherry picked or edited to some extent.

I trust New York Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CSPAN actual news shows (not opinion) where it is just reporters asking questions or reporting time, date, and place that something is happening. I trust them to show factual Information, but it still gets edited, sometimes with a slant, but it’s real information. PBS and CSPAN might be the most neutral. I’m still pushed off at NYT in their reporting about The Villages. Lol. I don’t think the NYT’s lies, but definitely there is a slant.

I like talk shows or news shows that bring on people from both sides of issues or bring in people with eye witness accounts.

The last 15 years people posing as journalists seemed to have dubbed themselves experts in finance, economy, accounting, health, that I don’t understand. I have yet to see an accountant talk about tax laws on any of these news shows.

For news I generally go to the LA Times, the East Bay Times (my local paper), and Al Jazeera

For opinion I go to Reason.com, The New Republic, The Bulwark, The Progressive, Center for American Progress, Mother Jones, and National Review. I also listen to NPR from time to time but most of the time in the car I’m listening to music, podcasts, or audiobooks.

I love both The Atlantic and The Economist, but I’m too cheap to pay for them so I don’t read them that much.

Typo: Pissed off at NYT for their reporting regarding The Villages.

Pretty much none of them. None of the politicians and none of the media outlets. I tend to get the same story from several news outlets and then consider what part of the story is bias…opinion reported as fact. I ask question and seek answers. Eventually I get a picture of what the truth is (I believe).

Only Senator Armstrong

@JLeslie: My guess is that the reason tax laws are not discussed by pundits on TV is because not only are tax laws speciffic to state, county, etc., but also each individual’s circumstances can change things as far as loopholes, exceptions, etc.

@Blackberry (the first post on this question) put it well. It seems that I took the same journalism class he did. And I agree, most (all?) news these days is opinion and propaganda rather than true news.

@SQUEEKY2 Like @seawulf575 said, I observe headlines across a variety of sources, but it is not worth my time to read details, because news these days tends Is more “stories” designed to draw readership than fact.

@jca2 Federal tax laws are the same for everyone. Tax laws are talked about, just not by the experts who actually deal with taxes every day.

I can think of only one time an accountant was on CSPAN and she was giving advice for small business owners. She was amazing. She was talking about SEP plans and Simple IRAs and so many things for small business owners to take advantage of. If I had never seen that I would have paid more in taxes. Before seeing it I missed out on taking advantage of those plans. My accountant never informed me about them.

I don’t think the average person knows much at all about their taxes or loopholes that wealthy people use. They just hear sound bites like a big corporation pays zero tax, or they feel small business’s owners are taxed to death. Small business owners write a ton of things off on their taxes. So much so they hurt their social security benefit, and a lot (I can’t emphasize enough that it is a lot) of them don’t know they are hurting their SS until they are retired. No one tells them the consequence of the tax breaks they are taking.

@Blackberry is correct. _ “June 19th at 6:17pm, a man pushed another man on the ground at Willy’s Pub on the corner of 6th and broadway. The altercation appears to have been over a woman who’s attention the men were vying for. Now here’s Tom with the weather.”_ is how the news should go. What we are getting from most media is something along the lines of:

“June 19th at 6:17 pm, a man pushed another man on the ground at Willy’s Pub on the corner of 6th and Broadway. Willy’s Pub is a known hang out for right wing extremists. People have been seen wearing MAGA hats there and once we saw a car parked out front that had a Confederate Flag bumper sticker.
The cause of the altercation is unclear at this time. Anonymous witnesses heard racial slurs though it is unclear which of the participants were using them. A woman at the bar indicated that both men were sexually harassing her and she wanted nothing to do with either of them due to her LGBTQ+ affiliations and that they refused to use her correct pronouns. Police on the scene had no comment”

I trust myself more than any politician or news source. Grain of salt on hand most of the time. A politician’s job is hard. They sometimes can’t tell the 100 percent truth even if they want to in order to keep their jobs. News sources are a business, yet they still manage to tell what happened, basic info which is what I am interested in getting. The spin I don’t give a hoot.

I’m a big Economist fan. You gotta respect a paper that’s been fighting the fight for Liberalism since there were kings in France and the pope had an army.

You can’t trust any one source, however. Everyone has a bias and a perspective, and your own are the biggest threat to your understanding. Acknowledging this truth helps you create your own larger picture of the world around you. Take in new information, analyze it, weight it, and set it in its appropriate place in your constellation of beliefs.

People rarely, but do, fabricate complete lies. Most stories have parts of the truth, and the degree to which they are not intellectually rigorous or honest, reflects how much value you should give it. Learn about logical fallacies and how to identify them. Check yourself when you are about to repeat something you’ve heard, and ask yourself if it really makes sense.

And as a general rule, everyone with an easy answer to a complicated problem is wrong.