How much do you trust the news media?

I don’t trust any news that is related to politics. (so basically anything the government says)

I trust them as far as Stephen Hawkings could throw them.

Yes, I trust only certain sources.

If folks are throwing their hands up in the air and talking about the evils of socialism, or are claiming that Barack Obama isn’t an American, I generally conclude that this is not news, but rather opinion. So Fox News is pretty much out of the picture.

OTOH, a presentation of the facts, with interpretation of them being limited to the editorial pages, is more trustworthy.

”Do you think the proliferation of highly opinionated political talk shows has affected the way we look at the “news?””

Absolutely. We seem to have a whole generation that is unable to distinguish fact from opinion.

I only trust Fox News. ~

I worked for the New York Herald Trubune, one of the world’s major newspaper in the ‘60s, with people like Jimmy Breslin, Tom Wolfe, and Dick Schaap, and I was continually amazed by how hard the reporters, columnists and editors worked to dig out and verify the truth of their copy. In today’s world in which news and entertainment have merged—and where the object is to get the message out fast rather than correct (i.e., IM, Twitter, email), I believe that high journalistic standard is either dead or in a vegetative state. My old Trib comrades are spinning in their graves.

Only NPR.

I heard an interview on NPR with President Obama last week and I was struck by how professional the whole thing seemed. They were asking him serious questions and played back his entire response.

It reminded me how terrible the rest of the media has become. I kind of trust my local newspaper. I trust NPR for its investigative skills. For world news, I trust the BBC. And politically, I think Talking Points Memo comes closest to seeking the truth most of the time.

I don’t have any time for networks or cable ‘news.’

My Father In Law use to read several News papers a day. I read on the INTERNET and try to listen to more than one report per day. I miss Lou Dobbs because he gave both sides .
Every report is subjective . Fox five is slanted to the R and many channels are slanted to the L.
I am an Independent and find myself yelling at the TV .

Napolean said that “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” I would say that the same is true for news (and probably always was). The proliferation of news channels (“channels” in the sense of “sources”) means that everyone gets to gravitate toward news outlets they agree with. So, really just about any point of view is objective truth for some group of people.

As someone with a “conspiracy theorist” bent or POV, I even see bullshit or naivete in supposedly neutral sources such as Charlie Rose or Jim Lehrer. While everyone was shaking their pom poms over killing some Somali pirates, I’m wondering why there’s no reporting on the nuclear waste that European countries dump off their shoreline and no reporting on China stealing their fish. But hooray, we killed some destitute Africans who had the audacity to try protecting their territorial waters.

I basically read most everything (including conspiracy dreck) and sort of decide based on how different reports seem to jive. I like rawstory.com primarily.

edit:: the video “9/11 Press for Truth” does a good job of showing how “truth” can be scrambled or scattered across multiple and mutually exclusive news sources.

While I take anything on the news with a grain of salt, I trust it a great deal more than the random rantings of some self important neckbeard with a blog, which is where a lot of people who disregard mainstream media seem to get their information.

NPR here as well.

I think NPR and BBC are still two bastions of journalism and news that can still be trusted more than most of what else is currently out there. My wife is a big fan of NPR and BBC and I find myself gravitating that way more and more these days.

There are a few ways, I guess, to suss out a reliable source. The most obvious is to pay attention to several news outlets, all across the political spectrum and even from other countries (like the BBC). This helps discern what really happened in the same way that having two eyes helps determine depth and how far away something is, because you get it from several angles. If they all have some news in common, and you can account for known slant, it’s probably true. (A way of determining slant might be to look at who owns the news outlet in question. Who profits from their reporting? Who pays them their wages? Can you discern an agenda? That sort of thing.)

Another way is to do the research. Sometimes the Left or the Right get all riled up about a bill that’s being debated in Congress, over-reacting and telling you that we’ll lose our access to herbal medicine, say, or that we’ll have “death panels.” However, if you go to the bill itself and read the actual text (the definitive site is thomas.loc.gov) you can see for yourself if they are posturing, or how much they’re mucking up the truth.

Also, it helps to know what sites are authoritative sources to find information. Joe Blow’s Blog probably isn’t the best place to find out anything but Joe Blow’s opinion, but if I wanted actual information on the national debt, say, I’d go to Treasurydirect.gov. If I want to know unemployment or inflation statistics, I go to bls.gov, which is the site of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. NBER.org posts the official start and end dates of the recessions in the US. Have a question about the Constitution? Read the Constitution! :)

Finally, sometimes you might not know the slant or opinion of a purported news site. Sometimes you have to watch their stories for a while and compare them to other sites (especially definitive ones) to know what’s going on with them. For instance, if you’re like my Mother in Law and all you watch is basically Glenn Beck, you might begin to think that he’s a definitive source for news – but if you take what he says and evaluate it based on observed reality (taking a statement like “There’s no such thing as climate change, because the climate isn’t changing” and comparing it to statistics, news about the Solomon Islands and Florida losing ground to rising water, and how the diseases that one might expect to spread when the climate changes are spreading in the predictable way), you might realize that the news source you’re evaluating is or is not reliable. This just takes time and observation.

Sussing out reliable news takes work – sometimes, I think most people are unwilling to put in the work and just believe everything they hear, or everything their political party tells them. However, I think the work is worth it, when trying to be a good citizen. :)

I trust most mainstream media about half. Many networks/ papers/ programs, etc. are a good jumping off point, but require some additional research for confirmation.

During the 1960s I pretty much trusted the national media explicitly, especially the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and CBS News. During the 1970s, I began to feel that the press was the last bulwark between us and dictatorship, as evidenced by the courage of the Times in the case of the Pentagon Papers and the Post in the case of Watergate.

Beginning in the 1980s, with the advent of Iran Contra, I began to have my doubts. It seemed to me the press was rather uncritical, but still, ordinary news stations broadcast long segments of the Bork debate and people seemed still to treat journalism as a serious profession.

No in the days of 24 hour cable news I am in despair as to where I can go to get help to understand what is happening geopolitically and locally. I trust certain bloggers to a certain extent, but I disbelieve first, rather reflexively, and then see what i can put together that makes sense.

I used to trust the news.

FOX caused me to lose that trust.

Every news source has some bias. It’s inevitlable. It’s human nature. I concur that NPR and BBC are probably the least biased. But to truly get an unbiased picture, you should listen to a number of different sources, knowing what their biases are, such as FOX, CNN, NPR, BBC, etc. If you don’t know what a particular source’s bias is, you’ll glean it soon enough by listening to all the others as well…

…keeping in mind that not every show on FOX is actual news, as they admit themselves.

no, trust yourself

Tha only news I Trust is→ http://www.foxnews.com/

@DixieRock Yeah, I’m sure it’s satisfying to get your daily dose of bile, but how do you find out what’s really going on in the world, then?

IF I wanted to watch any bile (IF) I could tune in to CNN, ABC, CBS, or NBC, ohhh can’t forget cnbc…lolol I also know how to read!
http://drudgereport.com/
http://newsmax.com/
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/today.guest.html
http://www.michaelsavage.wnd.com/
http://www.wnd.com/
http://michellemalkin.com/
http://www.judicialwatch.org/ Here is a special one just for YOU!!→

http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GFRD_en&q=barack+obama

Well, you have revealed more of your debility, but you haven’t answered my question.

you need you view them all and then pick through their biases to reach your own conclusion. Be wary of those with an obvious political agendas like msnbc or fox

With a tiny grain of salt, media is a gargantuan spin doctor with wheels behind wheels, feeding the masses that suck in all the negativity and bull. Notice how they prey on the emotional and downtrodden to encourage more emotional outcrys especially at many recent natural disaster areas.I only trust inner guidance system, close family,old friends those with opinons that matter.

The Media is always influenced by ratings.
Every story has a slant to it. No one ever presents the facts with out injecting what they wish us all to believe. I get the facts by examining all the information from several sources.

Is that what you want us to think, @philosopher? ;)