I generally try to stay informed on current events. With the exception of what gets posted here, I normally get my news from CNN. I tend to lean left politically, but not always.
The problem I always run into is that every news site I read, regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum, is always filled with pointless bullshit. Specifically, sports, celebrity news, and product placement. “Some shitty pop singer is dating some shitty actor” or “These are our recommendations for the best mass-produced garbage-quality fast fashion from Temu” or “Some overpaid dickhead threw a ball faster than some other overpaid dickhead.”
What I’d love to find is a news source that’s just news that matters. No celebrity gossip, sports, opinion pieces, etc. Just real events that have an impact on some part of the world. Legislation, natural events, economic changes, wars, political changes, that kind of thing.
Does this exist, or is all journalism just entertainment?
I recommend news agencies* like Reuters, AP, and AFP. If you want to just get pure news.
*News agencies are companies that primarily sell news to other companies like CNN.
Bloomberg news tends to only have the kind of news you’re referring to.
All media are biased. Some are open about their bias (communist media) and some are not (Wikipedia says it’s “neutral” but there’s a catch). Western media are all very polular and one-sided so I recommend reading english.news.cn.
mintpressnews, the grayzone
AlJazeera
1440 is what I use. It’s literally bare-bones news articles devoid of any opinion, just facts. They cover both US and international news, and have small culture and sports blips that aren’t click-baity. And it’s emailed to you every day. :)
I’ve not read 1440 at all, so this may or may not apply, but I’d offer a word of caution to any news that purports to be “just facts”. You can absolutely promote an agenda with only facts by choosing which facts to publish (and what stories to even cover). It’s sometimes better to aim to get news from sources that are just very transparent about their biases instead of claiming they don’t have any.
I don’t think it’s better to go for highly biased news at all, I don’t care what the reporter thinks or feels about the facts, I just want them. The overtly biased news outlets are filled to the brim with opinion. If there are facts a story is leaving out, it will eventually get to me through the absolute garbage microphone that is social media, and I can check out the sources from there.
I like allsides.com
I can recommend Reuters, given it still has a little bit of sports and opinion, but I find it’s good at providing neutral facts and sources it’s knowledge from appropriate experts for its opinion pieces.
It only lacks in providing local level news, where I turn to my country’s national broadcaster.
Seconding Reuters. Their primary customers are other news agencies, so Reuters generally don’t add spin to a news article.
I guess AP is similar.
IIRC those are like the big two in reselling stories.
Yep, they are called news agencies.
Thank you!
Apparently “Agence France-Presse” or AFP is the third one, at least if you speak French.
providing neutral facts and sources it’s knowledge from appropriate experts for its opinion pieces.
Such as Adrian Zenz. A guy who was paid by the BBC to make up absurd stories about China and who thinks god sent him on a mission to rid the world of gays and communists.
No idea about this dude, but literally in the article you link, they reference Zenz as an independent researcher who says:
“Although it is speculative…”
Before providing his estimate and also provides other details which appear to support the story, but the article does not present as clear, hard “facts”. Also, the title isn’t some clickbait trash, and even directly says “could”.
A guy who vows to destroy all gays isn’t “speculative”
NPR News is probably what you’re looking for. sports and celebrity stuff is relegated to the Culture section, which is its own separate thing (although there are a couple of music stories that seem to have been misplaced). here is the RSS feed for the News section: https://feeds.npr.org/1001/rss.xml
Id probably use AP (Associated Press) since they seem to provide the least biased and most fact based reporting. However looking at their front page right now I see minimal content involving celebrities so it might not be your cup of tea.
I have the AP Top Stories page as my bookmark. It gets rid of even more of the stuff OP doesn’t want.
Only borderline story is about Taylor Swift and food banks, but the focus is on the economics and other issues food banks face, so I feel it is still within guidelines. There’s no celeb drama or gushing in it.
This and my local NPR affiliate are my primary news sources.
Neither Reuters nor AP pass the Uyghur test. They may be less biased than others but they’re still fake news and propaganda outlets.
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For US news, I really like readtangle.com.
I like to listen to NPR’s up first. They don’t have too much time to editorialized. I’ll then go to AP or Reuters if I want to follow up on something.
Sounds like you’re looking for independent journalism, I’m in the same boat. I’ve found checking commondreams.org, scheerpost.com, therealnews.com, unicornriot.ninja, fair.org, thecanary.co, leftvoice.org, consortiumnews.com, labornotes.org, and popularresistance.org make for a great news feed. Those are an array of independent news outlets which keep it almost entirely just news. Setting up an RSS feed with these sites would be a solid move to ensure your getting news with none of the BS.
I’m having a hard time getting their URL feeds. I think your post is very useful. Since you mentioned the RSS feed, could you share the links, please? It would be awesome if you can spare the time. Thanks.
I just use radindiemedia.com as my source for these news feeds. It’s curated by an activist who also mixes in some of his work as well as a few other news sources. But those sites make up the vast majority of the links.
Oh, that’s it. Thank you very much.
I would add Grist to that list for climate focused reporting.
I think what you’re describing is the need for RSS feeds. Generally, news outlets categorise their articles neatly so you subscribe with RSS to only headlines, or world events, or whatever. It requires you to have a look around the news site in question and setup RSS correctly.
The other neat thing is that you can read all your RSS feeds (ie multiple news sites) in one reader and there are tons of custom RSS apps.
I share your disdain for gossip and mainstream money grab promo. And ads. My god how much do ads suck.
It’s funny how often this is brought up and how the answer is that’s it’s been solved since nearly the begging of the web.
I’ve been using an RSS manager / server for decades! Right now it’s FreshRSS as the server and using Lire as a client on iOS. There’s arguably no better way to consume content.
RSS won’t solve OP’s problem. Most sites have a single feed with all their articles, if they have an rss feed at all (can’t sell ads in an rss feed).
Aside from maybe just the raw AP feed (which is free through their app) I’m not sure any modern news room just publishes the type of feed OP might be looking for.
I think that really depends on the news site. News from my country is very well suited for RSS.
100% yeah. I guess I mean that OP is already frustrated by noise in their news sources, rss doesn’t solve curation, which is what it sounds like people think rss does. But if every story you’re shown needs to be relevant to your interests rss isn’t going to fix that.
Even the perfect news outlet that OP describes is going to have tons of boring stuff. Social media tried solving it with algorithms and will probably move on to AI driven feeds in 18 months, but their profit motive spoils the effort.
Then again I’ve thought about curation vs. aggregation maybe a bit too much.
I’m subscribed to over 50 RSS feeds and never once have I wanted to subscribe to a site and they didn’t have a feed.
