RICH

Came across this while answering a thread about Magic Jack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1ewIeCDU0M

dgsyd1

A quote from the godlike genius that is Aaron Sorkin..

"I was in London during Hurricane Katrina and watched the BBC news coverage. That was the first time I ever really watched news about America at length while away in a foreign country. I could not believe the difference in the coverage compared with US news - it was night and day. The BBC is fantastic and, saying this doesn't make me a member of al-Qaeda, so is Al Jazeera."


Smart man.

MostlyYank

Interesting about the coments on Al Jezeera - I saw a segment about it on the PBS Newshour a few years back, and they said that while it appears to be balanced, their panels are always made up of like minded people.

That it was basically phoney.

Pete

kimilseung

What do you think yourself about its news? It seems far from phoney to me. (Good news doesn't necessarily have to be balanced). What mind set are their commentators from, do you remember? I might have to see if I can hunt down that article. I wonder if it is something cultural, and which Al Jazirah news channel it was talking about; as I understand that the Arab is different from the English.

Bob

News isn't balanced, it is the news, just the information.

Anything else is being phony.

kimilseung

News is selected and edited information presented from an (inevitable) biased position.
Balance is when that news is either.....
Presented from opposed positions of bias, or
Presented from a fulcrum point on the scale of bias, that is considered a place of balance.

If news appears to have no position of bias or perspective, it is just because it mirrors your own bias or perspective.

MostlyYank

I agree, that's why I prefer France24. Their ticker is awesome.

Funny how AlJezeeras camera feed died as soon as they figured out Saddams statue was coming down.

Some things are obvious. 'You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.' Like RT news, oh, the saintly Assad fighting valiantly against those terrorists' lol.

Pete

Sally Redux

Have you actually watched it?

kimilseung

I am not quite sure what you are saying in this post, but you know about Wadah Khanfar, AL Jazeera and the wiki-leaks documents right?

Englishmum

The Reuters news agency websites (US and UK, although I prefer the British site). There is also a free App for tablets:

http://www.reuters.co.uk

http://www.reuters.com

* I may be a tad biased though as my spouse works for them (although it was sold to Thomson and is officially ThomsonReuters)

MostlyYank

Yeah Sally I watch most of them off and on. NHK, In From Holland, DW, South Asia Newsline, Taiwan Outlook, and the Afghan Report too.

But the only ones I watch regularly are France24 and often the BBC.

Kimil, I didn't, thanks. This, right? http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...zeera?page=0,0

Pete

kimilseung

Yes, that is what I was alluding to.

dlake02

To the OP.

Forget it. We've been searching and searching and searching for good US news sources for the last 18+ months and have finally got to the point of giving up.

There is nothing but house fires (not news), shop-lifting (barely news) and shootings in Oakland (hardly news - more an event to set your watch by) on each of our local TV channels. Think of your worst local ITV newscast (Look East anyone ?), increase to 45+ minutes, remove most of the content and you're there.

{The only thing funnier than local news is "Sabado Gigante" on a Saturday night - if you've ever "enjoyed" classic French, Italian or Spanish TV game-shows, this is the Big Mumma version of that. Great for your Spanish, but you'll feel your brain cells start to annihilate.}

PBS is good but on at the wrong time for us (some of the rest of the programmes are interesting/worthy but like being back at school - dry as dishwater in the 1970s Open University style).

What irks me is that in 18 months I have never seen any of these useless politicians on this side of the pond given the kind of grilling they deserve as Humphreys or Paxman would demolish the useless politicians on the other side of the pond.

But what REALLY irks me is that a nation as obviously intelligent as a good number of Americans are puts up with the kind of lack-lustre media that the nation has. IMHO, the ONLY thing worth watching/listening to is NPR which suffers from a dire lack of funding.

Our media diet now tends to be NPR in the morning, early afternoon and weekends (Morning Edition, Wait-Wait, Car Talk, Prairie Home, All Things Considered) and Radio 4, BBC 1/2/4 the rest of the time. There are a couple of world-music programmes on Radio 3 that I download via RadioDownloader and put on the iPod - you can get to all the BBC radio programmes to download as mp3s that way.

Thank whatever deity you are plagued with that iPlayer exists - what little evening TV viewing we have is now almost 100% on BBC and ITV and the occasional PBS programme. CBBC takes a huge hit as well - most US kids channels are outlawed in our house as they are nothing more than rampant consumerism writ-large.

If, like me, you prefer a good old-fashioned newspaper that you can read whatever size room you are in, even the smallest, may I suggest The Guardian Weekly. It's a weekly reduction of many international papers printed in the US - vast range of stories and opinion.

Then take your usual European titles via a tablet, PC, whatever. BBC, France 24, DW, etc... And if you like a little satire/comedy with your news, Maher et al are good. Personally, I prefer true reportage, but it's in stunning short-supply here.

kimilseung

Restrictions that journalists or organizations agree to hardly help matters. But there is now some push back on this after the NYT discussed it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/us...back.html?_r=1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...?newsfeed=true

MostlyYank

kimil, that's disgusting. Thanks for the link.

Pete