Just wondering how you define 'mainstream' - I get all my news from Radio 4 but I would always have considered that mainstream - you seem to be suggesting it isn't?

My main sources of news apart from R4 are the weekend broadsheets (more for analysis than actual news), BBC Online for headlines and Guardian Unlimited when I want more details and can't get to a radio. I don't much like TV news, and as I get over an hour a day of R4 news in the car, I never feel like watching any more on TV.

I get most of my news from reading The Guardian and listening to Radio 4. While I would consider both of those relatively mainstream, I don't often notice that they suffer from the problems you list. For TV news, by far my favourite is Channel 4 news.

Also, I don't know if people have checked out Googles new news search feature yet, but that seems very handy for getting a number of different perspectives on the same stories.

The single most important thing you can do is ensure you get your news from multiple sources -- most news channels these days are part of conglomerates (eg Rupert Murdoch/News International which includes the Times, the Sun and Sky; DMGT which includes the Mail, Evening Standard, ITN and Reuters; with most of the rest being Turner and Time-Warner), so the spin in the Times is often comparable to the spin on Sky.

Satellite and cable TV, radio and the internet all provide many different sources of information quite easily, so biases can often be identified so long as you track 3 or 4 separate sources (I tend to use the Evening Standard and Times newspapers & websites, plus Radio 4, plus CNN, BBC and Sky news on cable, plus a couple of independant specialist news sources on the internet).

Once you've got the single-source problem out of the way though, you quickly run into the problem of having too much information. With so many sources it becomes difficult to verify your information and confirm it's veracity and origin; one source will copy another, so making it appear that two sources are independantly originating a story; and information once it's released is very hard to retract -- a newspaper may publish something false about a person and issue a retraction the next day, but the false story is already out there and many people who read the original story won't read the retraction.

Information is an absolute nightmare, which is why it's so fascinating and so much fun

I dont think Radio 4 is particularly mainstream, like Channel 4 its one of the only news programmes on air that seems to challenge and analyse the news itself rather than feed it to you in bitesize portions with out questioning the significance of what is being said.

Radio 4 doesn't assume you're dumb (much) and therefore go for the lowest common denominator, doesn't tend to sensationalise, or buy into hype - its a wholly more sober affair than your normal Sky, CNN, etc that seem to like to dazzle the viewer with images - as though they are more about entertainment than content.

I'd agree though that C4 news is probably the best for TV news, although I still don't think it's all that great.

At the end of the day I like analysis of the news. Nothing is as simple as it is presented in bitesize bullets, you need to spend some time breaking it down, reading between the lines, brushing aside the spin etc. What papers would people recommend? I really should start reading a few.

I agree about information overload on the net, the problem I find is that there are huge rafts of information available from alternative news sources, much of which is very interesting and informative, but sometimes you're not sure of it's accuracy when its occasionally presented by raving lunatics.


(Edited by Funky Monkey 24/09/2002 19:12)

I've ended up the complete opposite to Funky Monkey - I never watch terrestrial BBC or ITV news as it's infuriatingly "lowest common denominator" soundbite-style reporting on the whole. There are of course exceptions - such as the BBC's Fergal Keane.

I read The Independent( www.independent.co.uk ) and Guardian every day, and also most of the other papers at least once a week. If you want more indepth analysis, one of the weekly news magazines such as the New Statesman or Spectator could be worth a look, and there's a lot of alternative (though often very partisan) discussion at www.urban75.com .

All in all I go with what's been said above - read multiple sources, be aware of biases, make sure info is varifiable, then aim in the centre and you should be about there. Sadly there's no easy answer to finding good journalism, but it definitely does exist in the mainstreme if you look in the right places.

(Edited by Byron 24/09/2002 21:00)

I think Urban75 is blocked by our netfilter at work as 'Activism' but then so is Oxfam! What's all that about?

I think the outcome of this is I should read decent papers really...

I dont know why I dont, I take an interest in current affairs, just never got into the habit of buying a paper every day.

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by Funky Monkey
I think Urban75 is blocked by our netfilter at work as 'Activism' but then so is Oxfam! What's all that about?

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Sounds as mad as the case where AOL bolcked a chatroom because it contained the word "breast" - unfortunately for them, it was a breast-cancer charity's room!

Come to think of it, the abundance of f-words and c-words at Urban75 probably wouldn't help with a netfilter either.

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by Callum
The single most important thing you can do is ensure you get your news from multiple sources

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I totally agree. That way you can make up your own mind about what's spin and what's genuine.

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by Callum most news channels these days are part of conglomerates (eg Rupert Murdoch/News International which includes the Times, the Sun and Sky; DMGT which includes the Mail, Evening Standard, ITN and Reuters; with most of the rest being Turner and Time-Warner), so the spin in the Times is often comparable to the spin on Sky.

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That is one of the reasons I'm proud to work for The Guardian & The Observer, as it's owned by a trust and not some global monster that's hell bent on making all it's journalists tow the corporate line. The only other paper I can read without a pinch of salt is The Independent and it says a lot that these are all papers with relatively low circulation (Gdn = 300k, Indy = 400k) compared to The Times (600k), The Telegraph (1m) and The Sun (3.5m!).

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by Lori
(quotes)
Indy = 400k

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We're doing that well? I'm impressed. I thought we were about to fall through the 200k barrier for the first time. (Guess who's just got his first shift working on the Indy website after six months away from it? )

Really, the thing with news is you have to be aware of the editorial slant: you can get a perfectly good picture of what's going on by reading the Daily Mail or Socialist Worker if you know how to strip out the politics and read between the lines.

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by Funky Monkey
Remember after Sep 11th when they were looking for someone to blame? The media showed a group of people in the middle east (i forget which country) celebrating in the streets. Ive read since (but yet to confirm for sure) that this footage was ten years old.

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I'm pretty sure I remember this: IIRC the footage was genuine and the story that it was a fake was triggered by a Brazilian student who claimed on the net it was fake after one of his tutors said she'd seen it on CNN 10 years ago. As soon as the proverbial hit the fan she backtracked and said she wasn't really sure whether she'd seen it at all. Or something.

(Edited by Random 26/09/2002 17:10)

(Edited by Random 26/09/2002 17:11)

[quote]by Random
(quotes)
We're doing that well? I'm impressed. I thought we were about to fall through the 200k barrier for the first time. (Guess who's just got his first shift working on the Indy(quotes)
Well the last circulation figures the Guardian printed for the Indy were about 190,000 without bulk sales, and 220,000 with bulks. Annoyingly, they don't seem to have them on their site, so I can't post up the exact figures.

The problem I've found with stripping the news from the stories with the Daily Mail is that their political slant permeates everything they write so thoroughly it's something of an uphil struggle to say the least. That, and some of the things they print are verging on complete fabrication (virtually anything they report about asylum-seekers for one!). At least their bias could never be described as subtle though - a good or a bad thing depending on your perspective.

(Edited by Byron 27/09/2002 09:02)

(Edited by Byron 27/09/2002 09:03)

/me reaches into her desk drawer for her sales bumpf

errrrrrr. i can't actually find my ABC circulation data (must chase ad planning for that) but I have got the most recent readership figures from the NRS.
For during the week:
the Guardian - 1,367,000
Independent - 607,000
The Times - 1,712,000
Daily Tel - 2,496,000
Financial Times - 586,000
Daily Express - 2,074,000
Daily Mail - 5,654,000
Standard - 976,000

Read into it what you will

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by Random
(quotes)
I thought we were about to fall through the 200k barrier for the first time

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D'oh! I'm having a bad week with figures, so probably best to ignore what I say and read the true data... www.abc.org.uk/

I'm sure the Guardian and Independent would sell more copies if they actually distributed more.

I've lost count of the number of times I've gone to buy a paper, to find those two sold out, but mountains of Times and Telegraphs still left. Is there any good reason for this, or is it just that Murdoch and Black can afford to print many more than they sell?

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by In a State of Dan
I'm sure the Guardian and Independent would sell more copies if they actually distributed more.

I've lost count of the number of times I've gone to buy a paper, to find those two sold out, but mountains of Times and Telegraphs still left. Is there any good reason for this, or is it just that Murdoch and Black can afford to print many more than they sell?

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Depends where you live I think. I believe the Indy and the Guardian, having a fraction of the resources some of the others do, tend to concentrate their disribution where they'll get the most sales. This is solely from personal experiance, but when I go local newsagents from Essex to Sheffield, there's about two of each and a huge pile of tabloids - this compares to central London, where you'll always find both broadsheets in plentiful supply.

Amusingly, I was in Cambridge today, and the pile of Indy's was enormous - which would bear this out, considering the obvious demographic of a large number of Cambridge residents!

The Guardian's supply management is based on past sales. If a newsagent sells out one day, their wholesaler will order more copies next week in order to increase the supply to that retailer, however, if they send back more than their allocated returns percentage, they will get fewer copies next time. This is, of course, based on the previous week's data except for Xmas, Bank Holidays etc. which is based on last year's figures.

The reason that you will often go into a small newsagent and find they have no copies of a paper is that they probably only have 3 regular customers who buy that title. If the wholesaler sends them 4 copies a day, it just takes a couple of people who don't usually shop at that store to pop by and the paper looks out of stock. The people who never buy a paper from the same shop are very difficult to cater for on a title with a carefully monitored returns level - I reckon that News International must have much higher levels than most because they can afford to (as In a State of Dan suggested).

Just be grateful you don't live in Stornoway as they often don't get their papers until the next day as the planes get grounded by fog all the time. Mind you, who'd want to live there anyway?