Libre news sources

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PsychicEcho
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Joined: 04/05/2020

News that is funded by big money cannot be trusted.

News that is loyal to the right wing cannot be trusted.

News that is loyal to the left wing cannot be trusted.

Find the sources that search for truth, even if it hurts.

This one looks to satisfy the above criteria:
https://unlimitedhangout.com/

Good luck to everybody.

nadebula.1984
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Joined: 05/01/2018

The criteria listed above are self defeating. For news sources, if they were not funded by "big money" (i.e. monopoly capitalist), they must be communist, revolutionary (i.e. proletariat) publishing sources. But you are also against left-wing publishing. Please note that there cannot be "neutrality" on political spectrum. Neutralists are also rightists, because they are counter-revolutionary.

PsychicEcho
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I said left and right winged loyalists. meaning those who are 'stuck' in those positions.

Both the left and right have blind spots. If they are stuck in their shtick, and are unwilling to check their blind spots, then they are not worthy news sources.

nadebula.1984
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Joined: 05/01/2018

Not everyone has "blind spots". Dialectical materialists and historical materialists don't. For example, we do agree that capitalism was progressive at the end of feudal society.

But everyone is a loyalist, loyalist to his/her class. One can "freely" choose either the leftist, proletariat stands or the rightist, bourgeois stands, but never both. Again, there is no neutrality on political spectrum.

Geshmy
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Joined: 04/23/2015

> News that is funded by big money cannot be trusted.
If we want to know what is going on in the world we are going to need a lot of boots on the ground because the world is a really big place and every part of it is active. I would recommend the largest news organization in the world as a good source. According to Wikipedia that would be https://www.bbc.com/. It takes big money to pay for all the journalistic foot solders. BBC is paid for by the tax payers of Great Britain so a certain level of neutrality would be expected.

> News that is loyal to the right wing cannot be trusted. News that is loyal to the left wing cannot be trusted.
News is news and should not be either left or right. Sometimes what the left or the right are doing is news. The big organizations like USA Today, Washington Post, The New York times also run editorials which will express opinions and that's good because they try to compartmentalize news from opinion. Since a bias is inherent in any organization we should probably try to vary our sources.

>Find the sources that search for truth, even if it hurts.
That is supposed to be the nature of reporting.

>This one looks to satisfy the above criteria:
https://unlimitedhangout.com/

I'm curious how you evaluate the trustworthiness news sources. I spent several hours looking into the site you recommend. As to boots on the ground, well its just four authors. Who are they and what have they done. Who do they 'hang out' with?
Take the most important author behind the site: Whitney Webb

The Authors page says this:
Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.

So she spent three years or so at a site called MintPressNews.com
I spent time looking into that site
Here is some info from wikipedia: "MintPress News is a left-leaning[1] American online news website founded and edited by Mnar Muhawesh which was launched in January 2012.[2] It covers political, economic, foreign affairs and environmental issues. ... By 2016, MintPress News had begun reprinting copy from RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik.[7]" That last line is a real problem for me since I have read a lot about Russia's war to undermine Democracies, especially my country. The modern war that they are prosecuting is in part a war on the mind. Through use of misinformation, disinformation and impersonation they seek to undermine our faith in our institutions and hammer away at fault lines that divide us. RT and Sputnik are used in a major way as a part of that effort.

There are appearances of her on many other sites. They in turn range from communist oriented (https://mronline.org/author/whitneywebb/ - https://www.globalresearch.ca/author/whitney-webb), pure conspiracy mongering and fallacious stuff (https://www.brighteon.com - see COVID DEATH VACCINE - 1st shot changes your DNA & kills the Elderly - 2nd shot kills 50% who get it.) to heavy anti-vaccine and pseudo science (https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/11/15/operation-warp-speed.aspx - https://childrenshealthdefense.org/author/whitney-webb/)

I am done looking into that site and have only expressed here a part of what I learned. I do not need to study it's content. I recommend staying away from it. I did look through some of her long articles. I suspect they are mostly a little truth mixed with a whole lot of conjecture and conspiracy weaving assumptions; don't have time.

So really PsychicEcho, What steps did you take to establish credibility of that 'news source'. Would you still recommend it?

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

Geopoliticalfutures.com is a really good one. It is not a "hard news" or "opinion news" website (so it is not part of the "news as entertainment industry" which dominates the industry), but instead is a collective of professional geopolitical analysts from around the globe. They don't appear to lean left or right, and take a long-term view on how the world's events are likely to play out.

Most of its content requires a paid subscription to access, but enough of it is free, including articles, analysis, videos, and podcasts, that it is still a very highly useful site even without paying.

When people in my family get panicked by the latest news headlines, I send them materials from this website. It tends to have a calming effect, not trying to play with your emotions but simply looking at how newsworthy events will probably fit into longer term shifts in the world.

Geshmy
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Joined: 04/23/2015

Thanks for that. Geopoliticalfutures.com does look real interesting. Probably will make the bookmark list. :) Might even subscribe.

Geshmy
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Joined: 04/23/2015

I thought this might prove useful to, this discussion.
First:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/
This site is dedicated to analyzing web news sites for their bias. For example, I looked up BBC.com it gets this for a rating:
"LEFT-CENTER BIAS
These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information, but may require further investigation. See all Left-Center sources.
Overall, we rate the BBC Left-Center biased based on story selection that slightly favors the left and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information."

Second:
The following links are all fact checking sites and they each earn this rating from mediabiasfactcheck.com
"LEAST BIASED
These sources have minimal bias and use very few loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes). The reporting is factual and usually sourced. These are the most credible media sources.
Full Fact is a very well-sourced, thorough fact-checker. We consider them to be a top fact-checker in the genre with the likes of Politifact and Factcheck.org. MBFC endorses Full Fact as a highly credible fact-checker."

So here is a list of fact checking sites rated least biased:
https://fullfact.org/
https://www.hoax-slayer.net/
https://leadstories.com/
https://www.truthorfiction.com/
https://www.factcheck.org/
https://www.politifact.com/
https://www.snopes.com/

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

Nearly all of the fact checking websites are politically biased and themselves are simply part of the "news" industry which is used by mega-corporations to terrorize people into spending money on their products. Just by seeing a site or a group call themselves fact checkers, I pretty much know for sure that they will be pushing a political agenda and pushing a global corporatist agenda and global central bankers' agenda of enforced debt slavery and enforced consumption of goods and products.

lutes
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Joined: 09/04/2020

Sorry, I am going to have to fact check this.

Geshmy
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Joined: 04/23/2015

Andy,
An old saying goes something like this, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ You mention agendas but highlight only one. Actually three but I assume that these three are all related so I unite them as one, maybe I have it wrong: 'a political agenda and pushing a global corporatist agenda and global central bankers' agenda of enforced debt slavery and enforced consumption of goods and products.’ If you want to resist a future of an ‘indentured’ world, I’m with you.

But I am concerned about other agendas also such as one to weaken Democratic institutions around the world. Misinformation is one tool being widely used by the actors pushing that agenda. If ‘fact checkers’ actually do legwork to verify or disprove statements on social media and elsewhere, I find them very useful.

As far as globalization goes, the software, some we love and some we hate, but it all is pushing a homogenization of humanity. Is that by design or just a side effect? maybe it doesn’t matter, the fact is it’s here and not going to go away so we have deal with it.

Albert Einstein 'strongly advocated the idea of a democratic global government that would check the power of nation-states in the framework of a world federation.' (Wikipedia - Also see: https://www.wfm-igp.org/) For me, it’s hard to imagine that humanity can survive on earth without embracing a process of global governance, given current trends towards over-population and decreasing supplies of the planet’s mineral resources, water and food.

And which would be worse, arriving at a world of enforced debt slavery, or seeing the world’s major powers decide to duke it out in an all out war?

If we can be united in America we can try at least to control the greed of 'global' bankers. Misinformation is being used to divide us. Here is an interesting wikipedia item that outlines an example of that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_Black_Lives_Matter

Anyway, that's my two cents worth for today, in fact not sure when I'll come up with another two cents.

PsychicEcho
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Joined: 04/05/2020

It feels like we are coming from different vantage points.

I would love to know which country, or country-group you were from. I'm North American.

There may not be neutrality on the political spectrum, but there are degrees of abandonment from the political spectrum.

nadebula.1984
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Joined: 05/01/2018

No one shall abandon the political spectrum. Humans are social being, and their social existence determines their social consciousness or ideology.

Therefore, everyone has to be loyal to his/her class interests. S/he has to have a position on the political spectrum, either the leftist proletariat position, or the rightist bourgeois position.

PsychicEcho
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Joined: 04/05/2020

tough crowd

bambam
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Joined: 12/10/2020

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.
Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure.
Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.

It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of our group life.
In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases.

Our Constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political machine.
But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion.

Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight.
Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four.
In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct.
In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything.
We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions.

From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.
In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market.

In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed.
To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds.

There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.
It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us teat.

But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition.
We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness.

To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda.

Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized — the manipulation of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought to the consciousness of the masses.

The instruments by which public opinion is organized and focused may be misused.
But such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life.
As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.
With the printing press and the newspaper, the railroad, the telephone, telegraph, radio and air- planes, ideas can be spread rapidly and even instanta- neously over the whole of America.
H. G. Wells senses the vast potentialities of these inventions when he writes in the New York Times:
"Modern means of communication — the power afforded by print, telephone, wireless and so forth, of rapidly putting through directive strategic or technical conceptions to a great number of cooperatin centers, of getting quick replies and effective discussion — have opened up a new world of political processes.

Ideas and phrases can now be given an effectiveness greater than the effectiveness of any personality and stronger than any sectional interest.
The common design can be documented and sustained against perversion and betrayal.
It can be elaborated and developed steadily and widely without personal, local and sectional misunderstanding."
What Mr. Wells says of political processes is equally true of commercial and social processes and all manifestations of mass activity. The groupings and affiliations of society to-day are no longer subject to "local and sectional" limitations.

When the Constitution was adopted, the unit of organization was the village community, which produced the greater part of its own necessary commodities and generated its group ideas and opinions by personal contact and discussion directly among its citizens.

But today, because ideas can be instantaneously transmitted to any distance and to any number of people, this geographical integration has been supplemented by many other kinds of grouping, so that persons having the same ideas and interests may be associated and regimented for common action even though they live thousands of miles apart.

Propaganda by Edward L. Bernays 1928
https://archive.org/details/Propaganda1928ByEdwardL.Bernays_201608/

Just leaving it here, it's an interesting read.

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PsychicEcho
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Joined: 04/05/2020

I see myself as counter-cultural energy. When I feel my culture becoming exaggerated too far in a particular way that feels unhealthy, my instinct is to push back against it. Balance feels safe. I fear too much concentration of power, fear mass mob mentality, fear too much ecological damage, etc...

Right now I especially fear people becoming too divided and compartmentalized. I try to be unifying energy. It is important that different types of people can cooperate together despite some differences. I fear the 'Divide and Conquer'.