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Today, I decided to post something a little different: a question about the trustworthiness and credibility of todays media.
There was the Thailand Cambodia border skirmish some weeks ago and no regular media gave more than superficial reasons. I had to stumble over a blogger to get a better background.
I have resigned to being uninformed unless I invest hours and days into researching a topic.
International and in alphabetical order:
Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/
France 24 https://www.france24.com/en/
Reuters https://www.reuters.com/
The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/europe
I would say these are the ones I still hold respect over the years. Regardless of issues, these still have my respect.
Trust however?
Well, nobody should trust or distrust anything blindly. Too many times I see people nowadays fall in line of blind allegiance to absolutes. To trust or to distrust absolutely. The key to media literacy is to look for what is not seen in what is being shown. And to try and cover our blind spots nurtured by our biases.
And no the answer isn't "ground news". That is a silly tool for Factioned Americans. Nobody gets to decide the spectrum and the polical positioning of outlets. Example: The New York Times is considered Left Wing by Americans but in Europe they would be a moderate Right Wing or full blown Right Wing depending of the country you're in.
This is why Left/Right is dead as a deconstruction of social struggles. The original meaning of it as established in the French Revolution has been dead and buried for a while. Especially with the NeoLiberalism creation of the "Centrist" positioning with false oppositions that protect the already benefitted citizens which would render them all as part of the "Right" by the original intended meaning of Left/Right.
There is no Center or Centrism in the original meaning of Left and Right for a reason. Because the center cannot be occupied by people saying what it is. The center is the "battleground", the "Negotiation Space" where the contesting and conceding occur between the ones privileged by the status quo and the ones left out of it.
Was I sanctimonious, condescending and awfully presumptuous enough?
I wrote all this because a lot of people decide their predilection of news outlets based on their perceived notions of Left/Right constructions which is why I've pointed out that they have been rendered pretty hollow throughout time.
Facts are verifiable. Opinions however are complicated.
I could state like many have, that The Guardian is an elitist outlet safekeeping the British upper middle-class interests against the oligarchs but at the cost of the disadvantaged as well. And if you are a reader of The Guardian like myself you know this is a warranted and fair criticism.
Taking this, what position would you place them in the silly Left-Center-Right spectrum line? The answer is quite irrelevant isn't it?
I would say, when it comes to political governance, focus on propositions and their inherent outcomes and consequences, then take the criticism of those same propositions to correct and improve them or to abandon them altogether in favour of something more viable.
When it comes to news coverage... outlets are by majority owned by corporations and or wealthy individuals that will run defense through them. That is why public owned news outlets have retained value and common trust, because the perverse incentive is blocked out.
Suggestion wise... seeking verifiable information first, then seeking many angles of that same said verifiable information to perceive if there is insight to be found or if it is just noise as cover-up for what is truly the foundation of what is happening is the best option we all have.
Knowing that all of us are unreliable narrators of reality is something that I try to find in the people that I surround myself with. Because together we can form a better account of reality than we can on our own.
That's it. No perfect solutions. But definitely the never-ending possibility of improvements.
The fact that all of this requires some level of ego death and humility in an age where social media and its inherent algorithmic distribution of information nurtures egotism, egoism and faction siding by the "faux virtue" path is however the larger crisis we face regarding the distribution of information. Which results in an aggravation of everything else in the process.
As to solutions to this? I truly don't know what can "disarm" this. But I would love to hear suggestions as to how we can counter this or diminish its effects.
Any suggestions?
Why aljazeera? Cause of the reporting from Gaza?
Instead of an edit, I decided to add another comment as PS:
If you're worried about Aljazeera because they are based in Qatar, don't worry, because everyone is. Including myself. And they know it very well. And I think most of us are aware that they're running prestige journalism as a face saving front. Like many other things they've run over the last decade for tourism sake and to attract foreign investment and appeal to international markets.
As to their national version of the outlet, I vouch for nothing and I have no idea of how it is. I will leave that to their nationals or people who speak Arabic to state and talk about it. I'm completely ignorant of that end and very aware of it.
Like I said in my original comment, trust no outlet. But facts are verifiable.
The reason I see more and more people checking Aljazeera over the years is because they function a bit as a broker between the complexity of the reality of the middle-eastern countries and Arab African countries and our over-simplistic and often latent prejudicial takes of their cultures. I have to say before starting checking Aljazeera, my perspective of Iran was an embarrassment compared to today. It's about the fact of how they function as a window to understand the inner complexities of their countries and problematic traditions as much as we do with our western ones.
There's no simple answers. But you mentioned Gaza, they and the respectable outlets have managed to display the problems of Israel without reducing the country to a thumbnail of Zionism and Netanyahu. Without shying away from Genocide and murdered journalists, how many outlets have you seen displaying Israeli protests and dissent? Not a lot of them...
And they get accused of being Arabs running a mission to destabilise Israel in favour of Hamas and Palestine.
I have to say, not that long ago, everytime I defended Palestine, I was accused of being a Hamas supporter. This is the reductionism of myopic coverage. And it's sad that now I have to run defense to the Israeli sometimes (amidst this terror!! ) because all that people see is the horrific genocide that their government is inflicting on Palestinians.
But if we know how not to reduce the U.S. and Americans to just Maga, why do we keep reducing every other country to their worst faction and erase their entire cultural complexity?
I think you are driving that from a lot of assumptions instead of experience of interaction. Which is fine. We all have those. Interacting with them as a news source over the years, their coverage is very wide and very fact driven. And there's a lot of coverage that other outlets usually shy away from that they don't.
You should know that even in polls taken amongst journalists Al jazeera scores very high on credibility.
I'm not sure but I believe Al Jazeera now scores higher than the Washington Post (obvious reasons) and The New York Times, two examples of once reputable news outlets that have been falling out of grace. But AP News is probably still holding their credibility along with NPR and PBS, both falling apart from budget cuts this year, all of them on the American side.
Al Jazeera's opinion side though, will be a big discussion to be had like with any other outlets that exist.
But then again, they're just one of the various I mentioned in the previous commentary in alphabetical order because I don't really have a favourite as a choice amongst those.
I also read "Publico" and "Expresso" and find them both reliable. And RTP, which is a public funded news station. But all these are outlets from Portugal in Portuguese only. I assume a lot us Europeans here will have a lot of reputable National News outlets we count on, especially public funded ones, that don't really register outside of our national borders. That is why I only shared my go to international ones and not the national ones in the previous comment.
Although, EU side, Euronews still holds up nicely despite the scandals and the envolvement of the Hungarian state friendly acquisitions, which was a Portuguese asshole that brokered that deal nonetheless.
They haven't become a shitshow. But it's more about what they shy away from, than how they changed their coverage.
Taz, a German left newspaper. They've got their facts together and criticise government bs. The Guardian is fairly good, too. I also like my local German newspaper and for daily updates from Ireland I check RTE to keep up to date.
I think that france24 is one of few western examples of actual reporting when it comes to the "situation" (second trump presidency and americas fall into fascism) in usa. Dw on the other hand has been big let down. https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20250612-protests-trump-immigration-raids-us https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YPwouaxIBkc&pp=ygUTZHcgbmV3cyB1c2EgcHJvdGVzdA%3D%3D