Having sat through half and hour of the O'Reilly on Fox News telling me how Obama wants to suck the lifeblood out of the US in tax dollars and sell it to the Chinese, I felt the need to change the channel to something a little less infammatory.

Unfortunately, the next channel was MSNBC, where I found Celine Dion lookalike Rachel Maddow spouting on about how bad Republicans were, with a little confused cartoon hefalump in the background just to remind us all who the 'enemy' is.


Seriosuly, is it possible to find a news channel that doesn't seem to devote its time to belittling the other side in order to re-enforce the existing stereotypes of their viewers?

You may as well ask if there are any truly neutral news channels in the world! They all have their own agendas, be it the ruling political party, a biased owner ala Murdoch, or just the bias of the particular news editor!
I find it best to try and view several different channels to get differing slants on things! Here in Morocco it is BBC world, CNN, Al Jazeera in English, Sky, France 24 in English & a few others from time to time, that way you seem to be able to at least get some of the salient facts of situations!

News Networks are, without exception, shit. This is because they have to sensationalise and play up to their viewers' own cognitive biases in order to maintain an audience big enough so sell ad space. Even the network and local news programming on regular channels are under ever increasing pressure to generate revenue, so you see increasing amounts of "soft news" in the form of gossip and entertainment bullshit, interspersed with more sensationalism. At the local level, this normally involves a reporter going out and trying scare the shit out you so the average mouth-breather is compelled to watch, so in the previews they'll ask rhetorical questions like "Is your local restaurant trying to kill you?" and "Are parking valets acting like those guys in Ferris Bueller's Day Off?"

A lot of people are turning to the News provision of BBC America for their take on world events, but for my money, the single best news show in the US has to be the PBS News Hour, which is a lot more like the UK's Newsnight or Channel 4 news, insofar as they actually take the time to cover the subject in depth rather than relying on some loudmouthed gobshite inciting you to hop on the outrage bus. Of course, it does come in for a lot of criticism from people with the attention span of a goldfish and who adapt to unfamiliar ideas and information like a duck confronting the blueprints to the space shuttle.

John Stewart - The Daily Show.

No - I am not joking.

BBC - but you don't want to hear that probably.

I'm not sure there is any such thing as politically neutral news, let alone a neatral channel.

Events are distorted simply by being defined as news, or not, and it all flows from there.

It's just that some people distort it more than others.

Originally Posted by Schaden

John Stewart - The Daily Show.

No - I am not joking.

BBC - but you don't want to hear that probably.

Wasn't there a serious report a couple of years back that showed that under-25 Septics trusted the news on the Comedy Network and MTV more than they trusted the "conventional" news shows? If so, all credit to them. PEW & the university of Maryland produced a study that showed hom much you know about what's going on decreases, the more Fox "News" you watch. I find it telling that NewsInt gives the USA Fox News... and gives the Brits "Sky News". And that Murdoch doesn't actually LIKE Sky News one bit. Possiblt because, unlike most other parts of the Murdoch empire, it covers stories that might embarrass the Dirty Digger (Like his daughter reading out the WRONG winner of "Australia's next top model", which kind of totally fucked up the show, and made her a laughingstock.)

I know Jon Snow can be a prat but Channel 4 news here in the UK gets my vote.

As for news channels in the US - hahahaha. Fox News made me laugh the hardest; CBS and ABC made my jaw drop and my eyes rolled. I would certainly watch for amusement value but as for politically neutral, informative, news-gathering - no chance!

The major problem is that they are all insular in their outlook and present a patronizing attitude towards their viewers.

I appreciate there is no such thing as a truly impartial news channel, however the extent to which the 'popular' US channels are polarised into 'Democrat' and 'Republican' really does boggle the mind.

Evening shows such as O'Reilly and Maddow remind me of the Lewis Prothero 'Voice of London' character from V for Vendetta, in that their shows are typically nothing but a concentrated slice of partisan venom that gives their viewers the impression of an intellectually rigourous analysis of the news.

I would have to agree with Crabtastic, about PBS news Hour as a highly credible source.
The "News" networks are known to pander to the Biases of their (majority) viewers.
BBC America shot them selves in the foot, when they dropped their evening news broadcast. The "traditional" Networks here, I do not watch, as they are invariably banal.
The Daily Show, is news satire at its very best, how I do not watch that much at all either!

I've got BBC, Al Jazeera and The Onion logged in, just flick between them to get an overall balance of current affairs.

Obama Begs U.S. Not To Embarrass Him In Front Of French (Season 1: Ep 8 on IFC) - YouTube