Which medium do you most trust with news?

I prefer my news from the Radio, I am a fan of the BBC news website especially when the radio is not available.
I do not pay attention to the newspapers which are not even worthy enough to adorn an outhouse wall.
The hard thing is to find the least biased information and BBC you are head and shoulders above the rest of them (but there's still room for improvement and constant monitoring).

Once upon a time the BBC was fair and unbiased and not pursuing some liberal/left agenda. The selectiveness of BBC radio reporting, the spin it gives to news stories and the obvious bias of some presenters means that I can no longer trust what I hear. Radio Five Live is a particularly bad example. I am left having to read various newspapers where the bias is open and acknowledged and somehow filter it out. The same story can be presented many different ways and maybe there is no such thing as objective truth but I do resent the decline of our once great national broadcaster.

If its a domestic storyI generally trust the BBC website to give me the facts, i'll sometimes check out SKYs take, but I get put off by their 'dumbed down approach.

If its a big international story I like to check the beeb, CNN and Al Jazeera just to get a rounded view of how the event is being depicted across the world.

The only TV news I watch these days is the chanel 4 news, whichI personally think is the most rounded service on the box.

The rolling news channels are just tortuous to watch as their presenters desperately fill the empty hours with repetition and inanity..

Radio is king when it comes to reliable information. Its so much harder to do than any of the other mediums and requires well thought out descriptions and language that paints the right picture. It is not at all like television which has lost so much of its intellectual credentials with unnecessary graphics and programmes aimed at the least intelligent in society that it leaves radio 4 in a class all of its own. Television even looses out to the internet as the net has no boundaries and news can be gathered and commented on without censorship. These are truly dark days for the television it is at risk of becoming the media equivalent of the advertising page in the newspapers, very eye catching using top graphics but not really what you buy your paper for.

I do not trust any medium. I find it best to look at news from many sources and try and form my own view from the variety of biased opinions I am faced with.

A question I have been mulling of late, how can I get a clearer picture of what's happening given the increasing bias and built-in blinkers of the 'big' news media.

When items like 'Men are bigger liars than women, says poll' are put forward as news even by the BBC (when the results could just as easily suggest that more females lied in the poll, instead of being truthful about lying in life, not a gender issue, one about how statistically insignificant statistics are presented as 'fact') one wonders what they're not printing instead of this nonsense filler.

Terrorists have killed maybe a hundred innocents in the UK over the last few years but thousands of similarly innocent people die in the UK every year from blocked airways (really !) - yet we spend millions on a war and seemingly nothing on giving the entire adult population a day's first-aid course - why is this not news ?

I certainly prefer radio. The bulletins last about 5 minutes - long enough to give you the information without having to fill in with non-news or partisan views. When I watch news on TV I am amazed at how many viewpoints are dragged out.

If there's news to report, report it. If there's no news, shorten the programme and put on a cartoon - most people wouldn't notice the difference.

I never trust ONE source. Only when the same story has been read / heard from at lease 3 sources with the same info is it worthy of taking notice of!!!

None, every form of media has a company or institution behind it with a very biased political agenda.

The news recieved, therefore, is worthless.

I wonder if the Tories will carry out their promise of scrapping the BBC license fee........

I quite agree - television relies far too much on the visual, to the extent that yesterday I saw three times a team of limbless people in training for a march to the North Pole. What for, I wonder, and why? Merely to increase their carbon footprint, with all the media present? Why was there no coverage of limbed people doing the same, or similar?

Is this discrimination and political correctness gone mad? In terms of content, television reporting is little better than a cheap glossy magazine.

Radio, in having no choice but to rely on the spoken word, gets its message across succinctly and without the need to send Beautiful Reporters here, there and everywhere. Long may it continue.

I used to trust the BBC but I felt them change after Hutton and the fear is still there in the ranks. I don't trust the media at all any more really. It is all owned by people with interests. Most journalists are part of an establishment that it is in their interests to protect. I sense them all communing together with politicians and businessmen, judges and academics in some huge trough of champagne soaked cash - our cash. What are you there for journalists? Tell me that, what purpose do you really serve any more? I miss Hunter Thompson a lot.

As I don't trust any particular medium, I try to listen/view from several different sources before making up my mind. Just because it is the BBC reporting - it does not make it right

BBC Radio 4 of course , and The Today Programme most of all. However , I have to discount a certain Leftie liberal bias.

To my mind, none of the listed above news mediums can be trusted wholly. This is due to the fact that there’s always room for subjectivity. Plus, each TV channel, newspaper or Internet source is liable to accept the policy of governing bodies.
The core of the point is that many people ‘eat’ everything without consideration. Such approach raises opinion of the mass.
Regardless of what I stated before, I used to read news in the Internet as far as computer is a great share of my work.

It's not so much the medium that I trust, but those delivering the message.

Any news organisation owned or controlled by a government is very likely to be reporting only the news which that government wants people to hear. Likewise, any profit-driven news organisation is likely to be reporting only what its corporate sponsors want people to hear.

The BBC, in this respect - whilst far from perfect - is easily the best, most unbiased source of current affairs news. Please don't listen to the morons, who will inevitably enter this debate as they do every other, insisting that you're "biased" because you're not specifically putting forward their own (largely spurious) talking points of the day.

No Left- or Right-winger... nobody who supports a cause or an ideology of any kind... has any business complaining about "bias", in the BBC nor anywhere else. What they mean to say is "you're proving us wrong, that means you must be biased against us". No... actually, they're just wrong about most stuff. That's what ends up happening when you start caring more about proving your chosen ideology to be correct than you do about what's actually going on.

Keep up the good work, BBC!

None of them.

By the very nature of the organisations owning or running them, every form of media will have some kind of bias. Therefore it is useful to take in reports from a variety of media sources in order to form an unbiased view of events.

In order of preference

1. The Guardian

2. Channel 4 News

3. Radio 4

4. BBC TV News

I tend to read several online sources and somewhere in the middle of it all is usually enough information to get the truth.

The BBC would be my least trusted source on anything to do with climate change, Israel/'palestinians', multiculturalism etc due to the rampant left wing bias and outright lies peddled by the left wing BBC.

The problem with most news sources these days is that journalists are using conjecture and personal opinion. Many are just trying to make a name for themselves. They always make sure they have a cuddly toy on hand to place neatly on top of the rubble in say Gaza or something, just for that extra emotive edge.

Jeremy Bowen was recently admonished (long overdue) for his pro-'palestinian' narrative whereby he used opinion and presented it as fact.

One wrote:

The only TV news I watch these days is the chanel 4 news, which I personally think is the most rounded service on the box.

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Rounded for the far left.

I prefer online news. With it you can get a list of sources and check the article is factual. Makes it harder to quote someone without being found out

My main sources of news come initially from the BBC news website and Time Magazine. After that it's really a case of "Google is Your Friend" for more information on stories that are of an interest to me, of course the internet being the internet, it often means cross checking multiple stories - and staying away from YouTube tirades on a subject!

As for our newspapers here in Blighty - no way Jose. I've said before that they are good for lining cat litter trays and nothing more. Same with most TV news, yes, even the BBC news. When a word is spoken there are too many vocal inflections and body language signals that give an opinion of the news piece and that is hard to block. So its written news for me, its not so hard to recognise opinions from facts.

Even so, the BBC seems on occasion to pick and choose its stories. I'm not going to go down "...ohh, the BBC is liberal elite" garbage trial - that's utter rubbish spawned by the Daily Mail & right wing fringe politics alike. However I have come across stories that I feel the Beeb should have reported better or even at all, or later than other sources. Im my mind, and I'm sure many others, the Beeb is the premier news service in this country, and in many parts of the world, so when I see it out done, I feel a bit let down.

One thing from one of my own interests. The Beebs lip service to coverage of the gaming industry leaves a lot to be desired. The games industry is more influential and sells more units than the music & film industries, and yet gets hardly any coverage at all. Take it out of click online, and give it its own segment.

I read the news daily from 27 different organisations across the globe.
The UK news agencies are the most clouded of them all.
If they told me the sky was blue i would go outside and check for myself!
But the sheep need to be fed!

All news outlets are biased one way or the other, with some being worse than others. The written press in this country is generally dreadful with reporters being paid for articles which if you took away the opinions and concentrated on the facts wouldn't be worth printing.

This past election just brought home to me how little actual quality reporting seems to happen now with sensationalism seeming to dictate the order of news items. On BBC News 24 last week there was a breaking news item saying "Pizzas are being delivered to Liberal Democrat headquarters". I mean seriously is that news?

1st hand accounts. I've had quite a few opportunities to compare the media with the situation as it actually happened and have found out none of the media will ever report things exactly as they happened. They either get it wrong, add "interesting" bits based on pure hearsay, or leave out crucial bits (often because it sounds much juicier without them).

8. At 1:53pm on 18 May 2010, Robert Geake wrote:

I never trust ONE source. Only when the same story has been read / heard from at lease 3 sources with the same info is it worthy of taking notice of!!!

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This is pretty much it folks. Getting away from bias from a single source is pretty much impossible.

At what point does 'information' get processed, translated and processed into 'news'? Incredibly rarely are we presented with 'information' and 'facts' in their raw form to digest. Opinions are importantly certain for placing it in some sort of context, but we're getting increasingly muddled in distinguishing where facts end and the opinions start.

The BBC is as guilty of this as anyone. Radio 4 in the mornings is pretty good though compared to what else is on offer.

I have always been a radio person and 6 music is the only station I can listen to as good music is more important to me then being bombarded by news all day. They have hourly news updates which is enough for me, and then I also look at the BBC website, where I can select items of interest.

Ironically two areas that the BBC want to make cuts to, don't do it please!!

13. At 2:01pm on 18 May 2010, Anarcho-libertarian wrote:
BBC Radio 4 of course , and The Today Programme most of all. However , I have to discount a certain Leftie liberal bias.

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'Liberal Leftie Bias'

Sounds like you've been influenced by the Sun,Mail,Express,Times, Telegraph et al which have been attcking the BBC in exactly those terms for years.

Not that they have a vested interest in doing down the beeb of course....

News? What news? All that seems to fill the air is blether from politicians and celebrity gossip. That doesn't matter enough to be concerned about the 'trustworthiness' of the medium from which it is obtained.

Now, for real information I follow the tried and tested second-source confirmation method: ask any intelligence analyst. Again I don't care about the medium, it's the message that's important (with apologies to Marshall McLuhan) - it is the credibility of the individuals and organisations presenting the information that matters, not whether they write webpages or speak over the airwaves.

18. At 2:10pm on 18 May 2010, SystemF wrote:
I tend to read several online sources and somewhere in the middle of it all is usually enough information to get the truth.

The BBC would be my least trusted source on anything to do with climate change, Israel/'palestinians', multiculturalism etc due to the rampant left wing bias and outright lies peddled by the left wing BBC.


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Just because they didn't habitually refer to Gordon Brown as the 'Prime Moron' does not make them biased.

What do you want?

Fox News UK?

I do like the BBC radio news (5 live and 4), I also think Channel 4 has the best TV news because it frequently goes beyond the headlines. I think the BBC 24 TV news is terrible, it is the same few headlines repeated every 10 minutes without much analysis, discussion or in depth coverage. It is also far too obsessed with domestic issues, I would much prefer a wider range of stories from around the world. My other pet peeve with TV news is why on earth spend the money sending journalists to stand in front of Heathrow / snow / Scotland Yard sign etc when they can report the exact same information from the studio???

Which medium do you most trust with news?

Well the way the same news is presented differently by all the media, my answer is:- The old lady down the road who talks to ghosts! The best 'medium' on the block.

how can you trust the BBC when it allows this to be rired, Danny Kelly joked that Queen Elizabeth had died live on his afternoon show

DJ Danny Kelly, 39, had been hosting his regular afternoon show between 2pm and 4pm on Radio WM in Birmingham when he made the remark.

The presenter, who has worked for 10 years in local radio, told listeners he had an important announcement to make.

Then, as the national anthem started up, he announced "Queen Elizabeth II has now died".

29. At 2:42pm on 18 May 2010, One wrote:

What do you want?

Fox News UK?

---------------------------------

Well, at least they're openly biased...

I trust the BBC, most of the time, the tabloids not at all. Fox News is a (poor)joke, Sky News is kept in check by our media rules at the moment.
It will be interesting to see how the media deal between Cameron and Murdoch works out.

It's pretty clear that most contributors to HYS consider the Daily Mail, The Telegraph & other such papers to be the most reliable source of news.

I trust any that aren't run and controlled by a select few rich people... so that would be non of them, and no the BBC is no better, they have followed suit with the rest of the capitalist media.

After the way the recent libdem immigration policy was reported in ALL mediums of media i trust none of them at all.
In fact it should be ILLEGAL TO REPORT MISTRUTHS AS THOUGH THEY ARE TRUTH, with editors facing long terms in prison for doing so, the lie reporting of the british media has a detrimental effect on society as a whole, the biggest perpetrator of this what should be a crime is the daily mail, if i was PM i'd make that rag illegal.

I try to use multiple sources to gain a rounded picture. I avoid "The Guardian" like the plague though. Utter tosh with no real substance. I prefer "The Times" myself.

If you filter through to the basic facts, the BBC can be ok.

Radio tends to be slightly better for immediate news, BUT for the truth it is necessary to read three newspapers, (not the Red tops), to filter out the rubbish and speculation.
TV is useless for News, even the BBC is more interested in getting any old rubbish on air now rather than having the TRUTH in 30 minutes. When a major story breaks we have to suffer a procession of 'Experts' who witter on about subjects they normally know nothing about, speculating for hours without knowledge, and drawing conclusions based on thin air. Years ago the game was to find the Newspaper with the most inaccurate casualty figures from some major accident, now the game is played more quickly with TV stations.
I once thought that Kate Aidie held the trophy for talking rubbish for over an hour, (Iranian Embassy Siege and rescue by the S.A.S.) but current presenters and reporters have honed the art of talking rubbish to a new high.

Please can we have the Truth in an hour rather than lies and half truths in seconds.

I certainly don’t trust newspapers. Don’t know why they are still around! They have to fill their pages with gossip and trash because why read news that’s been published the day before.

Fishing for compliments are we, BBC?

I don't think I trust any one for supplying me with an unbiased view of the news. I tend to read all the on-line newspapers and other internet news feeds and then make my own mind up.

Everyone always berate the Sun, Star and the Daily Mail for being 'biased'.

I personally find them less offensive that more pretentious outlets (yet ones where bias is still prevalent) and quite good fun on the grounds that at least the bias is so stark ravingly obvious and honest in them.

Who can we trust?
The BBC are accused of a bias to the left the majority of Newspaper and private media companies are accused of a bias to the right.
It takes 8 to 10 pages to get past the right wing hysteria in the Mail and Express(2 in the Sun as they won't interfere with page 3). Sky News is so far up the Tories rear end their advertising should be on David Cameron's teeth.
Even my local paper has become almost rabidly anti Labour (they don't even run the council)instead of reporting local issues affecting local people.
I am waiting for the new media ownership policy to come from the Con Dem coalition. Will we see what Rupert Murdoch was promised for his support in the run up to the election?

2. At 1:44pm on 18 May 2010, Westernmac wrote:

Once upon a time the BBC was fair and unbiased and not pursuing some liberal/left agenda.

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Only people biased of the right say that.

Meanwhile, people biased of the left say the BBC is aligned to the Right.

Go figure, my advice. Take off the tinted glasses and read what is actaully written on the BBC and not what you what to read into it.

Most newspapers are glorified comics, I don't like the Sky TV news format but their website isn't too bad, the BBC is so biased and PC it's laughable and Radio 4 news used to be bearable until it became a mouthpiece for the Labour Party.

So now I get my news information from a wide variety of sources, but as for 'trusting' any of them? No, I don't think so.

32. At 3:08pm on 18 May 2010, sam wrote:

how can you trust the BBC when it allows this to be rired, Danny Kelly joked that Queen Elizabeth had died live on his afternoon show

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You obviously didn't hear it then. Because anyone but somebody reading the report abouut without hearing it would known instantly that it was just a joke, as the topic was actually about a spoof website claiming she had died and so while talking about it the presenter put on the british anthem while mockingly announcing it.

The fact that people complained shows they have a hidden agenda to make someone elses life hard, somebody they do not know and that, I am sorry, is a reflection of the society that biased newspapers have helped shape in the hope it generates controversy just like this particular story that really is not news at all.

And I hearby would like to congratulate you on happily falling into the trap and becoming one of the mindless sheep who follow in line, influenced all to easy by rich men with their own agenda's.

BBC Radio 4 for clear concise, if rather UK-centric news.

BBC TV news is just too London biased, take the ash cloud from last weekend for example. Heathrow was hardly even touched, the TV news was primarily concerned as to whether LHR would be closed or not, even while Manchester and all points north were already being effected. Same with the BA strike. Outside of the southeast BA are largely a non entity!

For international news, I turn to Euronews to find out whats really going on in Europe especially, without the UK anti-european bias.

a honest answer,"i dont know",i always believed in the beeb but this election showed how right wing and bigoted they are.andrew niel leads the charge and we all know he's murdochs man.newspapers,sun a total disgrace to democracy this paper should be banned but because the good people of england attitude to freedom we defend it's right to publish. this is the price of freedom.broadcasters,maybe we can trust paxo,can we? i hope so,if not we are doomed....

Which medium do you most trust with news?

The internet of course , it is after all probably the ONLY fair , factual and impartial reporter of the news there is and it can be used to communicate with people directly involved with the news in many cases , which is why so many controlling governments try to bring out laws to strangle it , using various & sundry excuses for doing so . governments do not appear to like things which allow people to communicate freely , throughout the world without their particular slant or propaganda being inflicted.

BBC news is more like a chat show

Channel 4 is my choice for general news and
CNBC for business news

BBC business news is just a joke

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I listen to various radio stations and read many newspapers to get at the truth as all broadcasters and journalists have bias of their own.

In order of preference I trust:

1 My wife; she knows everything, including what I don't want her to know.

2. The BBC, boring news sometimes, too full of world news etc and too much about the USA, (this does not include 'News 24' which is an insult to the intelligence)

3 Channel 4 news, almost as good as the BBC.

4 The press, only certain parts such as the broadsheets, definitely not most of the tabloids (Sun/star/daily mail/daily express).

5 The radio, only BBC radio 2 & 4, definitely not the independants.

6 ITN, too sensationalised, always war, conflict etc.

100 The internet; the moment this was started and to protect it's development (and money making) the international laws of libel were not applied it became the medium of choice for liars, fraudsters, hype merchants, and every type of ne'er-do-well.

In the USA they have a phrase for their news media 'if it bleeds - it leads'.

So you always get stories about the bad things, never good, any small mishap is extrapolated into a disaster.

We are heading the same way, at least ITV is.

And why all the outside broadcasts?

If I see one more reporter from outside No 10 Downing Street at 5 in the morning, eagerly playing up some statement that will be made later in the day I will lose it.

Is it any wonder when we are inundated with gossip, opinion (same thing), trivia, 'celebrities', and basically junk news, that we are becoming a nation of cynics.

Take the recent general election, to listen to most news outlets clegg and his little party were destined to change politics for ever - and they go and get less MP's! They changed politics alright, in a grubby little stich up with the tories from which the news media were excluded.

Doris Stokes used to be good for the obituary news.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

RADIO WORLD SERVICE

I trust the BBC as the source of news, which allows me to keep up-to-date with the most significant events in the world. Having switched from my radio-receiver to the Internet, I have a bigger choice of media resources than before and can choose among them that which I need most of all and which I like most of all. The central place among them belongs to the BBC world service. To my opinion, it is especially useful for young journalists around the world, who want to learn how to present the news from an objective, unbiased and unprejudiced point of view. Because I am not a native speaker of English, the BBC also helps me to improve my language skills.

I have become very dissilusioned with the newspapers. They all seem to be filled with right-wing claptrap. Nowadays, I occasionally buy the Mirror, but generally for news I look at the BBC website or listen to it on BBC 3CR.

Is it not a case of what people reading the papers/watching the news personally choose to believe?

You only have to look here and on the 606 forum (for those who enjoy their sport) to see the varied views.

As some have said all papers and TV outlets put their own spin on anything which isn't factual as such.

Its up to the viewer/reader to decide who to trust most but no-body will be right.

Papers have their own agendas ofcourse to attract certain types of readers.

At least 70% of the press are biased towards the Right so its only fair and right that the BBC stay with the liberal-left in my opinion. I like the radio but not for news, I dislike the newspapers for news but like them for entertainment and sport. Personally I think if you want to be knowledgeable about a topic be it current or historical you have to read some varied books to gain good knowledge. Its sad we dont read so many books, I am christain and read from a varied source base inc. the Bible obviously but I am also interested in WW2 and read from American, British, German and Russian sources. That way you gain knowledge about a subject rather than from biased and weighted journalism or from downright simplistic and hysterical headlines. People who know the most about current issues tend to read from both right and left opinions and from nuetral sources. Then you gain a balanced and more accurate understanding. Headlines and tabloids are for lazy people who dont want to think. Keep them for the footy!

19. At 2:11pm on 18 May 2010, SystemF wrote:
One wrote:
The only TV news I watch these days is the chanel 4 news, which I personally think is the most rounded service on the box.
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Rounded for the far left.

Are you contractually obliged to mention "the left" in every post, or is it some sort of nervous tic ?

'Which medium do you trust most with News'?

MOST TRUSTED MEDIUMS are:

1) BBC Radio 4 - all day long.
2) BBC Radio World Service - news, education and GLOBAL LEARNING 24/7.
3) Channel 4 TV News - Jon Snow and partners.
4) BBC 2 with links to Open University.
5) News Night, Panorama, Watchdog, and ALL BBC investigative programs.

MOST UNTRUSTED NEWS: Anything via satellite - are we allowed to say that?

To my mind, without question the most coherent medium for news coverage is the radio despite the gradual degradation of the English language which it is determined to pursue: at home the Today program and PM are a on every day of the working-week.

On the other hand television the more flexible medium, being so absorbed with image creation over content, for example; recently, during the election, we witnessed hour after hour of chatty speculation coupled with glossing studio graphics of spurious value being explained by over-enthused presenters. It was long on time short on content as evidenced by the impromptu interviews on College Green, during which a continual ticker informed us that all the results were not in yet when it could have been used to state those results that were in. In total, I estimate that a third of the screen was obscured by the BBC logo without ever being employed to tell us who was being interviewed. Definitely not a case of form following function!

As to the validity of news coverage, all our news is filtered in some way and for some reason no matter where we search; it is our job to evaluate what we are presented . Currently, C4 News at 7pm is now a worthy rival to the BBC which only manages to stay in front by dint of BBC4 World News (also at 7pm).

Which medium do you trust with news'?

There is an obvious split between the senior political and senior financial Editors contributions on air and on their blogs?

In order for all senior Editors on BBC to maintain respect, they must report about their subject, rather than for their subjects???

BBC news on the radio or tv.

Then if it is very important ALL of them!

September 11th was such a day! And the Death Of Princess Diana, I watched the news non stop on those days. Then I didnt care if it was CNN on tv or the 'other side'! Then the following day I must buy the paper. To make sure I keep the info ... forever. I still have the newspaper of when Mr Nelson Mandela was released.

If I had to pick one it would be the BBC they dont have breakes every 15 minutes. So I dont miss anything.

1. Everything else.

2. Adam Boulton.

3. Nick Robinson.

All newspapers are still very important for public health and conservation?

News, only available via electronic media or satellite uses so much electricity - yours and mine - and deeply unhealthy for democracy?

Furthermore - every news site you visit; to improve your knowledge or opinion, operates on a click counter. Every click creates a cookie to track you and 'assumes' your interest/opinion?

Keep buying newspapers to read but don't forget, they are extremely important for privacy and equally important to enable composting and incentives to plant trees for paper production?

I wouldn't believe the date on some newspapers.

Broadcast media have an obligation to be unbiased but newspapers don't so they aren't.

We are bombarded with news but there's very little analysis. It's just lazy journalists and talking heads filling airtime with endless description of what is happening and pointless speculation over what might or might not happen. There's little explanation of why it's happening because they don't know.

It is worth understanding how "news" works.
Most news organisations get their news from several agencies. Large broadcasters have their own journalists.
They all all feeding off the same stories which is why there are really very few real exclusives.
But the tricky bit for people is to understand that there is someone..one person who decides what goes in to a bulletin..and what does not.
So the news is edited. Of course it has to be, there is too much going on everyday and each broadcaster has its own bias and its own set of customers.
And then because each broadcaster has to try and appeal to its core customer base it skews things...
And this is where things get really sticky....for instance the BBC and all the other mainstream print media were entirely convinced about the man-made global warning stories. Therefore they just pushed out anything that sounded alarming...rather than relying upon simple scientific questioning. Of course, they have been told off and we are now starting to see a more balanced view of this story.
This is just one example.
There are many, many others.
In fact every news item has been bent, twisted and skewed to try and appeal to one audience or another because at the end if it all it is about money.
It is one of the most appealing things about the internet. One can read direct reports of things...but wait..!...the people writing blogs and so on also have axes which need grinding....so on it goes!

BBC TV/ radio...but not necessarily the papers.

I used to love listening to the news on the radio until I became Deaf. The BBC News Channel is the best for truthful and clear news. The BBC News website is unbiased and great if you want more detail than television has time to do.
Newspapers have their own agenda and are too opinionated anyway, especially the Mail, Gaurdian, Times and Telegraph. Here in Scotland the Herald is generally unbiased. The tabloids do treat their readers as they were stupid.

I urge the Government to leave the BBC alone, if it seent to be "liberal", well the UK is a very "liberal" country. Its a wonderful country.

It isn't a case of what medium I trust, but rather the journalist or pundit who is delivering the news. Certainly some journalists are very biased.

3. At 1:45pm on 18 May 2010, One wrote: "The only TV news I watch these days is the Channel 4 news, which I personally think is the most rounded service on the box."

Can I just add my own recommendation for C4 News by confirming that spin is almost non-existant, facts are presented as news and conjecture is mostly avoided. C4 News is the best source of news in the UK.

Generally television news is fine although it's only with the biggest stories as they happen that 24hr news channels perform to their best - the rest of the time they have nothing to do but repeat what's already happened or bookend the news with magazine shows. The rest of the time I watch either News 24 or Sky for an hour at a time if I miss the 6pm or 10pm bulletins, but no more.

Channel 4 is the best all-round TV news show, which is a sad reflection on ITV where ITN-provided news always used to rule the roost. I wouldn't agree that news is any more authoritative just because it's on the radio, even if that type of service is decades older than television - a mistake's a mistake whether accompanied by pictures or not.

Newspapers, rather than being better or worse than faster types of news, have always been about reflection and analysis *after* the event, and you can at least tell their bias and take a pinch of salt when reading them - in modern times people don't want to take up to 12 hours to reflect on anything if they've read it on the net or heard it on TV.

In terms of minutes spent per day I get most of my news from the BBC website, but I read the first news I see every day on BBC analogue Teletext. (Ceefax).
Like radio, it isn't image driven (so does not tend to prefer to report visually sensational news the way TV does) but unlike radio, it's a very concise format with little room for fill-out comments from pundits or talking heads - as a consequence, the Teletext news usually just contains the bare facts without embellishment or comment.
While digital (Freeview) teletext has more or less the same content, I find the non-optional mini-TV on the left side of the screen intensely irritating as it is usually showing live content which is not related to the material that I'm reading on the right side of the screen. So - for as long as I can - I'm going to continue to use analogue teletext as my initial news feed for the day.

My news comes from as many sources as it must, often late but none the worse for it. Radio has, in the past, been a valuable source, but I have found the BBC unreliable on many issues. In my opinion the BBC have demonstrated unhealthy bias and uneven presentation on many issues notably those involving so called minority groups.

The problem the BBC has is in seeking to compete with other media moguls despite holding a very different position in the industry. The BBC's persistent use of audience size as a measure of "quality" is misguided. News can be presented by one person, with images on TV, in a ten minutes bulletin with no added comment. Commentary and opinion can follow in appropriately presented programmes where it is obvious the BBC is no longer presenting fact to its audience.

Unfortunately for the BBC's reputation it has continuously striven to run fact into opinion with no division between the two. A simple example is the latest general election and the hyperbole that followed it - historic, momentous, and so on - with footnotes about how many people had visited the BBC website.

One of the great things about the Internet is the span and diversity of opinion there is, but what is really interesting is how "facts" are delivered. It makes me realise how the BBC often dresses up a "fact" to trigger its correspondents opinions later. In other words there are "facts" and "facts".

Television and Radio clearly are the more trusted, the newspaper industry are no longer fit for trust, even for fish and chip wrappings.

There is no reliable news source. I use the internet and scan several sites.

The BBC has declined under NuLiebour to the point that it airs sick jokes about the Queen. But I do not see that, nor an apology, on this site.

Radio 4 Breakfast without a doubt- So much information packed into that news programme. John Humpries and his colleagues really are national treasures. Channel 4 news takies the prize for the News TV programme of choice, for analysis. Jon Snow takes that prize with Paxo a close second. I find the BBC main news just wall paper competing with ITV.

The BBC news website is the place I tend to go for news, and the BBC is certainly the organisation I trust most to present it in a rounded, unbiased way.

Newspapers are by far the worst - they are a good way to waste time on the train but the 'news' they provide is next to useless due to rampant and obvious bias meaning I simply can't believe a word they say; and I'm not talking about the tabloids, I wouldn't touch those with a barge pole.

Reading an article in a newspaper and then reading the same story from he BBC website shows what a massive difference there is between the two.

Trust the media? You have to be kidding. TV, newspapers, all rubbish. Why is the BBC asking this question? To find out which one people "trust" most and then use it to feed us with carefully-prepared propaganda? I sample all news sources and then make up my own mind; I trust myself and my instincts far more than anything else.

No single source.
-If the news is not politically motivated then most of them... e.g. Ash cloud.
-If it's for something to do with politics... e.g. Iran, then..
-I Listen to what's happening on C4 (mostly).
Then I look for leaked reports on the net and look through things like youtube for other information. I'd sooner trust a whistleblower backed up by other whistleblowers than believe any OFFICIAL stories.
-I then use common sense (rare thing these days) to filter out the rubbish.
-If I care enough... I gauge what foreign reports are saying about the subject - (Except American)

35. At 3:20pm on 18 May 2010, spotthelemon wrote:

It's pretty clear that most contributors to HYS consider the Daily Mail, The Telegraph & other such papers to be the most reliable source of news.
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You do a disservice to other reliable objective sources of balanced reporting - the Express, The Spectator and of course Sky News.The Sun and Talk Sport are also solid if a little less heavy weight.

Ideally I would like to see the bar raised even higher with the introduction of Fox News - a TV channel that really knows how to unearth the facts and avoid hysteria.

With the disgusting Fox-ification of Sky, TV has gone down a notch or ten in the truth stakes. Although the BBC is so establishment-oriented, it's still amongst the world leaders. Not many UK people watch it, but ARTE, the Franco-German cultural channel, is exceptionally good too, and has a lot of cutting edge music and film.

There is no reliable news at the end of the day.

"Sue Denim wrote:
I try to use multiple sources to gain a rounded picture. I avoid "The Guardian" like the plague though. Utter tosh with no real substance. I prefer "The Times" myself."

Ah, another gem from Ms. Denim, always good for a laugh. To say the Guardian has no real substance, and that by implication Murdoch's Times has, is so far from the truth, so absurd, so demonstrably false, that one wonders if she just sort of strings words together for the sake of it, or uses some general-purpose right-whinge text generator.

No news medium is ever going to be perfect so one simply has to read between the lines.

We don't get the truth here. We live in a sanitised country. And if it's politics, the BBC promote the left wing. The media have been trying their best to talk the coalition into failure. Disgraceful.
I hope QT this Thursday won't be a gloom and doom repeat of last weeks horrendous show.

"Which medium do you most trust with news?"

B.B.C. News along with various sources from the Internet. Still, you have to know how to read between the lines.

BTW, this is why Mandelson wants to shut down the internet. We get the truth from the internet, and it sometimes shows up the BBC for what it is. A government manipulation machine.

Any non-American/reliable news source is what I trust. I say this as an American. America is a land of profit at all costs, and their news organizations, no matter what medium, are the same. So, they gear everything toward sensationalism and getting the viewer to tune in. Combined with the ease of access of information, and it becomes annoying. This is why you get 3 hours coverage of a boy stuck in a balloon. So, I follow either British, Canadian, and sometimes German media, usually via Internet, but we do get BBC America and CBC TV too.

Trust?

Is it even possible to have a totally trustworthy source of news? They all have an agenda of some sort. Even if a media outlet were to become non profit it still wouldn't be totally trustworthy, it would still have a political or social agenda.

I think trust comes down to your own preference and your own personal views!

I am sorry to say it will not be the BBC, who in my opinion have been actively pushing out the political propaganda of successive governments over the last two decades. The problem is that the BBC is bought and paid for by licence fees, which the government of the day threaten to review if their views are not put forward sympathetically. Therefore the BBC is financially "Hogtide" and not seen as transparently impartial.

News? That's a laugh. Media companies no longer offer news, they pedal opinions.

Who's to say the media companies' opinions are more accurate or better than anyone elses' opinions?

The internet. BBC news is left wing bias, while the newspapers are by and large bias to the right.

79. At 6:26pm on 18 May 2010, KarenZ wrote:
"There is no reliable news source. I use the internet and scan several sites.

The BBC has declined under NuLiebour to the point that it airs sick jokes about the Queen. But I do not see that, nor an apology, on this site."
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I.e. YOU think that YOU are entitled to an apology from a disconnected part of the BBC for a show YOU never heard.

Media savvy? Nah. "NuLiebour" is the giveaway: anyone recycling playground-level insults is a deeply unoriginal thinker.

One wrote:

The only TV news I watch these days is the chanel 4 news, which I personally think is the most rounded service on the box.

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Rounded for the far left.

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Squared for the near right.or rounded for the centre / squared for the centre or rounded for the near right or rounded / squared for the far right / squared far for the left, rounded for the near left/ flattened for the centre.

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I think the BBC and Reuters do the most reliable news.

With the exception of Nick Robinson: the man is a lightweight and should never have been made BBC Political Editor. The only talents he has that I can tell are wearing fashion victim glasses and aping our gutter press's ability to present partial analyses.

Again a lot depends on how you 'want' your news..Is it only to reflect your own opinion or bias? The stalinist tory media excel in telling total distortions of the truth, essentially because as in War in news the first victim is the Truth. Its always someone's slant or opinion. Its pretty pathetic that the BBC have caved into Tory bully boy tactics over thier news. There is enough rightist claptrap in the news generally though this possibly reflects the desperate state free market capitalism is in and what it has done to the Western World and will continue to do. Desperation to maintain the Status Quo has probably made the Rightwing media even more extreme and biased in thier news presentation and cleverly have managed to blame the reccession on the poor and the working class and not on those who caused it, ie rightwing think tanks promoting deregulation fantasy and dogma.

The lies hence get perpetuated and new labour merely bought into the big lies brigade but this entire brigade existed long before new labour and are in fact part of what is termed free market capitalism which control the news outlets. Better reading the Beano or Dandy I say.