A great graphic detailing the quality of sources

[Lithos]

[ZoomBubba]

1. Saw that yesterday ...

... and largely agreed. Though it is hard to tell where a couple of things sit in the far left bottom corner.

There's a couple of people here that post the stuff from the fake news end of things, so I figure they'll take issue with this, calling Reuters and AP right wing sources.

[Lithos]

2. Funny..

As Rawstory.com, which people use here all the time actually just republishes/rebrands mostly AP and Reuters news items from the feed they've subscribed to.

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[ZoomBubba]

4. ... it's an attack I've heard before.

Particularly with the Bernie and Common Dreams crowds.

[MosheFeingold]

28. Eh

NPR (which I love) definitely skews liberal, as does the NYT.

Fox is hard right and not remotely credible.

National Review was not listed, which surprises me. It skews hard right, but it is intellectually consistent, in general. It's articles are well-written and informative, albeit obviously biased. I note they were anti-Trumpers for the duration.

The Wall Street Journal is really bimodal. It's news is solidly middle-of-the-road. It's editorials are hard right. It's also well-written and generally intellectually consistent. It probably appears more conservative than it is superficially because it is, at heart, a fiscal/investment paper.

[ZoomBubba]

3. I'm kind of surprised to see Vox ..

... ranked so high. I quit following them because they were getting to click-baity for me. I think the final straw was the "cats are evil" story which had been trending through other sites that month. I'd personally put them to the left of and bottom of HuffPost.

[ZoomBubba]

5. Also from 2014 ...

... http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/46-times-vox-totally-fucked-up-a-story-1673835447

[No Vested Interest]

6. Politico - where would it be ranked? nt

[thejoker123]

7. Yeah odd they aren't there. To me

They are the CNN of mainstream web sources. Mostly interested in giving each side something everyday, as opposed to reporting the news.

[noel711]

8. What's the source of this chart?

Wanna see where this originated.

[Lithos]

9. I believe here:

https://www.facebook.com/vanessa.otero.9619/posts/10155006385626062

I caught it rambling around Reddit and again on few other forums such as BoingBoing.

For the record, I did not include why I thought it good. Yes, people will critique which are where; the part I liked was the classifications which emphasize the nature. I'm also sure you could put this into the famous "circular" political spectrum where if you go far enough in one direction to the "dark side" you'll come back around. The "dark side" being the ultra-conspiroid sources which are so far out in the loonies to have no basis in reality.

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[noel711]

29. Thanks

It's a decent chart, but I would have added other websites.. Drudge, Breitbart, etc.

[JudyM]

34. Check the bottom tier...

[Skittles]

10. Fox News leans into "reputable? "

complete bullshit

[Lithos]

11. See the wide range

Faux at times is a legitimate news source, however, you have to realize that they span from posting legitimate news stories to supporting borderline conspiracy theories.

This makes them unreliable, which is what the graphic attempts to show. Again, I posted this as it shows the types/motives of news sources out there. It also shows there are ranges where we seek to find our own "confirmation bias".

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[jmowreader]

12. Drudge and Mercola belong with InfoWars

[Lithos]

13. Yes..

N/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. One correction - Natural News is far right wing, not liberal

See, for instance, "Why a President Trump is the only real hope for exposing the truth about vaccines (and prosecuting those who have conspired to murder our children)", "The Donald Trump phenomenon explained: The American people are on the verge of revolt and looking for an agent of radical change", "a Trump win is a true victory for America", "The next American Civil War begins on January 20… Second Amendment patriots may be called on to defend the Republic against left-wing terrorists", "Russian hack narrative revealed to be elaborate media hoax… email leaks actually came from Bernie Sanders insider" and much, much more garbage (I'm not giving that fucker links).

There's not much difference between Natural News and The Blaze, or Infowars. In fact, I think Glenn Beck is more moderate that Mike Adams.

[Nitram]

16. There are many liberals and left-leaning people who are strong anti-vaxxers.

They tend to intersect with the anti-GMO crowd, as well.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. There are, but Natural News isn't one of them

It's a scam site, selling quack medicines to the far right gullible. It's been both birther and Sandy Hook denier.

[Skinner]

15. This is a pretty useful way to organize the news.

Gratified to see some of my go-to news sources getting the thumbs-up:

New York Times
Washington Post
NPR
Vox
Slate
The Atlantic
The Economist

[Nitram]

17. Can anyone provide a link to the original?

[66 dmhlt]

19. This is just ONE Person's opinion ...

And who is this Vanessa Otero that put it together on Facebook?

[Lithos]

21. She is just a person like you and I

Why she did this was to start the discussion about sources. Her diagram is good from a circles point of view showing how sources can be classified.

So do not get hung up on what sources are classified where, I think it's more important to have the discussion about sources which in turn helps people understand what they are saying fits into the bigger picture. The assignments and selection of sources is a straw man to help facilitate things.

One of the more important points is how easy it is for people to fall into the trap of seeking out only information which confirms your own self-bias. This latter point is a trap we place ourselves and often leads to making grave over-estimations and assumptions.

You could even argue the Democratic Campaign did this when they ignored the requests from the boots on the ground in the Rust Belt as they saw their own internal models as having comfortable leads.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Another way this is wrong - it places CNN on a level with Breitbart, and below Fox News

That is frankly idiotic. Breitbart lies and passes on fake news. CNN's US editorial standards may not be as good as the BBC, but they're way better than 'RedState', and better than Fox News (and CNN International is just as good as NBC or ABC News; arguably better).

[Lithos]

22. Not really

They use talking heads as news all the time - just like Fox.

And CNNi is not CNN.

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[muriel_volestrangler]

23. No. Really. You cannot claim Breitbart is on a level with CNN

and they don't just put Fox on a level with CNN - they put it above it.

Fox does distort things. It's not just a question of how many talking heads are used. You might put CNN on a level with local TV news - a poor idea of what's important - but Fox has far less journalistic integrity.

Be realistic. Don't just accept what this person's graphic claims. Think.

[Lithos]

24. In a discussion of websites, I think it's very fair

Both CNN.com and Breitbart's websites lack any real substance and are designed only to get you to click to the next page. Obviously they are geared towards different audiences, but there is no detail.

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[muriel_volestrangler]

25. I've never hear you talk such bollocks in all my years here, Lithos

Breitbart has an ideological purpose, and lies, distorts and misreports to further that purpose. Bannon said he wanted it to be the home of the alt-right. It's not that it 'lacks any real substance' - it's that it's designed to fool the gullible, and encourage bigots. CNN really is 'fair and balanced', even if it's lightweight.

Honestly, I can't think what's got into you.

[Lithos]

30. We are saying the same thing

And I am saying BB is pure, utter filth. However, I'm am saying CNN is not a great place to get news as there is very little news there. And I will also say CNN no longer cares to provide any in depth coverage as they have shifted more towards entertainment than being a conduit for news. Many of these MOR agencies like CNN treat news in terms or ratings and not in finding any facts and so will follow whatever gives them good ratings.

And unlike BB which obviously has an agenda to push and sell, CNN just panders.

There are two axes on the graph - One for journalistic quality/integrity. Does it engage in "sound bites", or is there any attempt at in depth coverage? The other was whether or not the site is partisan and pushing an agenda.

CNN has no agenda to push and they only deal with soundbites and an attention focus designed with ratings in mind. However, they have abandoned any sense of journalistic integrity as evidenced during the non-stop fluff job they gave Trump and avoidance of educating the viewer about the campaign. Fluff, not stuff.

BB, is partisan and acts as an ad-agency for the alt-Right pushing their agenda. It was always designed to be a reference point for the alt-Right to try and give "credibility" by reference (ie, launder the memes and talking points of the alt-Right).

The thing I liked about this graph is that as proper journalism takes hold, where facts are shown, even in a thesis/anti-thesis type of manner, it moves away from being partisan to just being news. In order to provide real in depth coverage, the less partisan you have to be in order to be able to show the full facts.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. No, what you're doing is normalising Breitbart. They were responsible for the Acorn lies,

and the Shirley Sherrod debacle. They distort. They spread lies. You are trying to pretend that is no worse than trying to get ratings. You are claiming that lying is not a problem for journalistic quality.

I completely disagree with you about this.

Detailed example: the front page of us.cnn.com now:

GOP on brink of cold war with itself - Trump's affinity for Putin is dividing the party
Rift opens between Obama and Trump teams
Machine guns block Aleppo escape routes
Russia's playbook transformed war in Syria
Trump's business partners include controversial foreign developers
Trump taps hardliner for ambassador to Israel
The growing North Korean threat
Dylann Roof may get death sentence
Sports reporter Craig Sager dies
DeVry to refund $100M to settle lawsuit
Trump attacks Vanity Fair editor
Apple owes workers $2 million for meal breaks not taken

That's proper news coverage. Meanwhile, at Breitbart:

9 Reasons Why PolitiFact Is Unqualified to Label ‘Fake News’…
…MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE DECREE: WE DECIDE WHAT’S ‘FAKE NEWS’
FACEBOOK ENLISTS LEFT-WING ‘FACT CHECKERS’ AS THOUGHT POLICE
JUDICIAL WATCH: FEDS GAVE INVESTIGATED SOMALIS TOURS OF SECURE AREAS AT 3 AIRPORTS
FEDERAL COURT COULD DESTROY CROSS-SHAPED WAR MEMORIAL
‘THIS IS A LITTLE NUTTY’: TUCKER CARLSON TAKES ON NEWSWEEK REPORTER’S TRUMP MENTAL HOSPITAL CONSPIRACY THEORY
BREITBART NEWS DAILY: FACEBOOK ON ‘FAKE NEWS’

QED.

[Lithos]

33. *sigh*

First, I am not mainstreaming BB - that was done by CNN and the other media sites who brought over the people behind it, AmRen, VDare and other slick-hate sites as "alternate viewpoints" all in the name of ratings. I have long called it and those other sites what they are, hate sites. And to promote themselves, these sites have followed the media eye-ball slick format of places like CNN, MSNBC, etc. to help create the illusion of validity.

Second, what I am saying is that CNN, like many of the 24/7 media companies in the US are such poor source of news to the point that I would call it entertainment more than news. This is why Comedy Central was able to have better analysis as you at least have to have a good grasp of the material before you can satirize it. If you want to be called a news organization, then you need to be able to get to the primary source. CNN lacks this as it axed much of it's reporters, with most of the original material now coming from third parties or from talking heads in the studio who supplement at times from the talking heads at BB, Dare, AmRen, etc.. CNN is a media company who thinks more about eyeballs and viewership than about what News it broke. As for timeliness, I've seen CNN take 30+ minutes to even acknowledge a breaking news item. I've also seen "news" buried in the fold among the paid content which is itself competing as "news".

As for in-depth reporting - I have seen many tweets with more content than a full page on the CNN which are written more to get you to click other CNN articles than to give you a good picture.

That's why I tend towards sites such as the BBC, Reuters, "The Guardian", "Washington Post", France24, L'Express, The Independent (UK), The Economist, Haaretz, and the New York Times. Some of these are biased to the right or to the left, but they do tend to keep their journalistic integrity to the forefront.

Reuters and France24 are good for up to the minute news. The BBC for instance has far more in depth reporting of what's going on in the world and in US politics than any other US Media outlet. And if I want deeper analysis, then I end up over at The Economist, The New Statesman, or Mother Jones. Or if it is truly technical or specialized then over to academia if I can.

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[metroins]

26. CNN deserves higher

They can have some decent reporting.

But a lot of it isn't reporting, it's just repeating stuff and asking questions to that which they already know the answer.

If I want facts during a real-time event, I usually go to CNN. They are pretty reliable in real-time, because they usually preface speculation before they spout it. Like "There might be 2 gunmen, but we really don't know right now".

So I'd put CNN higher mainly because of how they cover real-time events. Their politics reporting sucks.

I really like the chart though and think it's close to accurate.

[Lithos]

31. I tend to go to other sources

CNN fired most of their reporters a long time ago and rely on other assets to gain breaking news. Their political reporting is definitely broken.

Here is a chart which mostly follows where I tend to get my news. For the most part I tend to find multiple sources and compare/contrast what they are saying. When I see the same small set of facts, often quoted verbatim, then I know I'm dealing with some sort of news syndication (very common among RW-conservative sites which try and use self-reference to gain some sort of "legitimacy" (noise over quality). The chart below also tends to coincide a bit with the original graph.

[yurbud]

27. I'd be curious to see the readership of these sites. I've barely heard of some on the lower left

and haven't heard of the rest in that cluster while those on the lower right are right wing staples.

[baldguy]

35. Seems to be just another "both sides are the same" bullshit.

Both side ARE NOT the same.

[Lithos]

36. Not really

The big takeaway is the deeper a source works on developing facts, the more non-partisan they tend to become and there are only a handful of sources which put that level of effort into it. Most of the sources on the bottom third of the graph are really nothing more than laden with soundbites and clickbait, some partisan, some not.

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