News Recommendations

News channels are shit. Complete, and utter shit. All of them. When they aren't stroking themselves over "The Irrelevant Outrage and/or Fear of the Week," they hire partisan hacks to throw pies at each other. Political shows like Olbermann and Hannity are fun, but the problem is that people often mistake them for actual news instead of opinions (mostly Hannity viewers). Don't watch the 24 hour news stations expecting to gain any sort of relevant information, because they're nothing but entertainment. Mainstream journalism is dead. These guys have helped contribute to the dumbing down of the American public because of the complete lack of intelligent discussion on their stations.

Important shit the media is ignoring

• A police officer shot and killed an unarmed, cooperating black man while he was on the ground.

• A police officer shot and killed a 73 year old black man at a family gathering, in front of his grandchildren. Witnesses say the officer's partner then tried to plant a gun on him. Police Chief - "If I see three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and check their names," said Mills, who is white. "I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might get arrested. We're not out there trying to abuse and harass people—we're trying to protect the law-abiding citizens locked behind their doors in fear."

• There have been reports from Israeli soldiers saying that Rabbis associated with their army had been interpreting the invasion of Gaza as a religious war. On top of this, the UN has now confirmed that the Israeli Army deliberately targeted civilians and civilian buildings like homes, schools, and hospitals.

• There have been four shootings across the country in the last month alone. A mechanic killed his boss and injured another before being gunned down. Some guy in Alabama gunned down 10 people before killing himself. Some guy killed four cops before being gunned down. Some guy walked into a church and shot the pastor four times before being tackled by church goers. I suppose this is a good thing though, since maniacs feed off the media hype of shootings and get emboldened. The lack of coverage is just a little odd to me, concerning the media's track record.
  

• Darfur, but this isn't really a surprise since nobody gives a shit about Africa anyway (I hear there's a lot of black people in Africa)
  

You don't learn about these things on television and what's left of newpapers. At least not in detail. Too depressing. The internet is an excellent source for stories like these. I'd hate to give a shout out to reddit, but that site is very good with this stuff. Just avoid the comments, because they're all a bunch of teenage, opinionated, dumbass libertarians. A lot of conspiracy theorists, too.

I'm sure there are a lot of good news blogs out there, but so far Goatmilk is the only truly great one I've come across. They focus on the Middle East, and also talk about what's going on in mainstream Islam.

Al Jazeera's site is good. They have a great Youtube Channel. Then there's BBC News, I like them because they're usually unbiased.

But there's also important news that doesn't involve people dying. That's where podcasts come in. Every single one of my favorite news shows have put themselves up on iTunes for no cost. They download directly to my computer each time they air. I fucking love the future. Awesome podcasts are:

• Fareed Zakaria's GPS, which airs Sundays on CNN. Fareed is my hero. He is fucking brilliant. He gets a panel who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about (I'm talking Nobel Prize winners like every week). Fareed asks them the best freakin' questions, and makes the world news easy to understand.
  
• Al Jazeera has something called The Listening Post. For every story they cover, they always show how the rest of the media is treating it, and if any of it is biased. They're a little biased themselves, but it's okay because at least they're honest about it instead of pretending to be fair and balanced like other sources I won't name.
  
• Meet the Press with David Gregory is fantastic. They always get the country's most important politcians on. Gregory is always unbiased, and does a great job at playing the devil's advocate with everyone.
  
• Gwen Ifill hosts PBS's Washington Week, which basically summarizes what happened on the Hill during the week. They always get excellent panels, who can discuss things in a clear, coherent fashion. Ifill caused a stir among Republicans a few months ago because she was to moderate the Vice Presidential debate. She had just written a book called The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. It was phoney outrage obviously, not only because Gwen moderated a debate in 2004 with absolutely no problems, but also because her book isn't about supporting Barack's policies at all. It's about how the Civil Rights leaders of the 60s are beginning to step down, and how a new generation of black leaders - more than just Obama - are trying to find their place. It actually looks really good, and I want to read it.
  
• And I know I just ripped on 24 hour news channels, but CNN has a podcast called CNN=Politics Daily, which is great if you're too busy to watch a full program. It's usually around fifteen minutes or less. It's a bunch of spliced together television footage that played earlier in the day, covering American politics. It's basically the day's sparknotes. And CNN is actually pretty balanced compared to MSNBC and Fox, so that's a plus too.
  

So I guess my final point is that good news sources are kind of like good bands. They're there, you just have to look hard enough.