Credible News Source

Dear NewsHounds:

During Wednesday's class discussions about the SPJ Code of Ethics and the responsibilities of the press in maintaining an informed citizenry, the natural question arose: Where to find reliable news?

That's a much more complicated question today than it was when I was in college, and there were only three TV news networks and much less competing noise in the marketplace of ideas. Now the “noise” is not just the three networks joined by Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc. etc., but all the competing online sources of “information,” ranging from the NYTimes online to blogs that sound authoritative, to say nothing of the sophisticated spinners that strategically concoct our political news diet from moment to moment.

Ironically, it’s perhaps more difficult to be well informed today than it was 30 years ago, because it's so difficult to know whose version of the what the Hutchins Commission called “the day’s intelligence” to trust.

A few weeks ago, I think, I suggested Slate.com as one possible addition to your daily news diet. Slate Magazine has its own perspectives and biases, of course, but its daily email newsletter (called “Today’s Papers”) simply reports what major U.S. newspapers—The New York Times to The LA Times to The WSJournal, etc.—are reporting on their front pages. Certainly, this is only a limited slice of what’s going on in the world, but it’s useful not only for the specific stories themselves, but as a measure of how various mainstream and credible news sources agree or disagree on the major stories of the day.

Professor Pease