News and Where to Get It.
Stuff is happening. The news is full of politics in America, all day, every day. If you’re like me, you really can’t take another four years of all-Trump-All-The-Time. So what to do?
I honestly thought everyone knew how to pivot to news sources that minimize Trump content, but I’ve been seeing TikToks and Reels and other social media posts talking about how to find news that’s not slanted and not focused on Trump most of the time. Unfortunately, the videos I’ve seen tend to list only one source. It’s good to know where to find the PBS newshour but they’re not the only ones who are delivering balanced low-trump news coverage
So in case you don’t know this stuff. Here’s my list, it’s more comprehensive than anything I’ve seen. If you know this stuff, great. If not, here it is.
YouTube:
PBS and all the major American networks have YouTube channels. On their channels they post their nightly newscasts. All you have to do is go to YouTube home page and search PBS Newshour, or ABC News or NBC News, you get the idea. They will all come up with highlights first, but scroll past the highlights and the full shows are there. Best part, you can fast forward through any story you don’t care about and most networks post their newscasts without commercials.
Foreign news is also available in English on YouTube. I watch foreign news because we live on one planet and everything effects everyone. So, in no particular order, here’s my list:
- British BBC, Sky News
- South Korea, Arirang News
- Germany, DW
- France, France 24 or Agence Presse France
- Japan, NHK News
- Australia, ABC
- Mexico, Mexico News Daily
- Canada, CBC (in particular their nightly news round up “The National,”) Global News and CTV
- American sources tailored to specific parts of society: Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
For international radio, I use mytuner on Roku but you can also use mytuner on your computer or phone. You can search radio stations by country on mytuner but be forewarned, you get it raw. If it’s not in English, you still get the station, just not in English and all the commercials they choose to run on their station will be on your feed.
There is a website called Radio Garden that uses a globe to pinpoint radio broadcasters and play them through your computer. It’s not an app, so you don’t need to download anything but I find it a bit time consuming to search country by country. Still, I think Radio Garden has the potential to be very useful if you are in need of information from a specific area in the U.S. or abroad.
Importantly, for free speech rights, though you may not know it, your local community access TV station is still there for you to make TV should you decide you want to do that. Community Access TV is one of the last true bastions of free speech in America. They are free to watch, mostly free to use, and for a small membership fee you can learn to use broadcast equipment, check out video equipment and become a broadcaster. Community Access channels are carried on regular Cable TV but they are also increasingly available on YouTube.
If you’re a print media person, the best thing I can advise you to do is to check out your local weekly alternative newspaper. They’re those papers you see for free in boxes or on racks at the grocery store. They look like they’re just ads but many are legitimate news sources. The Pennysaver overwhelmed the space in the 1990s and so many people assume that’s all there is, but that’s wrong. Weekly, free community papers still exist. You just have to look for them.
Also in print, and on the radio, many colleges and universities have low-fi radio stations and student newspapers. While these often focus on campus issues, they usually include coverage of major news and always focus on news that effects young people, so there are some interesting stories and information about trends to be found there.
We don’t have to choose between total isolation and stress overload over the next four years. You can have your news your way from objective, credible sources, you’re just going to need to go to different sources to get it.
