USA Politics

Well, that depends on what you want to define as "legitimate" and "stuff the regular media won't report".

I personally read Al Jazeera when I'm looking for a non-western standpoint. I read the BBC fairly regularly, but I get most of my news from the CBC (and my American politics from politicalwire.com, which is, for my money, the finest American political blog there is). When I feel like reading American sources, I usually check out the WaPo or the NYT. Boston Globe is a good newspaper, too.

That being said...most "alternative" news sources have a purpose. They're selling something. This is the same for bullshit fake news and biased sites on the right, like Drudge Report and Breitbart, as it is for bullshit fake news and biased sites on the left, like Politicus. There's some news sources that are very obviously biased, such as Fox News on one side, and say, the Huffington Post on the other. But "alternative" news is the same bullshit as "alternative" medicine. Anyone can break the news. The fucking National Enquirer has broken major news stories before. There's a word we use to describe "alternative sources that provide actual newsworthy stories". It's called "the news".
 
The problem we have is, the newspaper that used to be the paper of record in the U.S., the New York Times, has become almost as liberal as the Huffington Post. For non-political news, it is still excellent. For politics, it has ceased to be a neutral newspaper. It's a shame, and an important loss, because major national news outlets need to be able to call Trump out on his bullshit without being justifiably accused of bias. The NYT has lost that credibility, for the most part. I suggest the Wall Street Journal -- it is certainly more conservative than the NYT, but it has still been printing strong criticism of the Comey firing (for example), albeit in a much more measured, less shrill tone. EDIT: It also has been printing the other side, including an editorial today on why Comey SHOULD have been fired -- I may not agree with that, but it at least represents the kind of balance that has been missing from the Times.
 
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Now I don't dispute what you say about the NYT, it may well be biased. But it is hardly disputed that Trump said what he said, and claimed that he coined the phrase "priming the pump"?

On a more general note, I think many major news outlets are guilty of jumping on a bandwagon where they make "haha, look at that stupid guy" stories, or prioritize that angle when they cover the Trump administration. Since it is rather obvious that Trump, and possibly the entire core of his administration, make a lot of noise about small things (in order to distract from the more serious things going on), media shouldn't fall for it. Newspapers should put the stupid things in small fonts and prioritize the important stuff, even if that creates less clicks than entertaining "what stupid shit has Donald said today" stories.
 
Dr. Eddies Wingman said:
Now I don't dispute what you say about the NYT, it may well be biased. But it is hardly disputed that Trump said what he said, and claimed that he coined the phrase "priming the pump"?
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I think the NYT reports what it reports accurately. But I also think that it definitely slants liberal (and, of course, strongly anti-Trump). Having a press that opposes the President is not a bad thing. In fact, it's essential to democracy. But that opposition loses much of its force when it gets too obviously partisan and one-sided. To your point about jumping on the bandwagon, that's also part of the problem -- the media, even when it hates Trump, also loves him, because he generates money for them by attracting readers on both sides of the political "aisle." But that just arms the Trump supporters who claim that the media is out to get him and cannot be trusted. In a perverse way, continuously attacking Trump might make him even stronger. In contrast, if the mainstream media coverage of the President had been balanced and calm all along, then the current furor over the Comey firing and a potential cover-up of Russian influence would be all the more powerful.
 
I both agree and disagree with CFH. I think the NYT picks what it is going to report on, but it does have some pretty strong conservative commentators as well. I'm not going to call it a liberal rag, because I really don't think it is. I just don't know if it's really anti-Trump to that point. The simple fact is that the President of the USA is a liar. A really, really big liar, and any reasonable news organization would be calling that out. That's not what I consider being anti-Trump - it's pro-reality.

There are always other issues that are more strongly liberal and conservative, and the NYT comes down on one side more than the other. But when it comes to reporting on the president and his inability to do things truthfully and logically, I don't think that's a liberal thing. I truly believe if Trump had run from the left (or a similar person ran from the left and won), they'd treat him with the same disdain.
 
jazz from hell said:
How do you define 'liberal'?
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Anti-freedom when it comes to economic matters, pro-freedom when it comes to social (non-economic) matters. Basically, someone who is confused. :p

This diagram is obviously oversimplified, but at a high level reflects what "liberal" tends to mean in the U.S. For the record, on this chart, I self-identify as a libertarian.
nolan.jpg
 
LooseCannon said:
the NYT ... does have some pretty strong conservative commentators as well
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Who?? The closest to being a strong conservative is Bret Stephens, and he was only recently hired. (He's also very anti-Trump.) The liberal writers dwarf the more conservative columnists, both in numbers and in prominence on the NYT's pages.

We agree about Trump. My point is, when a newspaper leans so heavily Democratic (anti-Republican), the true and correct critiques of Trump get lost and second-guessed.
 
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A wiki entry and practicality are two different things ... Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are the two most prominent liberals in office today ... they are about as anti-free market as you can get. I'd think anyone would be hard pressed to find a prominent liberal in the US advocating free markets ... and actually freedom of speech is pretty iffy at this point as well
 
Liberal and conservative are both words that used to describe virtuous behaviour.
In American politics they have been so distorted they've become epithets.
Conservative has transformed from prudent to rigidly intolerant, liberal from generous to self-righteously controlling.
 
bearfan said:
Seems pretty dead on to me
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In the grand scheme of things, to assert that liberals are "anti-economic freedom" is simply ludicrous. Liberals are capitalists. Capitalism with more regulation than conservatives and libertarians may like, but capitalism nonetheless.

You'd get laughed at for that assertion in Europe, or even where I live.

bearfan said:
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are the two most prominent liberals in office today ... they are about as anti-free market as you can get.
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Both of them are democratic socialists. Not liberals.
 
mckindog said:
Except in the states.
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No, they're democratic socialists everywhere. They're just members of a liberal led party.

I know the U.S. likes to call things in their own terms in a wide variety of aspects, but political theory is political theory.
 
I'm not disputing your definitions, I'm telling you how these words are used and perceived by many Americans.
 
Just a side comment here, on the issue of more or less regulations in economical matters.

No regulations at all will under many circumstances concentrate a lot of economical power on few hands, leading to very little freedom of choice for individuals. In practice it will mean freedom for the few to squeeze money out of the many. That's why most countries in the capitalist parts of the world, including the US, have anti-trust regulations, to ensure that there is real competition.

Thus, I find the question of economic freedom much more complex than just defining a system as having somewhere between 0% and 100% freedom, with the same number applying to all.
 
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