Maybe news comes your way from television, or the newspaper, or the computers everyone today carries around in their pockets, but regardless of where, news will find you.
So in this flood of news that fills our screens, papers, and heads on a day-to-day basis, how are we to sort through it; to sift through the sands of words to find a grain that resonates with us personally? The answer is simple, that you must be the judge of what sources are meaningful enough to take a second glance at. In a world where a story that took place a week ago is ancient history, it can be relatively difficult to keep up. Today, I hope you can take away from my own experiences on how I do so personally, and that perhaps help yourself find news sources that mean something to you.
Where I live in America, there are two smartphones that dominate the market, being Apple and Android, with a large majority of the people I’ve met through my twenty one years of life carrying the former. However, what many don’t realize is that, by owning an iPhone by Apple, you inherently own one of the easiest accessible news sources in the modern day, Apple News.
Apple News is a fantastic place to go every morning when you wake up. It pulls from a variety of different outside sources of its own, and brings them to you in an orderly and unified manner.
Much akin to the various social media apps many use daily, Apple News picks up on trends that you show while browsing; whether it be top stories, political beliefs, or simply your interests and hobbies. Over time, as you use their platform, it gains an understanding of who you are and what you like, creating a customized feed that you are almost guaranteed to enjoy. It requires no subscription unless you want access to other major news corporation’s stories, in which case you’d be paying them directly on their own site regardless. I highly recommend it, and use it for most of my world-news updates in place of google’s top stories, which are unfortunately usually categorized by which company gives google the biggest payout.
Now, let's not overpraise a multibillion dollar cooperation too much, as it certainly has its flaws. For example, say I want more internet-style news in terms of what popular creators, artists, and scandals have gone on in the past week? Apple News certainly isn’t focused on such frivolities.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the news Youtube provides certainly isn’t up to par with the other sources in this article. Simply put, it’s news for younger generations who care about internet dramas, stories, and history. Even so, it’s a helpful tool to use if you’re into that sort of thing, and provides an almost infinite array of creators and videos for you to browse until you find your niche.
Youtube is most certainly primarily a platform for entertainment, yet it undoubtedly proves itself as a useful catalog of a variety of different opinions on current events happening all around us.
When thinking about a list of sources for this article, it almost pained me to add instagram as one of them. My relationship with instagram is shaky to say the least. On the one hand, I see it as a predatory app that creates a feed of content that it knows you’ll watch, and unlike Apple News, it does so with pure intent to keep you on their platform for as long as possible. On the other however, I will begrudgingly admit it’s a decent source of news depending on the person.
It may sound hard, but aside from my main account on instagram, I also have a backup account where I’ve done exactly that.
If you’re a bit more old fashioned like myself and want to step away from the slog that is finding news on media platforms, why not get news from a direct source? ABC News is my favorite when it comes to official companies that deliver news articles by themselves.
The claim I make here is not without thorough research, and actually dates back to my high school years when I was in an AP Government class. There, I remember one of our assignments was simply to look at a well renowned media-bias chart. With this link you can access it, and see for yourself.
The media-bias interactive chart is designed by, and created for those who want to know how much of their news is actually news beyond overhyping one side of the political spectrum or another. It works simply, with the x-axis being how far right or left a company leans, and the y-axis being how much of that company’s news is based on raw facts vs. opinions.
While I’m aware that ABC News does fall slightly left of the center, it is and has remained one of the few major news companies that is remotely close to the center of the political spectrum, and for that reason it is a source I find myself enjoying reading often.
Following the trend of a lack of bias, I present to you usafacts.org, a website that is bar none the most fact based, unbiased, and unpolitical news source out there. My only reason for putting it so low on today’s list of sources, is that it is a rather boring website; yet boring does not constitute its usefulness.
Usafacts is a simple website that shows raw data and facts happening in America today. It does not lean either way whatsoever, and is certainly useful for big events.
With all that said, I genuinely hope you’ve enjoyed reading. Today’s article is certainly a matter of opinion rather than fact, yet I still hope you were able to take something away from it. News is a hard concept to fully grasp, and even the pros don’t have it down as much as they think they do. I wish the reader good luck with future endeavors concerning reliable, but more importantly enjoyable news sources.
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