[josephg]

Yep this. I’m a paid subscriber to the economist’s podcast. A lot of their journalism is excellent. I really enjoyed the recent Tocqueville road trip. And their coverage of AI a few months ago was great - it was really interesting to hear what AI adoption in companies looks like for non technical people.

Yesterday I watched a fabulous piece by the Australian 4 Corners on food fraud in our country. They did forensic research into what food on our supermarket shelves actually contains. Shocking, but excellent journalism. Four Corners is a journalism arm of the Australian ABC - our national broadcaster. They’re funded by my tax dollars.

I don’t know what people mean when they say “mainstream media”. There’s lots of organisations out there - some of them doing really great work. But journalism is time intensive to do well, so it costs money. News you get for free is often either junk or it’s propaganda.

[coatmatter]

Whenever I encounter someone who jumps at the first opportunity to criticise "mainstream media", I ask them what their preferred outlets are. I tend to not get a response, which to me is quite telling.

[NikolaNovak]

I think a mixture of BBC, cnn, al jazeera, economist, will get a casual reader to a decent spot, and they're all mainstream media. Possibly guardian but emlarhically not their opinion pages (I agree with them, but even so they're gratingly opinionated, hate to think what a die hard conservative will think of them :)

[fsckboy]

BBC, CNN, and al jazeera are complete trash.

Economist always was good but I have not read it in a while so I can't speak to it. If it has not changed, that would be great.

[michaelmrose]

Let's pick one. Why is the BBC trash?

[Arkhaine_kupo]

The CEO was placed by the conservative party in 2017 ending decades of impartiality. He is a hack with a background in tabloid news, which has slowly swept into BBC entire ecosystem.

Their entire political reporting side is headlined by Laura Kuenssberg who is on her best day mediocre and on her worst actively participatory on the decline of democratic principles in the UK. Her "mistakes" such as giving her questions to Boris Johnson ahead of time, would be fireable offenses in any other high stakes job. But despite repeated mistakes all somehow helping the more radical, anti democratic, side of the conservative spectrum her position has never been in danger. She also hosts far right parties 500% more time than their current seats in parliment and is directly responsible for the cleaning of image of repudiable characters such as Nigel Farage.

So if becoming a slightly less abrasive Daily Mail while being paid with public money is not worthy of being called Trash, then idk what is. Its becoming the New York Post but without slurs

[neuroticnews25]

FWIW i've heard rightwing people call BBC absolute trash for not covering the rape gangs. IDK if it sums up or averages out.

[inigyou]

It only covers Israel/Palestine from the pro-Israel side?

[Arkhaine_kupo]

That is a weird accusation considering the fact that the BBC is still hiding an internal report they made about their Israel / Palestine reporting after they were accused of antisemitism in the early 2000s.

If the report exonerated them, and showed they even have a Israeli bias, why would they spend 50k in lawyer fees (disclosed so far, real number is probably higher) to hide that report?

There is obvious distrust on western sources of the conflict and the UK active participation in the creation of the 2 state solution, as well as its alliance with America all taint the possible impartiality or accuracy of the BBC. But the accusations against them for antisemitism and anti israeli bias go back decades

[fsckboy]

if mainstream media has gone downhill, why would somebody have a preferred outlet? What's your preferred outlet?

[hhh]

your preferred outlet would be something not mainstream then, it doesn't mean it has to be some mega conglomerate.