7.8: News as a Source
When Are News Sources Helpful?
- You need breaking news or historical perspectives on a topic (what people were saying at the time).
- You need to learn more about a culture, place, or time period from its own sources.
- You want to keep up with what is going in the world today.
When Are News Sources of Limited Use?
- You need a very detailed analysis by experts.
- You need sources that must be scholarly or modern views on a historical topic.
Mainstream and Non-Mainstream News Sources
Mainstream American news outlets stick with the tradition of trying to report the news as objectively as possible. That doesn’t mean their reports are perfectly objective, but they are more objective than the non-mainstream sources. As a result, mainstream news sources are more credible than non-mainstream sources. Some examples of mainstream American news outlets: The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Boston Globe , The Chicago Tribune , The Los Angeles Times ; ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, PBS News, NPR News.
News from non-mainstream American news outlets is often mixed with opinions. One way they frequently exhibit bias is that they leave out pertinent facts. Some examples of non-mainstream American news outlets: Fox News, MSNBC, Gawker, Reddit.
Types of News Sources
Press Services— News outlets (print, broadcast, and online) get a lot of their news from these services, such as Reuters or Associated Press (AP), which make it unnecessary for individual outlets to send their own reporters everywhere. Services are so broadly used that you may have to look at several news outlets to get a different take on an event or situation.
News aggregators— Aggregators don’t have reporters of their own but simply collect and transmit the news reported by others. Some sources pull news from a variety of places and provide a single place to search for and view multiple stories. You can browse stories or search for a topic. Aggregators tend to have current, but not archival news. Google News and Yahoo News are examples.
Newspaper sites – Many print newspapers also have their own websites. They vary as to how much news they provide for free. Take a look at these examples.
- RSS feeds
- News Feeds
- News Alerts
- Table of Contents Alerts