News source reputations

Would anyone else be interested in having a central place on ATS where you can see the reputations of all the news sources that come up? I'm not sure if it would be best to let the mods be in charge of deciding if a source is reputable or not, or if the members should give it a numerical ranking 1-5 on how reliable they think they are.

Thoughts?

FOXNews: -4


yeah, I've already got the hang of it.

I speak here as a member, not a Moderator.

I would be against any system that "tells" us what to believe. Any system that says this is more "worthy" or "credible" than another is a no-no in my opinion. ATS tends to stand for neutrality, accepting both sides of every discussion. This, in my opinion, would go against neutrality as it would be ATS's voice speaking for and against news sources.

Ultimately, we are here to make our own decision. If you think FOX is not a credible news source but CNN is, well that is your decision to make. Just my thought, but I don't think it is Above Top Secret's place to tell you what to think.

CNN: -4.0×10³¹



Perhaps ATS itself should not tell us what to think, yes, but if this is a user-driven resource, then ATS is not telling us anything. The members are.

Why not just create a thread in the media section and send it up the flagpole?

well ?

my major concern with these repleated claims that :

" media souce `X` lacks ? credibility "

is the selective application of it , the claim is just a red herring , which conveniantly demonises the news source - and allows you to blithely ignore anything it told you which iether :

A - you did not want to hear / believe

OR

B - coontradicted or falsified a previously held beleif / notion


that is the height of ignorant conceite

and ATS should have no truck with it , or encourage members to propte such notions

I also dont really think it will work as intended. If someone doesnt like the source then it could be tagged as biased even though it may no be. Even though I wish we had something similar when it comes to unknown websites, not the cnns or foxes but some people put sources from randomufosite.com and how am i to know reputable it is. But even with that, I believe that a system would have too many flaws.

Thank-you all very much for you input

I just came up with it yesterday when I was doing something totally unrelated to this website (isn't that always the way?) and thought I would throw it out there to get a few opinions.

Having thought more on this myself, I do agree that it may lead down the path of abuse and others would really not enjoy being told by mods, "Don't read this, avoid news from there, THAT is very bad for you" /RayWinstone

I also agree that thinking for yourself is a very good thing as long as you continue to keep your eyes and ears open for what other people have to say.

Thanks again guys (and thanks for the laugh watch_the_rocks). If anyone has any further input on this subject then feel free to post it up here. Who knows, someone may bring a new way of looking at to our attention

- Chris

Well I think it is an interesting Idea, though I think the rating should be on hom truthful and neutral the newssource is.


A few so called 'news souerces' that are completely untrutable are Pravda,
Worldnetdaily, weeklyworldnews and I can't think of the fourth one now.

We have three news forums, and in all of them the sources for the news items are what YOU all post as news and link to, the best test of these news sources are the MEMBERS who get involved in these discussions, present their own sources, information and question the credibility of the news sources the original poster provided. This is exactly why in our news forums the follow up discussion is so important, if a news item carries important, relevant and credible information, it will be because it passed the test in one of our news forums follow up discussions.

This defines U.S. news sources:

What We Call The News



[edit on 3/31/2007 by TheAvenger]

I say dissect all news.
Explore different angles to get the whole picture. Check out news sites from other countries. Dive into blogs that you feel are not bias or pushing an agenda.

The word has a way of getting around as to what is a reliable source and what is not. It is always good to look around and get some corroboration when posting news, just to be on the safe side, but then, no one wants to miss a scoop.

When there is more than one source, go with the one that has the least baggage and list the rest as backup.

These Russian 'sources' seem one step up from random text.

What about a graph that lists news sources and goes up by pixel every
10 or so times its used as a source?
That way in one graph if we click it we can view where to go for reading the news other then the places we usually go.