Tiny German Village forced to accept 1,000 refugees

[CathyA]

I watch the CBS news in the morning, but it's pretty much just for the first 15 minutes of the 2 hour show. It's all fluff after that.
I've heard that El Jazeera is a good news source.

[IshbelRobertson]

Try the BBC online service. Also for balance, the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian newspapers, right-wing and left-wing respectively, although I don't know if their online versions are fully available outwith the UK.

[sweetana3]

We watch DW News and Focus on Europe. Find them on the Bloomington, IN PBS station (location of Indiana University). Not often found. Hubby says they are streamed also. Gives a German perspective.

We are also big time PBS viewers. I know they are somewhat more liberal but contain a lot less "fluff". I really like their analysis of Supreme Court actions. I do not watch any of the regular channel (what passes for) news channels. They are out for ratings and skew their reporting to what brings in ratings. The only exception is a little local news in the early morning for weather, local items and such during breakfast.

If you can stream radio, BBC World has good analysis.

[Williamsmith]

The news is propaganda. It is also a drug. Stirs up your emotion and seeks to divide. It is no substitute for travel or communication because it shrinks our vocabulary to buzz words and stunts our thoughts. It is like a water slide with two chutes. Very limited choices. The news is like a jar of mixed nuts. You have to pick out the cashews.

[Miss Cellane]

YES. WE ARE. LOOK UP UK DRONES AND FLIGHTS OVER SYRIA, and joint US/Uk airforce missions.

Sorry for shouting, but please, please, do some reading on the current situation. The UK currently donates more funds to refugee camps, than any other EU country. Our policy is to improve the lot of refugees in the camps, rather than to accept the need for all of them to move out of the area.

Read up on the deep hatred between Sunni and Shiite muslims and this will enlighten you as to one of the reasons Europe looks a better bet than many ME countries.

Many of the asylum seekers are NOT from Syria, but Africans, Indians, Bangladeshis, pakistanis,malaysians etc. most are economic migrants, fleeing poverty.

In Cathy's defense, US media are not the best at reporting things that happen outside the US. And when they do, it is because it is a "sensational" story, one that will make headlines and garner the newspaper/network lots of viewers/readers. And a great many people do not realize that the stories are played for their sensational elements and that there might be another side to the story, or the reporter may have conveniently hidden a few facts that, while true, would have made the story less interesting and sensational.

I check the New York Times daily, and the BBC news website, because I like to get a view of the US that is a bit more impartial (or at least is biased differently from US sources). I'm always surprised at the number of what I'd consider small, local to the US news stories that make it onto the BBC site.

My brother lives in Turkey, so a) he tells me stuff that is happening there and b) I tend to check out news stories about Turkey and the surrounding countries because he's there and I want to know what's going on around him. There are major gaps in my knowledge about what's happening in other parts of the world.

But it isn't always easy to find international news in the US. Videos of extremely cute cats? Sure. Unbiased analysis of the Syria civil war? The reasons for the refugee crisis? You have to go and hunt for them.

[Williamsmith]

Kind of makes you wonder about how free our thoughts really are. The ease at which we went along with the attack on Iraq in the second Bush War as an example. The news played a huge part in that.

[IshbelRobertson]

If lots of Americans seem to agree that the US tv/newspaper world news reporting is poor, it's a sad reflection on a nation who has given us so many great reporters in the past.

We take 2 daily newspapers, the Scotsman and the Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times, the latter is owned by Rupert Murdoch, but he seems to allow the paper to continue with its award winning teams of investigative journalists. I watch Al Jazeera occasionally, to get the 'other' side's view on ME matters!

[IshbelRobertson]

Kind of makes you wonder about how free our thoughts really are. The ease at which we went along with the attack on Iraq in the second Bush War as an example. The news played a huge part in that.

EXACTLY, and with Tony Bliar as his poodle, dragging my country into that illegal war. Tony Bliar should be prosecuted.

I went on a number of 'Stop the War' marches in Scotland and in London with my students. The will of the British people was totally ignored.

[Miss Cellane]

If lots of Americans seem to agree that the US tv/newspaper world news reporting is poor, it's a sad reflection on a nation who has given us so many great reporters in the past.

We take 2 daily newspapers, the Scotsman and the Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times, the latter is owned by Rupert Murdoch, but he seems to allow the paper to continue with its award winning teams of investigative journalists. I watch Al Jazeera occasionally, to get the 'other' side's view on ME matters!

Lots of newspapers are closing down, because of a lack of subscriptions.

The average evening televised news show is half an hour, of which 20-22 minutes is news, not ads. Easily 2/3 of those 22 minutes is sports and weather, leaving maybe 7-8 minutes of actual news, which has to cover both local, state and US news. And the "banter" among the newscasters takes up some of that. (I never watch TV news; it's all sound-bites taken out of context.)

The morning news shows, which I also don't watch because I'm getting ready for work, are a tiny bit of news, both local and US, and a ton of fluff. The local morning newscast are a lot of traffic reports and weather.

Lots of people do keep a cable news channel on when they are in the house. Many of these are highly biased towards a certain viewpoint. If you don't seek out other sources, you would have a very slated view of what's going on in the world.

And many US citizens do. I've had a few conversations with acquaintances recently where they clearly had their facts about recent issues incorrect, but they were not willingly to believe that such-and-such a newscaster would feed them inaccurate information. The several websites I could present with differing facts had to be wrong, because they heard their facts on tv, and tv would never lie to them--I am not joking about this.

I think the real problem is that critical thinking is not a skill many Americans have.

[flowerseverywhere]

It's amazing what we don't hear. It was about a year ago that someone mentioned Angola and I thought wait, that happened when I was about 12. Yes it did, crisis in Angola happened when I was about 12, and it stopped happening when I was about 40. Their life expectancy is currently 38, so the average person my age in Anglola when I first heard the word died (after 28 years of hell), two years after I lived a whole life and then retired. I can tell you that Bruce Jenner is now a woman and I can tell you his new name. I can sing you the song for the Big Mac, I can sing you the song for Prius. Can I tell you what happened for nearly 30 years in Angola that caused the displacement of nearly 25% of their population, 4 million people? Nope. Can I tell you why there were 15 million land mines in Angola? Nope. I can tell you it's a country, and that it's in Africa, and dear god, that makes me better informed than most of my peers. Both embarrassing and absurd.

ETA - not to hijack the thread, Angola is just one of a thousand humiliating examples of information we have to go mining for if we even remember, vs. what's dumped on us for free. Two all beef patties, special sauce ....

excellent summary. We won't stand up and take notice until they reinstate the the draft and we are on wartime rations. I fear we are heading towards that, and I am not a pessimist.