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Is there such a thing as a bullshit-free news agency?

I generally try to stay informed on current events. With the exception of what gets posted here, I normally get my news from CNN. I tend to lean left politically, but not always.

The problem I always run into is that every news site I read, regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum, is always filled with pointless bullshit. Specifically, sports, celebrity news, and product placement. “Some shitty pop singer is dating some shitty actor” or “These are our recommendations for the best mass-produced garbage-quality fast fashion from Temu” or “Some overpaid dickhead threw a ball faster than some other overpaid dickhead.”

What I’d love to find is a news source that’s just news that matters. No celebrity gossip, sports, opinion pieces, etc. Just real events that have an impact on some part of the world. Legislation, natural events, economic changes, wars, political changes, that kind of thing.

Does this exist, or is all journalism just entertainment?

Vinny_93 ,

I think what you’re describing is the need for RSS feeds. Generally, news outlets categorise their articles neatly so you subscribe with RSS to only headlines, or world events, or whatever. It requires you to have a look around the news site in question and setup RSS correctly.

The other neat thing is that you can read all your RSS feeds (ie multiple news sites) in one reader and there are tons of custom RSS apps.

I share your disdain for gossip and mainstream money grab promo. And ads. My god how much do ads suck.

zelifcam ,
@zelifcam@lemmy.world avatar

It’s funny how often this is brought up and how the answer is that’s it’s been solved since nearly the begging of the web.

I’ve been using an RSS manager / server for decades! Right now it’s FreshRSS as the server and using Lire as a client on iOS. There’s arguably no better way to consume content.

beliquititious ,

RSS won’t solve OP’s problem. Most sites have a single feed with all their articles, if they have an rss feed at all (can’t sell ads in an rss feed).

Aside from maybe just the raw AP feed (which is free through their app) I’m not sure any modern news room just publishes the type of feed OP might be looking for.

Vinny_93 ,

I think that really depends on the news site. News from my country is very well suited for RSS.

beliquititious ,

100% yeah. I guess I mean that OP is already frustrated by noise in their news sources, rss doesn’t solve curation, which is what it sounds like people think rss does. But if every story you’re shown needs to be relevant to your interests rss isn’t going to fix that.

Even the perfect news outlet that OP describes is going to have tons of boring stuff. Social media tried solving it with algorithms and will probably move on to AI driven feeds in 18 months, but their profit motive spoils the effort.

Then again I’ve thought about curation vs. aggregation maybe a bit too much.

orcrist ,

I’m subscribed to over 50 RSS feeds and never once have I wanted to subscribe to a site and they didn’t have a feed.

beliquititious ,

There are millions of blogs and news sources to browse off the beaten path. It really depends on how the site is built. A Wordpress enterprise solution has a default rss feed, but it can be turned off should the site choose. A medium or ghost based site has the same toggle. For a more bespoke solution it is extra dev time not all sites opt for anymore because so few people use rss these days.

Back in 2010 at the height of Google Reader’s popularity rss only accounted for 10% of traffic and depending on how the feed was configured it might consume 30% of the non-money-making bandwidth. There was a push to try to monetize rss, but it kinda backfired and the technology faded into (relative) obscurity for the average person.

There are tens of thousands of absolutely amazing blogs and news sources online today with no support for rss.

velox_vulnus ,

There are a few good news, like 404media and The Intercept. Coincidentally, they also have a RSS feed.

AZERTY ,

Id probably use AP (Associated Press) since they seem to provide the least biased and most fact based reporting. However looking at their front page right now I see minimal content involving celebrities so it might not be your cup of tea.

anon6789 ,
@anon6789@lemmy.world avatar

I have the AP Top Stories page as my bookmark. It gets rid of even more of the stuff OP doesn’t want.

Only borderline story is about Taylor Swift and food banks, but the focus is on the economics and other issues food banks face, so I feel it is still within guidelines. There’s no celeb drama or gushing in it.

This and my local NPR affiliate are my primary news sources.

LarkinDePark ,

Neither Reuters nor AP pass the Uyghur test. They may be less biased than others but they’re still fake news and propaganda outlets.

Oneser ,

I can recommend Reuters, given it still has a little bit of sports and opinion, but I find it’s good at providing neutral facts and sources it’s knowledge from appropriate experts for its opinion pieces.

It only lacks in providing local level news, where I turn to my country’s national broadcaster.

LarkinDePark ,

providing neutral facts and sources it’s knowledge from appropriate experts for its opinion pieces.

Such as Adrian Zenz. A guy who was paid by the BBC to make up absurd stories about China and who thinks god sent him on a mission to rid the world of gays and communists.

neidu2 ,

Seconding Reuters. Their primary customers are other news agencies, so Reuters generally don’t add spin to a news article.

feedum_sneedson ,

I guess AP is similar.

CanadaPlus ,

IIRC those are like the big two in reselling stories.

salarua ,
@salarua@sopuli.xyz avatar

NPR News is probably what you’re looking for. sports and celebrity stuff is relegated to the Culture section, which is its own separate thing (although there are a couple of music stories that seem to have been misplaced). here is the RSS feed for the News section: feeds.npr.org/1001/rss.xml

ExtravagantEnzyme ,

Sounds like you’re looking for independent journalism, I’m in the same boat. I’ve found checking commondreams.org, scheerpost.com, therealnews.com, unicornriot.ninja, fair.org, thecanary.co, leftvoice.org, consortiumnews.com, labornotes.org, and popularresistance.org/news make for a great news feed. Those are an array of independent news outlets which keep it almost entirely just news. Setting up an RSS feed with these sites would be a solid move to ensure your getting news with none of the BS.

MoonMelon ,

I would add Grist to that list for climate focused reporting.

Okokimup ,
@Okokimup@lemmy.world avatar

For US news, I really like readtangle.com.

JimmyBigSausage ,

All the “news” people care about is clicks so you will read their ads. That is why they cover Trump so much so you will outrage click. Case in point, look at HuffingtonPost.com It is a left-leaning outrage bait website. They no longer care about actually reporting anything. They position themselves as a women-staffed site but if you look, right this very minute, it is about 100 photos of Trump. I agree it is getting old, but they are all doing it. Real news? You just have filter through the shitshow of 2024 journalism.

CanadaPlus ,

Yeah, there’s no way to make money covering important but boring stuff in a neat, concise fashion.

techwooded ,

I would check out Semafor as well

CanadaPlus , (edited )

I really wish there was a news source with coverage weighted by humanitarian impact.

That might actually be too far in the other direction for what you’re thinking of, though. Most political news wouldn’t be there, just because it’s hard to draw a direct line objectively to the impact it has. Many sites provide categories and filters, so maybe just using those more would be a start.

Brkdncr ,

News is a service that determines what’s newsworthy and summarizes it. You can’t do that without bias at some level.

Californiz ,
@Californiz@lemmy.ca avatar

If you are retarded, use MBFC

BeatTakeshi ,
@BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world avatar

Short and to the point, with sources. Headlines grouped by categories

newsasfacts.com

mark ,
@mark@programming.dev avatar

Sounds like you might just want the news without fluff.

I use AllSides as my main news source for federal news. Give them a try. The writing is succinct and gets straight to the point.

They give you news of the day in small chunks separated by topic. Each topic has a quick context, run down of what’s happening, and (my favorite) how the left right and center outlets are all covering it.

They also have an RSS feed (provided by Open RSS because they dont serve their own feeds. openrss.org/allsides.com

BlueAure ,

I like Axios because it’s short form but has extended versions of I find it interesting enough to learn more.

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