CBS News Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan recently said she was committing professional suicide by calling out the mainstream media for its liberal bias. Logan said, among other things, that news reports based on single, anonymous government sources were an abandonment of journalistic standards. She said, “That’s not journalism…Responsibility for fake news begins with us. We bear some responsibility for that, and we’re not taking ownership of that and addressing it. We just want to blame it all on somebody else.” She said that the media has abandoned its pretense or at least the effort to be objective. This is nothing that we didn’t already know, but it raises the question of what many want answered.

Where do you go for accurate news? This question has been raised by many Daily Jot readers. The truth of the matter is, I don’t know. Most news sources that I know of are biased in some way. Some would say that Fox News is a good place to get balanced news. I quit watching Fox News years ago because of the noise it generates in the name of fair and balanced. When we see that Fox reporters are no different than the mainstream, they have become the mainstream. Yes, they have conservative commentators that might get your blood boiling, but that is not news, it is commentary. Fox News programs appear to me to be slightly better than the mainstream, but still reflect bias.

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Others say Breitbart is a great place to get unbiased news. But Breitbart is also biased toward a conservative slant. You have to take care to go to the source of their articles and check them out. For example, Breitbart reported continuously about how NFL stadiums were nearly empty during games, complete with pictures of empty seats. NFL official statistics (not cited in the story) on attendance, however, showed a slight increase. Those pictures may have been taken during halftime or pregame. Breitbart also headlined that the NFL paid Colin Kaepernick upwards of $80 million in a collusion settlement. There was absolutely no sourcing to this story. It was irresponsibly based on another reporter’s anonymous conversation with a “league source.” These are examples that I know first hand, but there are many others I have caught over the years.

I use several sources for news. Among the best, I find, is Drudge. Drudge essentially reposts stories from all media reports. Then you need to check the sources and find other stories that report on the same topic to compare. I do the same with Breitbart. The Middle East Media Research Institute,Capitol Hill Prayer Partners, Koenig’s International News are very good.I generally do not use any news site exclusively without verifying the facts from other sources. Discerning the truth takes effort. Does the point of the story match up with Biblical principles? Does more than one credible source corroborate the story? Does the story meet the “straight face” test, i.e. is it believable? Does the reporter or the sources have an agenda? These are all questions that need to be answered to find balanced reporting. Bottom line is the warning Christ gave us in Matthew 24:4, “Take heed that no man deceive you.”  The Daily Jot – Bill Wison