The issue of where one can find actual and truthful news (or just information) these days has been on my mind a lot. And it is because you can't trust anything you read. Even sites like Wikipedia are compromised and the review sites like Yelp have long ago become pay to play. As far as news of the day, it is a wasteland of lies and omissions out there. I have been trying to decide which of these are worse, lies or omissions.
Where am I personally getting a lot of my news these days? It has taken a long time to find these and I know there are other places I am unaware of. I keep looking every day. What I do know is that the “normal” places we have been getting our news are useless today, including everything pushed by social media sites like Facebook. Even if you agree with their slants, you are getting lies and missing out on lots of stories. Reading news written to reinforce what you already believe just isn't very helpful even if it makes you feel better.
If you hate Trump, watching MSNBC, CNN or reading the New York Times or Washington Post isn't going to give you any actual news about him, just lies and slurs. Which is what you probably want to see. They certainly don't tell you he is the first president since Jimmy Carter who didn't start a new war (a big deal to me, an Iraq/Afghanistan veteran who went to war under Bush and Obama).
On the other hand, what is really scary about news sources like that is that you will never actually know that we have a president who is cognitively impaired and not in charge of anything and his people are the most incompetent administration in our history.
So, right now, I have an eclectic mix of sites and people I follow and read. Here are a few. This list will be added to as I get smarter about finding sources of real news and room to publish them. This is a start.
Matt Taibbi at
Matt has always been good and used to be with Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone has employed some very good writers over the years, including Hunter S. Thompson. Matt became too honest for Rolling Stone. He is giving us since he left there the most important reporting of our time, stuff that Rolling Stone would never publish. Matt has been the main man with the Twitter Files (there are others, like Michael Shellenberger). The most important story of our time is the demise of free speech.
That is, the censorship of the Internet with complete government involvement. Amazing violations of the 1st Amendment. And many people not only don’t care about these violations, many on the left are cheering them on.
To the mainstream media, the Twitter Files are all “nothing burgers” and “cherry picking.” My new favorite idiotic phrase is now “nothing burger.” That is right up there with “there are more than two biological sexes.” When you hear these phrases, it is a direct sign that a liberal does not like the truth being spoken. Great written journalism, plus see below.
I add America This Week separately, even though you get it with a subscription to Matt Taibbi's Substack every week on Friday. I wish they did America This Week every day or three times a day. It is a 1-2 hour discussion of news from the week with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. Walter Kirn is a national treasure. He is older than Matt, but a few years younger than me. He provides historical context to things that Matt does not have, simply because of the generational difference. And this is so important and a major reason I started this Substack.
I get on Matt sometimes for appearing to think that journalism was unbiased prior to the election of Donald Trump or, sometimes, the Iraq War buildup. I subscribed to Walter's Substack, as well as Matt's. Walter is not very prolific, but what he writes is powerful. Watch or listen to him every week on America This Week with Matt. If nothing else, sign up as a free subscriber. Walter's Substack is at
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Next up is Glenn Greenwald. I have loved him since his work with Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden. I used to like The Intercept, that Glenn founded, until they became totally compromised and Glenn left because he was censored on the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Glenn used to have a Substack that I paid for. He has moved to Rumble and Locals and has switched to mostly video journalism with his weekday nightly show called System Update. System Update is free and I am not a big fan of Locals, so I no longer pay, but that doesn't mean System Update isn't worth watching. I live on a small fixed income and, since Biden, inflation has been killing me. System Update is a great show and you can find it at https://rumble.com/GGreenwald .
Every show is a very deep dive into one or two topics. And he often has guests on. Most news watchers will find it strange that things are not covered in 3-minute clips and not every expert is an ex-CIA, military, or FBI operative. So, sometimes it can drag and Glenn isn't the best on-video anchor. It doesn't matter, it is worth watching him cover things that the mainstream media will never touch. The recent episode on the 10 year anniversary of the Snowden revelations is amazingly good, informative, and relevant. See that here: https://rumble.com/v2sgyx2-snowden-revelations-10-year-anniversary-glenn-greenwald-speaks-with-snowden.html
Zero Hedge is what most MSM and so-called “media reporting” outlets would call right wing propaganda. Trust me, it isn’t. I find it rather interesting at how good and actually unbiased it is. But, then, truthful reporting about things the media isn't supposed to report about is actually useful to people who aren't all-in on censoring “wrong speak” and want to read what is actually going on. You can find it at https://www.zerohedge.com
I get an email everyday called The Durden Dispatch with headlines and links. It is really good stuff, heavy on financial reporting and they do have a Libertarian approach. I have found that they usually get things right and they report on things the mainstream media does not, such as lending credence to the US having blown up the Nordstream pipeline.
I have a few more to discuss and will do so in due time. We all have limited time to consume news and entertainment and the nightly CBS/ABC/NBC news and the cable stations (including Fox News) just aren't providing news at all any longer. They are all trying to stir up scandals and division and supporting the Democrat Party and Deep State agendas. They are America's Pravda.
The differences between Pravda and mainstream American media is that the Russians knew Pravda was lying and many ill-informed Americans think our media are telling the truth. That is indeed the proof that well done propaganda is effective.
We have to dig deep to find truth.
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