There is a good movie called "The Network". It is about a news corporation, and what they will sacrifice in order to get ratings. It is a bit old but the message of the movie is timeless.

One of the many great quotes:

Diana Christensen: I watched your 6 o'clock news today; it's straight tabloid. You had a minute and a half of that lady riding a bike naked in Central Park; on the other hand, you had less than a minute of hard national and international news. It was all sex, scandal, brutal crime, sports, children with incurable diseases, and lost puppies. So, I don't think I'll listen to any protestations of high standards of journalism when you're right down on the streets soliciting audiences like the rest of us. Look, all I'm saying is if you're going to hustle, at least do it right.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/

Actually the news have just recently fallen from their very high quality during the 60 and early 81.

Walter Cronkite actually said on tv "and that is the way it is" once he had delivered the news, but not if he ended the news with an opinion piece.

Now compare this with William Hearst with his "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I will furnish the war" during the period of yellow journalism.

There aren't really any Hearsts around anymore (though their actual heirs still run the news), and we are properly closer to Conkrite but we are more aware of what is actually going on now than ever - that is why it looks like the news are getting worse.

The statement may be falsely attributed to Hearst:

http://academic2.american.edu/~wjc/wjc3/notlikely.htm

The economic context from which the statement arose has some similarities to today. Hearst and Pulitzer were competing to grow newspaper circulation. Strangely, Pulitzer appears to escape the bad rap Hearst gets, probably for funding a journalism school and prize.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–Ameri...

What is Rupert Murdoch if not a modern Hearst?

All I watch is The Daily Show, mostly because it's funny.

I stop watching the news a long time ago. One incident that help was when I watched a report about a protest in Cuba in favor of Castro. CNN reported 100K participants, CBC French in canada reported 500K participants and while I swing by the BBC, they say it was close to a million. I know judging crowds is hard but come on.

I don't implicitly trust any news organization (not even the BBC) - but there are a handful of journalists who I believe to have extremely high levels of personal integrity and while I might not always agree with their opinions at least I believe that what they are saying is their honestly expressed opinions.

Unfortunately for me only a handful of journalists fall into this category and it has literally taken years (mostly by reading their books) that I identified them.

re: not trusting the BBC - smart move. I'm from England and lots of people regard it as the most unbiased source out there, that and the guardian but if you step back and look critically at them you realise just how bad things are. I'd advise anyone to swingby medialens.org and read some of their articles and buy their books, especially their new one. Unblievable stuff.

It's not just you. Political correctness, 'showing both sides of the debate' and editorializing have made the news far worse than it ever was in recent years. We urgently need news that delivers the facts, and only the facts. Maybe some distributed yet structured collaborative effort like Wikipedia for news?

Twitter is mostly filling this role for me.

140 characters seems a little limiting for news.

How about for headlines and URLs?