National Yahoo Daily World Wide News

Jackie Mason | February 1, 2008
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | March 7, 2008
I gave up on Yahoo News some years ago for exactly this trend. It makes the supermarket checkout lane look like an ivory tower of journalistic integrity. For a while, I couldn't bring myself to stop reading the daily Dear Abby column, because I like hearing how to solve life's problems, but a third of the "letters" were annoying pleas for Abby to tell her readers about breast cancer screenings or amber alerts or national something-something bullshit week instead of actual questions, and another third were given over to passionately supportive or passionately angry letters about previous columns. There's very little meat to chew on those bones.

I tried MSNBC next, but they had runaway spoilers for movies/TV/books on their homepage that ruined a number of things for me, and their film critic gave away more endings than he kept secret. When they posted a film review with no byline that contained barely any plot information, I wrote them a thank-you message for getting a guest critic who cares about the sensibilities of his readers – and the next day, the regular critic's byline appeared on the same review and the staff sent me back a snotty email pointing out that it WAS the regular critic, moron. No more MSNBC for me.

I've been with CNN for a few years now. They get some things just right on their site, but other things (like having to wait for the 30-second commercial to play before the video starts) are so wrong it hurts. I visit the site in secure mode so it doesn't launch popups or annoying banner ads. The site is easy to browse and the news selection is interesting.

Tony Peters | March 7, 2008
I read Google news and Yahoo news though having ADD I tend to ignore everything after the first paragraph unless it's realy interesting. I can't do CNN because of Ted or Fox news because I can't stand the whole sky is falling mentality they have. At somepoint I'm sure that somone will actually have a fair and unbiased new until then ADD keeps me from being too annoyed with news websites

Jackie Mason | March 9, 2008
[hidden by request]

Jackie Mason | July 2, 2008
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 3, 2008
I still use CNN, but lately I've become annoyed by the frequency of sex-related headlines on the homepage, which seems to have at least one at any given time. As I write this, all these are at the top of the page:

- Brinkley spouse had sex with teen, paid $300k
- $550 Speedo swimsuit makes a splash
- Want better sex? Eat a watermelon
- TMZ allowed to repost 'Mini Me' sex tape
- Watermelon: The new Viagra?

I know they're just giving users what they want, and I applaud their recent catching up with Fox New Channel in TV ratings no matter what it takes, but this single-minded pandering is pretty annoying. It's like the news editors have been replaced by horny teenaged boys. I don't oppose sex-related headlines out of prudishness; I even click on a few. I just can't help but notice how obsessed CNN seems to be with sex.

Amy Austin | July 3, 2008
Anybody here seen Idiocracy yet? I find myself thinking about that movie on almost a daily basis... and *often* while I'm watching CNN, sadly...

Edit: Ah... I just read your review, Scott -- and while it may be all true (yes, it could have been funnier, but I was pretty caught up with the horror (aka "moron") factor to the extent that I didn't much notice... I figured it was being sarcastically "subtle"), honestly... I didn't know whether to laugh or be really freakin' scared. With every item of real life that provokes reflection upon it since watching it a few weeks ago, I do just a little of the former and a rather depressing amount of the latter...

Scott Hardie | July 3, 2008
I recommend The Onion Movie (Netflix), which is in the same satirical vein as Idiocracy. It's a funny movie, too sharp and subtle for mainstream audiences, and widely misinterpreted as being what it mocks, much like Mike Judge's other satire of stupidity, Beavis & Butt-head.

Tony Peters | July 13, 2008
I gotta say thank you to Jackie for the heads up on BBC, I switched my News tab in Firefox to BBC and I couldn't be happier, It really reminds me of watching the english language news when I lived in Japan...much more balanced than the the propaganda we get now in america

Scott Hardie | July 19, 2008
I'm annoyed by CNN's round-the-clock coverage of the Dark Knight premiere, including fans waiting in line, overwhelming fan response, and "i-Report" footage of fans dressing in character. It's been the top story on the homepage for most of the last 24 hours. CNN is of course owned by TimeWarner, which includes Warner Brothers and DC Comics.

Scott Hardie | July 3, 2010
I've recently reached the limit of my patience for CNN's breathless coverage of non-news. They find the most shallow angles they can find on new stories and hammer them for days. For instance, they were the company banging the drum about Obama not acting angry enough about the oil spill, until he finally said he would "kick some ass" and they covered that for days, as though that has anything whatsoever to do with the oil spill. They've slashed their budget and filled their site with cheap content drawn from elsewhere, particularly junk from Demand Media, and wading through the nonsense on their site now is like searching for a drink of water in the desert.

The thing is, I haven't found a good replacement yet. I'm going to try BBC on the strength of the above comments. I tried Google News for the last few weeks, which is just an aggregator. It has better taste in subject matter, but it tends to pick versions of headlines that don't communicate at a glance what's going on in the world; what they show is often some follow-up to the real news story. For example, one headline this morning was about Lynn Cheney's support for Bill Kristol's recent criticism of Michael Steele's comments about Afghanistan. I had to dig to find Kristol comments, and dig further to find what Steele said that set them both off in the first place, to put it all in perspective. If I didn't already understand Steele's shaky footing among conservatives, I still wouldn't understand the full story. In other words, Google News gives you bits and pieces of the whole, but it doesn't provide you with anything resembling a comprehensive picture of current events. And its memory of my search terms is more than a little creepy; all of the news it keeps recommending to me is about recent celebrity goos that I've researched, as if those people interest me.

I'll give BBC a shot next. Any other good news sites out there?

Jackie Mason | July 4, 2010
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 4, 2010
Voice of America isn't bad, although I'm leery of inherent bias. I'm still shopping around.

For what it's worth, CNN offers an outstanding user interface. They clearly went to a lot of trouble to think about how users would and should interact with their site, and came up with a clean, intuitive, and well-organized layout, probably the best in the industry. Too bad they don't have the content worth accessing in that well-planned interface.

Scott Hardie | September 8, 2011
I'm done. I'm just sickened by the news too much to keep reading. When it's not useless partisan bickering/mudslinging in Washington that makes me angry, it's sad coverage of some foreign disaster, or meaningless fluff about the latest toy from Apple/Google/Facebook/blahblah, or garbage about some C-list celebrity being drunk and/or having a nip slip. Google News is great at letting you INCLUDE certain topics that interest you, but what I wouldn't give for the option to EXCLUDE the numerous topics that I'm sick and tired of hearing about that have no relevance to me. I fear missing out on what's going on in the world, but I hope to find some measure of calm, at least until I miss it too much and give it yet another try.

Jackie Mason | September 10, 2011
[hidden by request]