where is the REAL news?

over the last decade or so, I have noticed a real shift in news organizations.
I used to have a morning ritual of dropping my kids off at the school bus and then meeting my work partner for a coffee before we started our day, and there I would read the local newspaper.
I started to become more and more disillusioned about the paper though, as we started approaching an election.
The next thing I know, everything became slanted towards the editors' personal political agendas and the entire rag seemed like it was designed to influence the readers about who to vote for.
and walley don't play that game!
just give me the news.. not your opinion on it.
and so I basically gave up on reading that paper. but then when I looked at the competitive news around.. they were just as bad or worse but slanted to the opposing views..
I noticed that the more the internet took over, printed news seemed to get more and more aggressive and pander to certain demo graphs more than ever before.

now it's to the point where everything I read tends to be like this, and online news are even worse!
places like the Huff post that are pure left-leaning socialist (they claim to be liberal but..) and others are merely reflections of the right leaning counterparts and I personally don't trust a thing I read on them simply due to the fact that they are opinionated articles, and too often human nature will gloss over facts to push opinions and agendas.

so now here we are.. in a place were all news seems skewed because of personal views.
where do we get the facts now?
just the facts, all the facts, no slants.
where is the journalistic integrity that used to be the main doctrine of the profession?
have they all become tabloids and paparazzi?
what good is the freedom to have free speech and open societies if this is what we do with it...

'News just in, the news sux'

It's always depressing as well, there must be more good news than just the odd funny story at the end???

I dislike reading papers generally, I usually pick out the stuff I'm interested in through all the celeb garbage and exaggerated stuff but sometimes it's just full of nonsense. It's easy to see the powerful effect these news organizations have on the public and it's too easy to manipulate judgement or opinion through some sort of subliminal/graphic means. People WILL use this for their advantage.

I take news stories with a pinch of salt and try not let their language cloud my own judgement so I can make my own.

If you want something a bit harder on the news front, you'll have to look at the investigative journalism. Unfortunately... most of that will make you very angry because it mostly exposes corruption and immorality being everywhere. Then demonstrates how we're doing nothing about it and then when interviewed, the person who should be doing something will smile, nod, promise they'll do something and then do nothing.

World we live in...

As long as PEOPLE report the news, it will always be "slanted."

I think that's just a cop-out.
it's like saying that I don't need to have integrity because nobody else does. the precedence has been set.
but to me, it's a lot like say.. being a moderator on a discussion forum.
when I used to do it, it was on a debate forum where there was nothing besides opinions and clashing views where everyone was either trying to make a statement to prove their case or trying to persuade someone else to change their views. as a moderator I had to completely ignore the topics and my own views and be a judge that only focused on the rules.
I was one of the few staff that could actually engage in debates with members and not get sucked into taking sides. it wasn't and easy thing to do..
but, it CAN be done.
I would often have to spent tons of time researching sources and finding facts that others would leave out, and taking well over an hour to write a single post was common.
not to toot my own horn.. but one time when our website got into a war with another competing forum, I was chosen by both sides to be the moderator that managed the week long, 30 page argument thread. because they all knew I could remain neutral in any situation.
we don't have to be slaves to our impulses or feel like we always need to sell our own views.
I felt I had a job to do and my mandate was to be objective. and that is exactly what a journalist is supposed to be.
what I think happened was, somewhere along the lines money became more important to the news industry than anything else, and they, as a collective, have turned their backs on the antique notion of being objective and getting all of the facts out to the communities.
and instead only care about numbers or personal agendas.

I dislike having to second guess, source check, and practice so much skepticism with the news. I suppose it's just good sense to not believe whatever you hear, but it would be nice to easily get the truth and nothing but the truth (as much as I like opinion pieces that aren't just ranting).

Worse might be how doggedly people keep up with the lives of celebrities, start topics, and share articles about them. I could live with never hearing about Justin Bieber again, from his fans or his critics.