I read The Economist. Reasons and benefits I have seen so far are:
1. It's weekly. "World this week" section is more than enough to have a summary of what has happened throughout the globe and I can get this information in less than 5 minutes. If you are interested in being more up-to-date, you can also try Economist Espresso, which is daily.
2. It's not only about world news, but also has different sections such as Technology, International, Book & Arts which gives me a wider range of topics to digest on a weekly basis.
3. This is, in my opinion, the most important bit: Because I'm digesting a wider array of topics but only spending an hour or two every week, I have observed a surprising benefit on human relationships as well:
Kick-starting a conversation with a person I don't know.
As a not-so-social person I have always struggled finding a topic to chat about with a person I have met recently. Now, first thing I do is to ask this person where he/she is from, or what their hobbies are, and all of a sudden I make a connection with an article I have recently read on the magazine and try to learn more from that person. This is a wonderful way of building a relationship as well as learning quite interesting facts about the culture or the hobbies of that person.
I started regularly reading The Economist a few months ago and it's absolutely transformed my relationship with media and the news. I had previously given up on consuming any media other than HN. One of my close friends challenged me to think more about my relationship with others in the world outside of my small circle of friends and family which led to me deciding to subscribe to The Economist. It has been one of the best decisions I've made all year.
In addition to the points mentioned I'd also add:
1. It's clear about it's own bias and doesn't pretend to be completely neutral in its reporting (though it is generally quite balanced). That gives me a chance to read certain articles a little more carefully when I know they are likely to clash with my own world-view and biases (i.e. the controversial article "Inequality could be lower than you think").
2. They are absolutely fantastic at injecting a little humour in otherwise quite serious journalism. For example, this headline: "Soaring pork prices hog headlines and sow discontent in China"
3. It has a good amount of intelligent comment and debate on a massive range of topics that has opened my thinking up to ideas and perspectives I hadn't previously encountered or wrestled with in any meaningful way.
I hadn't expected regularly reading a newspaper would be as enjoyable and as challenging as it has been. It's been a lot more valuable than I would have thought. I'd highly recommend it.
While the Economist is often recommended, somehow I increasingly find articles posted from the Economist to be very shallow takes - as if a high school literature student was asked to turn in an essay on a given topic. I have rarely felt satisfied after reading any Economist article in last couple of years through I don't know if this represents a growing understanding of the world on my part as I grow older or standards in the Economist declining. I don't necessarily feel the same issue though for NYT or WaPo articles.
Have long read The Economist and it has definitely influenced my world view probably more than anything. +1 to everything you said—it’s a huge help in conversations.
Recently, their app has included audio recordings of all their articles the day a new issue is released. That’s made it much easier for me to digest nearly the whole thing each week.
I'm similarly attached to the WSJ's weekend edition. It's a good highlight reel for the week's news, and avoids most of the hyperventilation the NYT seems prone to.
If you've read both, how would you compare the two?
Over the past few months I've been consciously reducing my time spent on news sites/reddit/social media. It's been a huge benefit to my available time & overall level of focus, but that change has definitely left me craving some more legitimate & compelling articles to read and I've been feeling a bit "out of the loop". The Economist sounds like a wonderful recommendation & I've just subscribed based on reading your comment -- thanks so much for the suggestion!
I try to avoid it. It's too much of a time sink and there's almost zero pieces of actionable information.
I know it's offensive to claim it's merely entertainment but in concrete terms there's no material difference resulting from tuning into daily banter that's any different than watching some serial drama on television.
I understand why you'd reach this conclusion. I would like to offer another viewpoint for you and others reading this to consider.
Simply put, you are underestimating the impact you have on those around you. Every media literate and well-informed critical thinker has the ability to dramatically change someone's perspective. Not just by knowing what to say, but even more importantly how to listen.
Empathetic 1:1 conversation that is respectful is literally the only way to help people escape their bubbles. If you don't know wtf you're talking about, you're missing every shot you don't take.
Essentially, this would be fine if you lived alone, but in reality when you insulate yourself from politics you're just setting yourself up for frustrating moments where you know that your racist uncle is wrong but you have neither the facts nor the confidence to address his ignorant points in a way that doesn't just boil over into hurt feelings.
In short: this attitude taken to the extreme is an abdication of social responsibility. Much like herd immunity, you don't need to be a hero... just not part of the problem.
Yes, empathetic 1:1 conversation is critical, and yes you can have a huge impact on those around you. But this has nothing to do with keeping up to date with news. Facts will not change your racist uncle's opinion. 99% of the news you consume will have absolutely 0 effect on your ability to convince others to be better.
Develop a vision for your life. Become an expert in topics that are important to you. Read good books, befriend interesting people, and focus on problems where you can make a large difference, and inspire others to do so as well. Daily news plays no role in this.
This is my point of view as well. Even (especially?) for things like politics. I might read a quick summary about whatever the current big issues are every few weeks and around elections, but that's it.
Issues that may affect me (which are more local in nature) will naturally come up in conversation, so I don't think I'm really missing out on anything. I'm not in a position where I can change anything, so why bother wasting my attention on these things?
I do the same. If some news is important enough, it'll eventually percolate to HN, or I'll hear about it from someone else.
The way I see it, almost all news is completely irrelevant to my daily life, not actionable in any way, usually depressing, and often very inaccurate. It provides negative information - after consuming them, you end up dumber and more confused than you were before. So I stay away.
Democracy is achieved through active participation in building and maintaining institutions exercising power, not in passively consuming broadcasted editorial content.
It's depressing because consuming content in isolation doesn't materially affect anything. You can't watch your way to political action. It's empty and everyone knows it.
Donate money to causes you care about, attend meetings, help organize things, exercise power.
You don’t have to follow news to make good political decisions. If people read philosophy as the same rates they follow fake political drama, we’ll be in a better place.
We don't have a democracy where you need to stay up to date with events, if this were Switzerland you'd have a point, but in most countries you only need to get the summary once every 4 years. I'd even argue that people will make better decisions if completely stepped away from everything and got some perspective before the election instead of constantly being emotionally involved all the time.
I came here to say something similar. At least with watching some TV shows or movies, you’re more likely to get de-stressed and/or entertained. News is usually the opposite, creating more frustration, tension and stress about things where you may not be able to do much to help. Whatever is called “news” in today’s world is more of sensational, controversial and divisive stuff. Anything to create an addiction and keep people coming back and arguing is what it’s turned into.
It’s good and also useful sometimes to know what’s happening around, but obsessing with keeping up with news everyday is a huge drain.
> there's almost zero pieces of actionable information.
I don't agree with this. The news is filled with actionable information. If nothing more than constant reporting of problems, many of which could be solved with new businesses - there is value in knowing about that if only to be better positioned to start businesses.
The world is full of people in pain, and often the news reports on that. That is actionable information. Other people's pain is not your entertainment. It is actionable information about how to help improve the world and reduce suffering.
Also, the news and happenings of the world do affect you every day even if you don't know it or notice it.
"You may not care about politics, but politics cares about you"
> The world is full of people in pain, and often the news reports on that. That is actionable information. Other people's pain is not your entertainment. It is actionable information about how to help improve the world and reduce suffering.
There is far, far more of this than is actionable, and most of it isn't really actionable from this distance. You end up with "white saviour" disease.
The news is also full of my fellow voters saying that those in pain are lying, or that we should inflict more pain on them as a matter of policy. Those are somewhat hard to stomach.
Sure, if you approach it with a problem-solving mindset, you can ignore the content and the noise and the inaccuracies of the news, and dig into an issue to be addressed that underlies the story.
But there's only so much thing you can act on at any given moment, and actions take a lot of time. In particular, you can execute one, two business ideas at a time; perhaps three if you're Elon Musk. So once you're engaged in action, what's the point of following the news? You aren't going to act on anything else for the next couple years anyway.
I agree with you. I get an email USA news summary from The Guardian in the morning and a few minutes looking at that is suffices. I like democracynow.org also but only give that a good read a few times a month.
When a US politician does something I find offensive, I do take a few minutes to check to see if they are running for re-election in which case I try to donate $5 to their opponent. Otherwise, I am happy being “apathetic” to politics.
EDIT: I volunteer one day a week at my local food bank, and that helps tie me into local events and what is happening in town. Local news is the most important news to me since I have virtually no effect on the world outside of my local community.
Assuming you have at least minimal social interaction, if anything actually important happens, somebody will tell you. So there's really no reason to pay attention to news at all. It's pure entertainment and time wasting.
The problem is that online news sources are (almost) all the same - low budget, second tier silos of mostly trainee journalists. They have an emphasis on clicks and outrage and constant updates to keep you engaged and are a secondary (or tertiary) driver of revenue. The only exception I know of are The New York Times and maybe The Intercept.
My tip is to read a (or more) actual (read: printed) newspapers:
- they are printed daily or weekly (e.g. The Economist), keeping you out of the "Breaking News" loop every 60 minutes;
- they have more weight within the news organization because they are the primary driver of revenue;
- are therefore written by actual professional journalists in a proper journalistic process.
I recommend just picking up any news paper and comparing that to the online presence of that news paper, you will notice the tremendous difference.
In my opinion, a lot of the "media mistrust" comes from the constant barrage of so-called "news" articles with the primary goal of being shared on social media and bubbling up in Google News. Just check how many news articles are 1:1 copies of AP or any other news conglomerate.
https://newshound.co/editions/en-us/ is pretty good for seeing how many news articles published by different outlets are actually written by AP/Reuters/etc. and only modified slightly. I think the site was originally intended to allow users to choose the article from their preferred outlet, but I rarely find myself interested in reading any of the grouped articles.
I like the same thing about https://techmeme.com/ if I click the arrow next to a story, it shows me everyone covering it, but they use editorial discretion to chose the "best" coverage, whether that be the first copy, or the first good copy.
There’s a reason it seems online sources are the same. Step outside the conglomerates, and choose independent news.
See the following list for a “growing number of independent news sources available to anyone with internet access. The following are only a sampling of those alternatives. Most state that they are “non-partisan, independent and non-profit.” Some are more transparent than others; a couple even outline a code of journalistic ethics their company follows.”
The Intercept started out strong, but has also devolved into reactionary clickbait-y crap as of late (also hosts pieces written by unrepentant race-baiters like Shaun King). Really sad as I used to like them.
It seems those with hard paywalls that don't have to rely on clickbait-y headlines are able to have a bit more integrity (who would have known?!). Foreign Affairs is generally pretty good for actual analysis on world events (it's politics, yes, but they are good at what they do).
Thanks for this - that's exactly what I was hoping to find when I clicked into this.
While I didn't find a whole lot of the content I had intended, I think what I did find was interesting, none-the-less. The general opinion here seems to be "news sources suck[0]", especially if it has anything to do with politics/politics-masquerading-as-economics[1]. And community-driven sites tend to become dominated by the fringe of one political persuasion or another. HN does a good job, here, though a look at "new" yields a few headlines who's content can be summarized as "Your politician iz teh satan11", they rarely bubble up, and the ones that do -- even the ones that (headline-wise) I'd probably never click through in another context, I end up appreciating more often than not.
[1] Replace "economics" with anything else. HN's policy against political-related posts aside, I think this community tends toward skepticism and a lot of political is facts/truth twisted to fit an agenda/bias (intentional or not).
The BBC has a wide range of podcasts (available internationally), including ones about geopolitics and science.
Due to the nature of the medium and the BBC's generally more serious and composed disposition these podcasts tend to be about actually relevant information rather than the outrage-inducing, largely irrelevant rubbish commonly fed by "Now ... this" media.
I'd advise steering clear of anything related to UK politics published by the BBC.
There's been a clear pro-right trend for a number of years evident most clearly during the most recent election and Scotland's independence referendum of 2014.
This just doesn’t seem to add up to me. You think that the BBC, based in London, the absolute epitome of the middle-class metropolitan liberal media Oxbridge elite, founded on a socialist principle of media provided by the state, an organisation that helped to pioneer left-wing satire, home of the News Quiz, a broadcaster that commissions programmes for Mark Steel, Marcus Brigstocke, the late Jeremy Hardy, is actually right-wing?
That's a trend reflected in voting patterns. What is the BBC supposed to do, ignore the fact that a massive number of voters rejected the Labour Party's platform, fail to note that Labour had their most dismal outing since 1935 while losing seats for the first time in many places in the north of England, and fail to comment that the UK Left is a dumpster fire and a hotbed of anti-Semitism?
The right wing in the UK is usually the group most critical of the BBC (AKA "Brussels Broadcasting Corporation").
I would agree that the coverage during the Scottish referendum in 2014 was biased but I think that this is because the BBC is naturally biased towards the status-quo.
Any organisation that can produce The Thick of It being critical of politicians and W1A about its own antics can't be all bad....
If you are to be looking at new sources from the BBC, just stick to BBC World News. At its best, I find that the quality of the online sections and articles from the BBC are beyond woeful and extremely cringe-worthy everytime I dare to visit and read from the site or watch their news channel.
You'd expect that having the privilege of a royal charter they have a duty to be fair, impartial and balanced. But as shown in recent events and previous scandals, they are becoming a questionable source and still can't help giving coverage towards Twitter spats that isn't worth paying a TV license for.
The BBC also has a useful smartphone app. Each day it offers just a few items related to the US; can scan through them in a couple of minutes; seem free of any American left/right tilt.
Even thought I'm kinda "ideologically aligned" with Página 12, I wouldn't consider it unbiased when it comes to country politics (quite the contrary, up to the point of not reporting news in some cases) from Argentina (As it is clearly aligned with the "peronist" movement). There are 2 newspaper that from my point of view do a better job of presenting news in a un-biased way.
One is www.ambito.com (That it originates in a financial newspaper, but their politics reporting is very good).
The intercept is by far the best news outlet. Most of their staff is incredible except a few pseudo journalists like Mehdi who are riding the anti-Trump train.
Trying to understand politics by watching the Web stream go flowing by is pointless. You need high-quality, big picture stuff that requires effort to produce and consume.
In the US, the NYTimes and the Washington Post are the best sources.
To ensure you're exposure is 'fair and balanced' I would add the Economist for a more conservative, but not xenophobic or straight-up nonsensical viewpoint. It has the nice additional bonus of being more global.
Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy are excellent journals for, well, US foreign policy. Finally, the New Yorker has fantastic longer-form articles on American politics.
Search engines are progressively getting worse or I am finally becoming an old boomer. I can't search anything without being bombarded with amp links focused on something completely unrelated. I tried duckduckgo, yes it is better but still not comparable to the results I was getting back.
If anything's a good metric for "propaganda or fake news", it's that they all use amp.
The WSJ has great content. But, with the WSJ, Economist, and even WaPo, I stopped subscribing to each because the editorials / opinion pages were vile. Look, I'm all about critical dialog, but when propagandists are given a soap box to spread nonsense (IE: flat out gaslighting lies), the purpose of the press in public good is abused. As the saying goes, people are entitled to opinions, not facts.
NYT publishes all kinds of inflammatory stuff it its Op-Ed section. I don't think you should read the Op-Ed section too seriously (or at all). It's not up to the same bar as the rest of their reporting. It's their way to compete for clicks in a click-driven economy. Stick to the news sections.
No paywall. Relatively fast loading, not too annoying site. They're heavy on news, light on opinion, agenda and propaganda. They generally cover anything of consequence globally.
Readit News
1. It's weekly. "World this week" section is more than enough to have a summary of what has happened throughout the globe and I can get this information in less than 5 minutes. If you are interested in being more up-to-date, you can also try Economist Espresso, which is daily.
2. It's not only about world news, but also has different sections such as Technology, International, Book & Arts which gives me a wider range of topics to digest on a weekly basis.
3. This is, in my opinion, the most important bit: Because I'm digesting a wider array of topics but only spending an hour or two every week, I have observed a surprising benefit on human relationships as well:
Kick-starting a conversation with a person I don't know.
As a not-so-social person I have always struggled finding a topic to chat about with a person I have met recently. Now, first thing I do is to ask this person where he/she is from, or what their hobbies are, and all of a sudden I make a connection with an article I have recently read on the magazine and try to learn more from that person. This is a wonderful way of building a relationship as well as learning quite interesting facts about the culture or the hobbies of that person.
In addition to the points mentioned I'd also add:
1. It's clear about it's own bias and doesn't pretend to be completely neutral in its reporting (though it is generally quite balanced). That gives me a chance to read certain articles a little more carefully when I know they are likely to clash with my own world-view and biases (i.e. the controversial article "Inequality could be lower than you think").
2. They are absolutely fantastic at injecting a little humour in otherwise quite serious journalism. For example, this headline: "Soaring pork prices hog headlines and sow discontent in China"
3. It has a good amount of intelligent comment and debate on a massive range of topics that has opened my thinking up to ideas and perspectives I hadn't previously encountered or wrestled with in any meaningful way.
I hadn't expected regularly reading a newspaper would be as enjoyable and as challenging as it has been. It's been a lot more valuable than I would have thought. I'd highly recommend it.
Also noticed that they often display clear unjustified political bias, which didn't happen before. Not sure if it is intentionally or not.
Nonetheless, it remains one of the best sources for me.
Recently, their app has included audio recordings of all their articles the day a new issue is released. That’s made it much easier for me to digest nearly the whole thing each week.
If you've read both, how would you compare the two?
I know it's offensive to claim it's merely entertainment but in concrete terms there's no material difference resulting from tuning into daily banter that's any different than watching some serial drama on television.
Simply put, you are underestimating the impact you have on those around you. Every media literate and well-informed critical thinker has the ability to dramatically change someone's perspective. Not just by knowing what to say, but even more importantly how to listen.
Empathetic 1:1 conversation that is respectful is literally the only way to help people escape their bubbles. If you don't know wtf you're talking about, you're missing every shot you don't take.
Essentially, this would be fine if you lived alone, but in reality when you insulate yourself from politics you're just setting yourself up for frustrating moments where you know that your racist uncle is wrong but you have neither the facts nor the confidence to address his ignorant points in a way that doesn't just boil over into hurt feelings.
In short: this attitude taken to the extreme is an abdication of social responsibility. Much like herd immunity, you don't need to be a hero... just not part of the problem.
Develop a vision for your life. Become an expert in topics that are important to you. Read good books, befriend interesting people, and focus on problems where you can make a large difference, and inspire others to do so as well. Daily news plays no role in this.
I do agree that a responsible citizen must stay informed. But you need to direct your efforts to the possible and impactful.
If you wanted to become well versed in, say, Marx, you don't get there through watching the news, you just read Marx.
Go on eBay, buy a couple used books, read them instead. They'll have quite a bit more insight than a Twitter stream
Issues that may affect me (which are more local in nature) will naturally come up in conversation, so I don't think I'm really missing out on anything. I'm not in a position where I can change anything, so why bother wasting my attention on these things?
The way I see it, almost all news is completely irrelevant to my daily life, not actionable in any way, usually depressing, and often very inaccurate. It provides negative information - after consuming them, you end up dumber and more confused than you were before. So I stay away.
But I also have to limit my exposure to political news. Otherwise I get too depressed.
It's depressing because consuming content in isolation doesn't materially affect anything. You can't watch your way to political action. It's empty and everyone knows it.
Donate money to causes you care about, attend meetings, help organize things, exercise power.
With that much talk time they have to speculate about what's actually going on. When they speculate wrong it's labeled "Fake News".
Currently USA news media creates division to get eye balls.
Reading a summary of the news weekly keeps you just as informed at watching 24/7
It’s good and also useful sometimes to know what’s happening around, but obsessing with keeping up with news everyday is a huge drain.
I don't agree with this. The news is filled with actionable information. If nothing more than constant reporting of problems, many of which could be solved with new businesses - there is value in knowing about that if only to be better positioned to start businesses.
The world is full of people in pain, and often the news reports on that. That is actionable information. Other people's pain is not your entertainment. It is actionable information about how to help improve the world and reduce suffering.
Also, the news and happenings of the world do affect you every day even if you don't know it or notice it.
"You may not care about politics, but politics cares about you"
> The world is full of people in pain, and often the news reports on that. That is actionable information. Other people's pain is not your entertainment. It is actionable information about how to help improve the world and reduce suffering.
There is far, far more of this than is actionable, and most of it isn't really actionable from this distance. You end up with "white saviour" disease.
The news is also full of my fellow voters saying that those in pain are lying, or that we should inflict more pain on them as a matter of policy. Those are somewhat hard to stomach.
But there's only so much thing you can act on at any given moment, and actions take a lot of time. In particular, you can execute one, two business ideas at a time; perhaps three if you're Elon Musk. So once you're engaged in action, what's the point of following the news? You aren't going to act on anything else for the next couple years anyway.
When a US politician does something I find offensive, I do take a few minutes to check to see if they are running for re-election in which case I try to donate $5 to their opponent. Otherwise, I am happy being “apathetic” to politics.
EDIT: I volunteer one day a week at my local food bank, and that helps tie me into local events and what is happening in town. Local news is the most important news to me since I have virtually no effect on the world outside of my local community.
My tip is to read a (or more) actual (read: printed) newspapers:
- they are printed daily or weekly (e.g. The Economist), keeping you out of the "Breaking News" loop every 60 minutes; - they have more weight within the news organization because they are the primary driver of revenue; - are therefore written by actual professional journalists in a proper journalistic process.
I recommend just picking up any news paper and comparing that to the online presence of that news paper, you will notice the tremendous difference.
In my opinion, a lot of the "media mistrust" comes from the constant barrage of so-called "news" articles with the primary goal of being shared on social media and bubbling up in Google News. Just check how many news articles are 1:1 copies of AP or any other news conglomerate.
See the following list for a “growing number of independent news sources available to anyone with internet access. The following are only a sampling of those alternatives. Most state that they are “non-partisan, independent and non-profit.” Some are more transparent than others; a couple even outline a code of journalistic ethics their company follows.”
https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/A-Real-Need-for-the-Real...
It seems those with hard paywalls that don't have to rely on clickbait-y headlines are able to have a bit more integrity (who would have known?!). Foreign Affairs is generally pretty good for actual analysis on world events (it's politics, yes, but they are good at what they do).
While I didn't find a whole lot of the content I had intended, I think what I did find was interesting, none-the-less. The general opinion here seems to be "news sources suck[0]", especially if it has anything to do with politics/politics-masquerading-as-economics[1]. And community-driven sites tend to become dominated by the fringe of one political persuasion or another. HN does a good job, here, though a look at "new" yields a few headlines who's content can be summarized as "Your politician iz teh satan11", they rarely bubble up, and the ones that do -- even the ones that (headline-wise) I'd probably never click through in another context, I end up appreciating more often than not.
[0] I tend to agree with this and blame much but not all on the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
[1] Replace "economics" with anything else. HN's policy against political-related posts aside, I think this community tends toward skepticism and a lot of political is facts/truth twisted to fit an agenda/bias (intentional or not).
Due to the nature of the medium and the BBC's generally more serious and composed disposition these podcasts tend to be about actually relevant information rather than the outrage-inducing, largely irrelevant rubbish commonly fed by "Now ... this" media.
There's been a clear pro-right trend for a number of years evident most clearly during the most recent election and Scotland's independence referendum of 2014.
Then why has there been more complaints from the right than the left this year about the BBC?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/31/bbc-election-c...
To my (American) eyes, the BBC has a liberal bias. YMMV, of course.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/31/bbc-election-c...
The right wing in the UK is usually the group most critical of the BBC (AKA "Brussels Broadcasting Corporation").
I would agree that the coverage during the Scottish referendum in 2014 was biased but I think that this is because the BBC is naturally biased towards the status-quo.
Any organisation that can produce The Thick of It being critical of politicians and W1A about its own antics can't be all bad....
You'd expect that having the privilege of a royal charter they have a duty to be fair, impartial and balanced. But as shown in recent events and previous scandals, they are becoming a questionable source and still can't help giving coverage towards Twitter spats that isn't worth paying a TV license for.
English: https://theintercept.com/https://www.democracynow.org/https://phys.org/
One is www.ambito.com (That it originates in a financial newspaper, but their politics reporting is very good).
the other is www.tiempoar.com.ar
In the US, the NYTimes and the Washington Post are the best sources.
To ensure you're exposure is 'fair and balanced' I would add the Economist for a more conservative, but not xenophobic or straight-up nonsensical viewpoint. It has the nice additional bonus of being more global.
Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy are excellent journals for, well, US foreign policy. Finally, the New Yorker has fantastic longer-form articles on American politics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controver...
https://theduran.com/the-washington-post-admits-that-its-fak...
https://www.rt.com/usa/369598-washington-post-fake-propagand...
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/washington-pos...
Search engines are progressively getting worse or I am finally becoming an old boomer. I can't search anything without being bombarded with amp links focused on something completely unrelated. I tried duckduckgo, yes it is better but still not comparable to the results I was getting back.
If anything's a good metric for "propaganda or fake news", it's that they all use amp.
No paywall. Relatively fast loading, not too annoying site. They're heavy on news, light on opinion, agenda and propaganda. They generally cover anything of consequence globally.
I use Economist for longer-cycle opinion and news.