Irish Independent website

Cricketer said:
Because we need trusted, varied and relatively impartial news sources Paddy.
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But how trusted and impartial are they? Just because they charge for content, it doesn't make them any more credible than sources that don't. They tell the same stories I can access for free elsewhere.

I have enough in what I access without paying anymore for it. RTÉ News costs me via the licence. SKY News costs me via monthly subscription.

I gave up buying newspapers long ago. They started to carry less and less content and what they do carry I can get on the headlines of the six o'clock news every evening.
 

Did you read Tom Cotton's Op Ed? The internet almost melted that the NYT allowed it in their paper!! An editor resigned over it. Goes against allowing people have a different opinion, even if you disagree with it.

Wapo is on offer too. Some good writing in that. Bought a year's subscription which will get me past the November election and the inauguration. I hope my interest in US politics will wane after that...
 
Gordon Gekko said:
You’re kidding, right?
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No, I find that the IT writes from a very narrow base. It represents the opinion of liberal, urban, wealthy socialists. What could be called the smoked salmon socialists. It derides those who hold opposite views and is smug and self righteous in it's outlook.
It is like a newspaper version of our President Michael D ("I have lived a life of integrity!") Higgins.
 

That’s certainly a point of view.

You mean the people who should be running the country, right?
 
Gordon Gekko said:
You mean the people who should be running the country, right?
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The people who think they should be running the country, if only the electorate was as educated, ethical and intellectually developed as them. The people who never employed a person from a deprived area in their life, are on the right side of a form of economic apartheid and often have very well paid publically funded jobs. Yea, those people.
 

Think about how stupid the average person is. Then think about how half the people you see are more stupid than that person. Social media has given a platform and a voice to every eejit in the world. In a properly functioning society, the most moronic viewpoints wouldn’t be shouted the loudest.
 
And then think about how self serving elites are and how dangerous the tyranny of the virtuous is when their ends justify their means.
 
Cricketer said:
Because we need trusted, varied and relatively impartial news sources Paddy. The people working in these organisations need to be paid. Wait a few years till they're gone, then come back and tell us how worthless they were.
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Agreed. An independent press is one of the pillars of democracy. If we want to keep it we will have to pay for it. We may get “free” content from other sources but without any forms of journalistic standards and no filter whatsoever for fake news. It is worrying that so many now seem to take their news from social media of one form or another. We are leaving ourselves wide open for manipulation and coercion.

All newspapers have an opinion. I prefer when they are relatively open about it. Also I have no difficulty with opinion pieces. If nothing else they are a test for one’s own biases. But I prefer a differentiation between opinion and reporting. This is an area where some media fail.

There is plenty of opinion in the Irish Times. Some of it greatly irks me, some of it I nod along with. It would be easier to only read the opinions that comfort me but probably more valuable to read the other ones. And there is a wide diversity. Ciara O’Brien v Una Mullaly for instance. But in general the others offer a wide spectrum of views – I don’t see much groupthink between, say Fintan O’Toole and Mark Paul. Newton Emerson, Cliff Taylor, John Fitzgerald, Chris Johns, Rosita Boland, Stephen Collins, etc, offer a wide range of views. Current affairs, politics and policy is about opinions and values just as much as it about facts, so it is good to get a variety. As long as it relates back to verifiable facts, which much of social media does not.

Quality, independent media will not survive if is not paid for. I subscribe to the IT and to The Times. I like the latter for the Sunday edition in particular. The weekday editions have little specifically about Ireland but it is quite good for world and British news and opinion. On some topics the opinion can be bracingly different from what we get in Ireland, eg, Brexit. Again this is surely good? It is also very good value for €5.

I don’t subscribe to the Guardian as I don’t have time to read any more (or don’t want to give any more time). It is very overt in its biases as is the Mail, in a different way. I check in with The Mail from time to time to stay in touch! I have considered subscribing to the Guardian just as a contribution to its continuing existence (and its investigative pieces can be very good). I have not considered the Mail – shows my biases! But it is good that they are both there with their biased opinions.

Anyway that is my opinion. And it is free ! Anyone who doesn't agree is smug, elitist, leftie, fascist, reactionary ( substitute your own pejoritave).
 
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