How To Get The Truth From The News

Do not believe everything you hear on the news. News sources these days often paint a picture that rarely shows the entire truth. The key word in that last sentence being "entire". I am not by any means suggesting that modern journalism is a dead art. Some of the most influential and honourable people in this world are journalists. No, I am merely suggesting that Journalists, either by the order of their superiors or by their own national pride, have a disposition against casting their beloved country in a dismal light - at least on the global scale.
      So how then do we decipher what is written in the news when some key components of a story that would besmirch the reputation of the journalist's country are left absent in the article? How then are we supposed to gain a thorough understanding of global affairs when our eyes are unknowingly obstructed from seeing the whole picture?
      A recent example of this is when I was reading a news story on a US news website about US involvement in the Arab region. This story said the people were happy the US was there and the city in question was under majority control. However, after reading the same story in an Arab news source I discovered a contradicting idea to the same story. The people were in fact calling out for the United States to leave claiming they were making the situation worse with their presence and that daily bombings were happening in this "majority controlled" city. This did not cause me to disregard any of the facts claimed, it merely caused me to question what I was reading and to try read between the lines. Neither story is 100% accurate, but neither are any of them entirely false. Details had just been left out of each and picked up by the other.
      So, now to return to the question at hand as I hope I have ever so briefly convinced you that every story is working an angle and not all angles contain the same facts. Hopefully, the astute among you have already realized that I have indirectly answered the question, but for those of you who did not catch it right away here it is - READ MULTIPLE, INTERNATIONAL NEWS SOURCES. Simple as that. One of the vital words however is "international". In order to gain a global perspective of the world you have to look globally.  Otherwise you are going to have a very narrow minded opinion on world affairs based on what the one news source you frequently visit tells you to believe.
      So research yourself! Find the newspapers, stations, magazines that suit you. But to get you started here are just a few of my own main sources of news:

• The Guardian
• BBC News
• CNN
• Huffington Post
• Al Jazeera
• France 24
• Spiegel

EXTRA: Here's an article from cracked.com that tells of five story's where major facts were deliberately left out. Click HERE to read article