Where do you get your news from?

Today the UK was holding elections for the new police commissioner posts. I’m not going to go into whether or not this is a good idea (largely because I’m really not sure), but I was talking to Chris about this morning after we returned from the school runs and voting (on the way up to the school – and with the girls in tow and ensuring a little bit of a learning opportunity about democracy) and I mentioned that I’d known about the supplementary vote system because I’d read about it on the BBC News site. Then I mentioned reading a piece there about what police officers think about PCCs, and that it seemed pretty mixed, though they don’t seem to be able to actually say very much about the issue.

And Chris said that the BBC News always aims to show a complete balance of opinion, even where there is one obviously correct conclusion. He said that, unless you’re looking for a very plain fact, the BBC was no good for news. This surprised me a bit, because the BBC News site is my first port of call (pretty much) for news and I do tend to click through from the front page to read more on pieces that interest me. I’m not keen on sensationalism and feel they (mostly!) avoid that. But, thinking about some more today, I think he probably is right, and that they do try very hard to avoid coming across as either left- or right-wing.

So… as someone of a left-wing inclination, should I be going elsewhere for my main news injection? I do stop by The Guardian once or twice a week and read a few pieces in depth, but that’s almost always opinion pieces or in-depth articles, rather than information on the main news. I do also spot stories on social media and sometimes click through (if I can – don’t get me started on Facebook and it’s locking you into its apps in order to click through to a newspaper headline) if the story sounds interesting – now and then kicking myself hard for accidentally ending up in that third circle of hell that is the Mail Online (could everyone please stop writing about Liz Jones, by the way – I didn’t actually know who she was before and really kind of wish I still didn’t).

Maybe I do want to keep using the BBC News site as my first port of call for news headlines, though. Maybe I want my news as balanced as possible and then to go off and find out what different people think about, once I’ve got the facts. And maybe I just want to stick to The Guardian for my big Coalition-bashing opinion pieces (or blogs, actually, they can be very good at that, too).

Where do you get your news from? Do you have a main site for finding headlines and quick news facts and somewhere else for opinions? Do you keep it all to blogs and avoid the mainstream press? Do you (surely some people still do) even read an actual physical newspaper? And do you go to news outlets that tend toward your political bias, somewhere that aims for balance, or do you read everywhere to come to your own balanced conclusions?