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Permalink Reply by Becca on March 12, 2011 at 1:48pm

The places I tend to get my news from are:

- Posts by friends on Facebook.

- PBS and OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) on TV the internet and the radio when driving.

- Local News Stations on TV

- Other news sources are: Science Daily, Scientific American, Slashdot and Discover Magazine online 

- I occasionally watch or read articles from more mainstream news sources like the Washington Post, Deutsche Welle, BBC, New York Times, Welt Online

 

I do come to T|A quite often to see what the perspectives of people here on T|A are and I do especially enjoy the Sunday School posts by Nelson they are very informative. I am a news hound so T|A hasn't increased my awareness it's just given my awareness a new set of perspectives... perspectives devoid of god and religion which is refreshing as it seems that theistic perspectives are over represented not only in media we consume in the US but media from other places too. I am in the current events group but I haven't as of yet spent much time exploring and interacting in the groups. I do repost articles members of T|A have brought to my attention on Facebook (I do not have a Twitter account) but I do not have my T|A and facebook account linked since I'd prefer to keep them separate since I do not want my facebook to become a place for people to debate with me and I use facebook to mainly to share things I like and to communicate with friends and family. Anyways I hope that answers your questions and I am curious to see the responses of others.

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Permalink Reply by Misty: Baytheist Living! on March 12, 2011 at 5:20pm

Welcome welcome welcome!
I totally understand that sometimes you have to keep your atheism a little bit incognito, and with the various collection of childhood friends and family on there, it's not always possible to be 'out' to some and not to others.
FB has actually made some real strides in dealing with this issue, though. You can group and filter people pretty easy now, and the privacy settings help a lot. You can control who sees your updates and links and stuff. I have mine set so that work, older family and young kids can't see my updates unless physically click on them to include them.
Hopefully they'll come out with a list-broadcast feature so you can always click what groups will see what post individually. Like a 'Publish to Friends, Family, Co-Workers' and you can add and remove each group with just a click.

Yuuup. Eventually we'll reach a stage where folks online will only ever see the stuff you post that they agree with. ...........(Warning. Random Rant about to begin. ) I'd like to think that we'd suddenly realize how much we have in common with one another and find world peace.
More than likely what will happen is that as each little corner of our world becomes more and more isolated, we'll loose that desensitization we've acquired by being exposed to conflicting ideas. Our brains are just like our immune systems. The more we encounter stuff we don't like, the more able we are to deal with it. Eventually we'll filter out so much stuff we don't like, we'll go mentally or emotionally anaphylactic when we do get exposed.
Already we are seeing this in the polarization of politics. We can determine how someone will vote pretty damn accurately depending on if they enjoy Fox News or not.
People that watch Fox watch it because it's tailored to a very specific mentality. Quite literally, they will turn the channel if coverage is given to an idea or message they don't like. Fox provides them only with what they DO like, so their exposure to conflicting messages is limited. In the place of actual information, bullshit abounds. If you don't have knowledge concerning a social issue, you can't tell lies from fact. You are more likely to make assumptions. You will believe that Muslims build mosques on sites of victory and know you don't want a mosque at the site of ground zero, but it will never even occur to you that 1) no mosque was going to be built, anyway. (It was a community center.) and 2) it wasn't on ground zero (it was..how far away again?) and that there are already real mosques a lot closer that are in existence right now! (why aren't you out protesting those, then?) You probably won't stop to consider that you vote for a party that stands on the platform of limited government interference, yet your demand that they step in and do something about that mosque would 1) be an infringement of government on the property owner's civil rights, and 1) probably get mixed into some message of dominance of government over religion, and as a right wing Xtian, you should hate that.
And you know why you aren't considering that?
Because the emotionally charged pictures of angry and/or violent people are way more interesting to look at and a great distraction. They will keep you watching Fox instead of another channel that might.. maybe... stand a chance of bringing up those points.

Anyway.. that's my vision of the future.
Not thanks to the filter features on facebook, of course.
But just our technological ability to censor, period.

Enjoy the site!

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Permalink Reply by Ethan Levy on March 12, 2011 at 3:31pm

Twitter comes first the live feed is the best way to get news on anything happening after that BBC to confirmed the accuracy of the news. I tend to RT & post a lot of science/news on twitter & facebook most of the kids my age probably don't know or care about what happened in Japan it's sickening these kids are the future.

 

I do have several apps that inform me about news articles i.e, Discovery News BBC etc..

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Permalink Reply by Misty: Baytheist Living! on March 12, 2011 at 5:01pm

I feel that by getting a large portion of the news through TA, I'm immediately considering how that news effects me as an atheist.
I mean, it's true.
If I was on one of my gardening websites and read an article about changing weather, my first reaction would be to consider how this changing weather effects me as a gardener.
It stands to reason then, that when I first experience a social issue through a browse on TA, my focus is much more attuned to the atheist facet than say the woman or civil rights activist or technical diver or world traveler ones.
Five years ago, it never crossed my mind that any information I was processing might somehow be tied to atheism.
Now, after long time habits of HOW I receive knowledge, I know that ALL things are. Sure, it might be in a ripple in the pond sort of way sometimes, but it can be much more influential in others.
And so I urge you, friendly infidels...to always scan TA before you move on to other sources! Watch the world through atheist-tinted glasses.
This type of training will prove invaluable when the zombies come..........

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Permalink Reply by Ethan Levy on March 12, 2011 at 9:38pm

I agree we do view things differently, a aussie friend of mine who mind you is religious herself, she asked why people hate or don't allow gay marriages to happen. Simple because "holy scripture" tells them it's wrong that's why.

I always question the nature of everything, i wonder would atheist if in charge would allow fossil fuels to be our main source of energy, it takes me to the scene in 'The Walking Dead' episode 6 when the scientist is telling them how stupid it was to relay on such a limited source. Promise you one day we will laugh at the fact that we once lived in a world when the majority was blind to faith. 

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Permalink Reply by Gerald Scott on March 12, 2011 at 6:56pm

I don't watch TV news.  Too many commercials for my taste.  I browse the web.  I start at Huffington Post, then the Boston Globe sports section.  I like the Wall Street Journal.  I'll usually take a quick look at USA Today.   If I find an article about atheism, I always read the responses.  Atheist make sense to me.  They seem to know what I want to say and say it.

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Permalink Reply by Misty: Baytheist Living! on March 13, 2011 at 1:25pm

Heh. My cousin used to write for Huff.
I think he went by Avery Walker over there.

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Permalink Reply by Samuel H. Kenyon on March 13, 2011 at 1:56am

I get my news via blogs and Twitter and sometimes Reddit.  Occasionally I see something new posted on Facebook.  Occasionally I see something interesting in a mailing list email.  I very rarely look at mainstream news and it's always via a link on a social media site.  When that happens I immediately try to find the source of the info and go there if it exists.  I can't stand Time and CNN and Fox and all that crap.  Not only are they usually days or weeks behind, they simplify everything because of their general audience (and perhaps assumption that everybody is stupid).  The only time I ever see news on TV is when I'm at the dentist and it always reminds me how much I hate both mainstream news and modern television show editing.

 

I do sometimes read paper magazines but they aren't about general news, they're about science and engineering.

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Permalink Reply by idcollapse Ra on March 13, 2011 at 7:39am

I do it old school , I read two newspapers  everyday ,usually in the evening ... as for the internet , yes ,but only for general knowledge .. sometimes I come across some good stuf on facebook ... but  ,afte all, facebook for me is only for entartainment and chatting .... news on Tv ? only if i have enough time on breakfast and this is rare ... TV is for MTV or nothing lol ... oh, I almost forgot , youtube too !

  thanx Misty

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Permalink Reply by Reggie on March 13, 2011 at 1:16pm

I have not had much time to keep up on topical events lately.  But when I do, I try for a wide variety of sources, depending on the subject.  Since all news is filtered to one degree or another, I find it is beneficial to gather information and view the topic in context of that aggregate data.  It is not unlike the example of three blind men stumbling across an elephant and trying to guess what it is by touch.  Each guessing alone will have different answers, but analyzing their collective data will yield a much more accurate picture. 

 

Also, I try to find the information closest to the source.  So, blogs that link to blogs that link to stories with no links to the source material are usually discarded.  Analysis that directly reference sources (e.g. link to the full text of a proposed bill) tend to provide much more reliable information in my experience.

 

T|A does provide some novel news information to me from time to time, but often it is something I have already seen around the atheist blogosphere or other news sources.

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on March 13, 2011 at 3:11pm

I get my initial notifications from my RSS feeds. I pull from a number of different sites, ranging from atheist-specific through general science to just 'stuff of interest' like Boing Boing.

After RSS comes email notifications I have set up for specific sites/topics (This is where T|A comes in) and finally there is Twitter and the various search criteria I have there.

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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on March 13, 2011 at 9:07pm

I've gotten my news from the net for well over a decade now.  I've rarely had anyone with whom I could have serious discussions.  I think the biggest change I've encountered since joining TA is that I now have a lot more people to discuss things with.  Nelson's Sunday school is a great source for good reading on all sorts of topics, and I usually don't finish my 'lesson' before the week is almost up and it's time for the next.

 

I think what I enjoy most here is reading other people's blogs.  I used to hate blogs because so many were based on pop-culture crap.  Most people here seem to have deeply considered and developed views on an incredibly eclectic range of disciplines.

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