If you don’t want “Enquirer quality news”, I recommend you stay away from all the publications found at the grocery store checkouts…
Also from FOX “news”, lol… I find that reading & watching from a variety of reputable sources helps a lot. It soon becomes obvious which ones are pushing baloney. And this site is awesome! Thank you Matt!
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I’m taking notes on those. Foreign Policy is a great publication, I’m always really glad when I end up there.
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Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. A list of a few news sources that were considered informative and empowering by respondents is the following:
Washington Post
NPR (read and audio versions)
CNN (read and audio versions)
NYT
Daily Beast
American Prospect (new to me)
The Atlantic
WSJ
The New Yorker
Time Magazine
Think Progress (new to me)
Economist Espresso (app/newsletter)
Foreign Policy Morning Brief
Foreign Policy
WTFJHT (naturally!)
I have found The Hill and the Guardian to be generally quite good also.
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I’d forgotten about Democracy now, which tends to cover things from a progressive angle without relying on punditry and talking heads. It reminds me a lot of older news programs that focused much more on journalistic integrity rather than media personalities.
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I’m glad to see PBS & BBC in the middle there too…I consider them balanced.
What a great graphic! I was actually surprised to see CNN smack dab in the middle because I tend to think of them as a bit to the right - certainly on a par with MSNBC. Perhaps, it’s my imagination but it seems as if Fox has come people who are at the extreme left and others who are more moderate. So depending on the time of day, their positioning could wiggle a bit. So here’s a question. Where would reddit fit? Obviously not a very reliable news source, but my 23 year old daughter uses that as a primary source of news. Thankfully, she’s intelligent enough to start there but then go to more credible resources for additional information. But I do believe she often takes the words of her peer group as factual. I’m curious as to what a Complex news source would “look” like if either on the extreme left or right. Or is that just too inconceivable?
Reddit isn’t a news source. It’s a platform, just like FB and Twitter. Have a look:
A very diverse set of stories and sources. Of course there is specific subreddits for whatever you’re into, like /r/conservatives or /r/progressives.
A friend in the UK recently steered me to #Three Quarks Daily”…3 Quarks Daily I believe is the better title. It’s both a consolidator of articles and a platform for original work. Personally I look to The Atlantic, WPO, WSJ and NYT. I take the Sunday Times which gives me access to their digital edition on a daily basis. I know my step daughter seems to feed on Reddit but I have found there are quite a few conspiracy theorists there or a forum for them. Interesting in the graphic I did’t see Breitbart or The Drudge Report. Maybe I missed it.
Drudge rarely breaks news – he’s an aggregator these days. Breitbart is in the lower right-hand corner
I’m pretty sure Drudge hasn’t broken any news since the 1998 Clinton/Lewinsky story (which was only “breaking” news but Newsweek having a real scoop); granted it did launch into a culture of instant breaking news online. 
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I believe Breitbart (& Drudge) would belong in the extreme lower right. (Maybe that’s what the “B” is for? hard to read & not familiar with their logo)
Yes, the B is Breitbart.
IMO, Drudge really isn’t worthy of a spot on the chart. As @matt mentioned, they are an aggregator vs an original news source.
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Never read Drudge, it was cited as a source from someone in an online forum exchange who was spouting really crazy garbage. 
Ironic as it may be, I actually love reading Drudge. I find the entire thing to be fascinating, from the amazingly stubborn design to the consistent content selection. Guy never strays from doing the thing people expect from him. I can respect it. That said, I could care less about most of the stuff he links to. 
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Standing in a grocery store line a few days ago, the Enquirer headline was something about “Obama and Hillary tapped Trump’s Phone Lines”. What’s sad and frightening for the country is people actually believe the Enquirer in some form or another. They don’t care or recognize the owner has a connection with Trump.
Nobody reads the Enquirer anymore. They go on Facebook instead.
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Jezzz from the frying pan into the fire, Facebook! Wired has an in depth article on their efforts to clean their act up.
I agree that trash like the Enquirer is harmful…even if it’s only the headlines that gullible people are reading at the check-out stand! Because then they go home & watch FOX “news” & think “see, that story I read in the store really WAS true. And not only that, but did you know…?” 
And so it goes…
I think many do realize that sources like the Enquirer are exaggerated, but (a) they enjoy the salacious stories and (b) they think that if it’s in print, there’s at least SOME truth to it.
At that point, I don’t think there’s a moral case against turning the magazine backward on the rack just to spare that embarrassment of a headline the light of day.
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