News sites
- The European Correspondent
- Financial Times
- The Observer
- Prospect Magazine (left)
- The Economist (right)
- The European Review of Books
- The Brussel Times
- EU Observer
- The Conversation (Europe)
- Die Zeit
- Le Monde
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
- La Stampa
- Corriere della Sera
- El País
- NRC Handelsblad
- Le Monde diplomatique
- Alternatives économiques
- Monocle
- Les Echos
- Deutsche Welle
- Groene Amsterdammer
- Vrij Nederland
- Max-Planck Institute
- Fraunhofer Institute
- Leibniz Institute
No RSS
- The European Correspondent
- The Brussel Times
- EU Observer
- Die Zeit
Conclusion
FT and The Economist are the best. French media recommended often due to pro-Europe stance. Germen media is also often recommended due to (my understanding) objectivity.
Notes from the thread
I am a scientist and durnig covid I realised most news wasn’t just bad, it was terrrrrible. I am a medical scientist so I kept getting the Gell Meinn amnesia effect, there were so many misinformation stories in every ‘serious’ news outlet.
There was only two decent newspapers, the FT and The Economist. These had solid stories, no fear-mongering/click-bait. My brother is into finance and says it’s because if they did that, they’d be misinforming the financiers, which would lead to bad returns. So they give the sober, real news.
Now I’ve been subscribed for years, and the level of journalism is just top-tier. These guys really break stories, proper deep investigative journalism. And also just great columnists, there are some amazing writers there (Wolf and Okoro).
I’m a bit skeptical on The European Correspondent. I have contacted them for corrections quite a lot, because they like to make social posts with those statistics maps that get a lot of engagement. All fun and all, but they contain just as many inaccurates ad your average Instagram bullshit account. Mistakes happen, but a newspaper not responding to someone pointing out factual inaccuracies..? Does not give me good vibes, makes me wonder if I can trust them when I don’t know the subject.
Did you know that Politico is part of Axel Springer Press, along with BILD, WELT, The Telegraph (as of recently), Business Insider, FAKT and BLESK. It’s basically Germany’s version of a billionaire-owned, “EU sceptic” MAGA media machine.
A lot better German options would be Spiegel, Stern, Handelsblatt (for business/economics), or Die Zeit (as already mentioned). In English? No.
That said, the Atlantic is fairly problematic and biased in many ways and their fact checking is actually quite atrocious.
The Guardian has really gone downhill the last few years, it’s so disappointing. They were among the very best and their business model kept it free for all.
Both in content and design of their site they’re leaning more and more into sensationalism and, indeed, clickbait.
Yes they are a public broadcaster but they aren’t part of the public broadcasting system of ARD, ZDF and DLF (Deutschlandfunk - public radio broadcaster) and also they do not receive any funding from the Rundfunkbeitrag (public broadcast fee) but are directly funded by the German federal budget. At the same time they indeed joined the ARD which makes this all very mucky.
To protect journalistic freedom they aren’t overseen by the government itself but an independed body just like the other public broadcasters. They also fall under the foreign affairs office and their job is to reach foreigners with German produced television and radio in 32 different languages.