Ideally ones that provide RSS/Atom feeds. Currently, I’m following the BBC, CBC, The Guardian, DW, and Al Jazeera, and they provide reliable information, but there is always a bit of a bias. For instance, BBC and DW are quite pro-Israel, while Al Jazeera are rarely critical of the Qatari government. Are there any independent news outlets that have less of bias w/ RSS feeds?
edit: Wording has been changed a bit. One more thing, I’d rather have news sources that are not US-centric. As somebody from Hong Kong, I’d also like to ask if there are any good ones that cover the South China + Southeast Asia region, since SCMP was bought out by Alibaba a few years ago.
I am moving to Piefed at scallisto@retrofed.com (https://retrofed.com/u/scallisto)
Headlines are unbeatable. The other half is delightfully left.
I think you are on the right track. Newswire services like AP and Reuters tend to have the least noticeable spin, but no news service is bias free. Best you can do is diversify your outlets and look at not just the narrative but now each outlet sources their claims (Who are they talking to? What data do they use to support their conclusions?)
I do not know much about HK news sources, but I follow some Taiwan-based outlets like Focus Taiwan (state-backed) and Taipei Times (largest English-language outlet). There is often coverage of HK and southeast Asia there but obviously more in how it relates to Taiwan. NHK in Japan may also be an option. Best of luck!
I will check out some of those Taiwan-based news sites, thanks!
You are right to use multiple sources. Avoid US sources except NPR, PBS, AP news. Decent sources also include ProPublica, DW, the Narwhal, the rabble, the Tyee, Reuters
I assume DW is Deutsche Welle? It seems like they are having news without subscription and cookie banner that forces subscription or accepting the cookies so I will start to read it.
“The Conversation” is usually pretty good. No idea if they have any feeds, though.
https://theconversation.com/au/articles.atom
You may want to replace au with uk or nz or whatever…
Australia has two public broadcasters: ABC and SBS. Both provide reasonably balanced reporting.
abc.net.au/news is the main one, similar in concept to the BBC. Officially they don’t support RSS feeds any longer, but they still exist and work. See https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/abc-news-australia-rss-feeds/
sbs.com.au/news is our “Special Broadcasting Service” and caters to our more multicultural and indigenous audiences in general, but their news is fairly solid, perhaps without the breadth and depth of the ABC. Their main RSS news feed is at https://www.sbs.com.au/news/feed and they have others. See https://feedsearch.dev/api/v1/search?result=true&url=sbs.com.au
The fact that the US police seem to target the Australian Broadcast Corporation every time they cover civil disturbance in the US does speak to their credibility to me.
Same as the fact the retuers journalists got periodically wasted by the US army in the Iraq and afghanistan conflicts spoke well to theirs.
I will follow SBS, thanks mate!
404 Media? I’m not much one to follow news, so I can’t speak to accuracy or biases, but I’ve heard them recommend as an independent source. Especially since, they should be less beholden to corporate interests since they’re a journalist cooperative.
Hmm… it’s gonna be tough to find brands that produce quality international news without something of a corpo bent.
Maybe if you have areas of interest you can find writers and reporters in that space who you can follow and perhaps compensate directly.
Also, have you considered Ground News?
Also, have you considered Ground News?
It looks very US-centric, and it’s always a bad idea to get all your news from one source. I’m personally not a fan, and would rather get news from multiple different outlets and judge them myself.
If OP is trying to avoid corporate biases, Ground News may not be quite what they’re looking for. Eric Rosenfield has an excellent pair of videos (one, two) doing a long form deep dive on the company. It’s an excellent bit of citizen journalism and well worth the watch. That said, it’s not a short watch, so the tldr is that by presenting both sides as having equal weight and relevance it normalizes the bat shit insane stuff presented by one of the sides. The second video digs into the Ground News owners/ board members and partner organizations used for assigning biases. All of which are overwhelmingly corporate and very far removed from the ideals of journalism.
PBS is decent, if written to a bit of a dumbed-down level at times. Ars Technica was originally an excellent tech site, but has broadened its repertoire quite a lot over the past decade - although it doesn’t focus so much on the things most mainstream media sites cover, there’s still routinely some overlap.
NPR is not better than PBS. I am glad NPR is there, but they are NOT reliable. They allow corporate interest groups to come on and bold faced lie without challenge. Plus they are scared of their own shadow, at least if the conservatives are around.
The BBC is better than NPR, but they have their own problems, and are probably getting worse with the recent tory purge over the movie about the israeli occupation last year was it?
I find fact based source sites like Reuters the best for this. If you want to understand exactly what is speculation and what is known about a story, there isn’t much that I have found to do this better. There is however some leaning towards the effects on stock markets, but I find the core bias well managed.
I read reuters every day if I can, and they are pretty good for world events and business news especially.
I’ve noticed some bias creeping in with candidates like El Sayed and Mandami and the like. But they have some really good reporting sometimes. They actually cut off US users in like 2024 or so, a paywall, just for us that I’m aware, but have since removed it.
The guardian helps round out what reuters leaves out. Then check The Intercept and Propublica regularly for investigative stuff. I need more but everything else I used to read online is paywalled now it seems.
maybe also AP News? not really a news outlet but i also have MBFC and Lead Stories
i use freshrss’s extractor to get feeds from sites without rss/atom and also for full text instead of short intro, might be useful for you too
If you’re looking for general news I subscribe to Grist, The Conversation, Mother Jones, and ProPublica. They have a mostly neutral bias. I also have some leftie sources: Vox, The 19th, and Jacobin. And one right wing news source that is more libertarian than MAGA: The American Conservative, just to keep an eye on them. All of those have a US bias. The EFF’s Deep Links and Open Culture are also great but are more niche.
Just don’t use BBC for anything related to the Palestinian genocide.
The only part of the BBC reporting that may still be useful is the 6am Radio 4 news.
Or for anything related to transgender people
The intercept does good work. Surprised no one has mentioned them yet.
German ARD and ZDF are about as reliable as BBC, if you don’t mind using translation tools.
correct, three of them are Zionists propagandists but calling them reliable is a skit
