CFR has two issueguides on the subject. As an aside, I find CFR in general to be a great source of relatively balanced foreign news analysis. My primary source of world news these days is their Daily News Brief which I get delivered in my inbox.
CFR provides deep coverage but they aren’t balanced. They are a think tank with major influence on US politics. Joe Biden would be an example for a prominent member of the CFR.
It’s funded by ExxonMobile, Goldman Sachs and various other banks and Big Oil companies.
“Balanced” is a very subjective term, it basically means “in a one-dimensional political space their positions fall both to the left and to the right of me”. In reality the political space is multidimensional and different people have quite different reference (anchor) points in it.
I don’t think it’s possible for a single news source to be well-balanced. To get a reasonable picture you need to read a diverse collection of sources (and it’s OK for some or even most of them to be “unbalanced” as long as they are skewed in different directions).
“Balanced” is a very subjective term, it basically means “in a one-dimensional political space their positions fall both to the left and to the right of me”.
If you look at the interests of a think tank like the CFR I don’t think it makes much sense to think in terms of left and right.
If I look at CFR coverage of Ukraine, than asking whether it’s right or left isn’t helpful because it tells you little about the interests that the CFR has on Ukrainian politics. In the Ukraine it might work because there’s fascists against communists and you have a clear left right split.
If you look at a country like China or Egypt it doesn’t work because the interested of the multinational banks and oil companies aren’t left or right. There corporatist if you want to use a word.
On the other hand neither yourself no myself have stakes into what happens in the conflict in the Ukraine, so in some sense we can be more balanced. A random sampling of LW opinions is likely to be more balanced than a random sampling of CFR articles.
When seeking to get a reasonable picture it’s always good to know the interests of the source you are reading.
I’m not referring to their recommendations, just their coverage. I was not aware of their funding sources, and I never heard of Joe Biden being a member. The primary reason I had the impression they were relatively balanced is because I’ve tried to detect a slant to their reports (whether by leaving out some information or by reporting it in a slanted way), but I have been unable to do so. Of course, that could just be because I don’t know enough or am not perceptive enough to detect the slant.
They intent to inform readers in the US policy by giving them useful information about what’s going on in the world.
They don’t pretend to be balanced. Neither does the Economist for that matter. Both use language like “We think XY should happen.”
In US culture there the strange idea that being a good news source is about having no interests and weighing all views equally.
Often the people who are deeply informed on a topic do have interests. That doesn’t mean that you should ignore them but it’s worth to keep in mind those interests when you read them.
CFR has two issue guides on the subject. As an aside, I find CFR in general to be a great source of relatively balanced foreign news analysis. My primary source of world news these days is their Daily News Brief which I get delivered in my inbox.
CFR provides deep coverage but they aren’t balanced. They are a think tank with major influence on US politics. Joe Biden would be an example for a prominent member of the CFR.
It’s funded by ExxonMobile, Goldman Sachs and various other banks and Big Oil companies.
“Balanced” is a very subjective term, it basically means “in a one-dimensional political space their positions fall both to the left and to the right of me”. In reality the political space is multidimensional and different people have quite different reference (anchor) points in it.
I don’t think it’s possible for a single news source to be well-balanced. To get a reasonable picture you need to read a diverse collection of sources (and it’s OK for some or even most of them to be “unbalanced” as long as they are skewed in different directions).
If you look at the interests of a think tank like the CFR I don’t think it makes much sense to think in terms of left and right.
If I look at CFR coverage of Ukraine, than asking whether it’s right or left isn’t helpful because it tells you little about the interests that the CFR has on Ukrainian politics. In the Ukraine it might work because there’s fascists against communists and you have a clear left right split.
If you look at a country like China or Egypt it doesn’t work because the interested of the multinational banks and oil companies aren’t left or right. There corporatist if you want to use a word.
On the other hand neither yourself no myself have stakes into what happens in the conflict in the Ukraine, so in some sense we can be more balanced. A random sampling of LW opinions is likely to be more balanced than a random sampling of CFR articles.
When seeking to get a reasonable picture it’s always good to know the interests of the source you are reading.
I’m not referring to their recommendations, just their coverage. I was not aware of their funding sources, and I never heard of Joe Biden being a member. The primary reason I had the impression they were relatively balanced is because I’ve tried to detect a slant to their reports (whether by leaving out some information or by reporting it in a slanted way), but I have been unable to do so. Of course, that could just be because I don’t know enough or am not perceptive enough to detect the slant.
They intent to inform readers in the US policy by giving them useful information about what’s going on in the world.
They don’t pretend to be balanced. Neither does the Economist for that matter. Both use language like “We think XY should happen.”
In US culture there the strange idea that being a good news source is about having no interests and weighing all views equally.
Often the people who are deeply informed on a topic do have interests. That doesn’t mean that you should ignore them but it’s worth to keep in mind those interests when you read them.