The title for this “The Best…” list might not be a great one. This is also going to be a very short list, though I’m hoping to identify additions.

(A companion post to this one that has numerous related resources is Where To Find The Most Popular News Stories On The Web)

In addition to thinking about how I’m going to help students learn to detect bias and plain falsehoods on various websites (and Langwitches has some great resources on that topic), I’ve been exploring accessible tools that students could use to gain a similar understanding of more mainstream media.

Media Meter “shows you four different views of the world. It maps the top 20 English language news sources for four types of media: newspapers, broadcast, magazine and online (digital native). Our goal is to discover the which news medium has the most comprehensive global coverage, where the blind spots are, and to discover how different types of media cover different countries.”

ViewChange.Org has some pretty amazing short videos from around the world, and it’s also part of Link TV. This is how it describes itself:

Using the power of video to tell stories about real people and progress in global development.

Euronews provides great, and short, online videos, which I’ll talk about in a minute. But first, let me tell you what I found out about the network from Wikipedia:

Euronews is a multilingual and pan-European television news channel launched on January 1, 1993 in Lyon. It covers world news from a European perspective,in many languages. In 2008 Euronews is distributed to 248 million households in 135 countries worldwide. The latest distribution report shows that Euronews is the leading international news channel in Europe. It reached more than 177 million European households by cable, satellite and terrestrial. This compared with 167 million European households for CNN International, 124 million for BBC World News and 65 million for CNBC Europe.

The site has excellent short news videos.  It also has the audio transcription but, unfortunately, it’s right below the video instead of being closed-captioned.  That reduces its benefit to English Language Learners.

One great feature is it’s “No Comment” section.  In it, it shows videos that it believes communicates its message without any commentary.  Those could be interesting for ELL’s to describe.

Because of it being able to provide a European perspective on the news, I believe it belongs on this list.

The Under-Told Stories Project is a partnership of Saint John’s University and the PBS News Hour, and has a video collection of international news stories. Here is how it describes itself:

The Under-Told Stories Project works to expand, sustain and improve coverage of the world outside America in broadcast, print and emerging new media outlets. Our challenge is to direct American eyes to the daily concerns of far away people who increasingly affect our lives. We hope to reawaken the generous curiosity of Americans –our students in particular– about a world we can no longer ignore.

Many teachers are familiar with the Newseum’s great resource of showing the front pages each day from newspapers around the world. However, some people (like me) might not know about their cool interactive map that lets you roll over the country and then it shows you the front page.

The Newseum has also just launched a new project — the Newseum Digital Classroom.

Newspaper Map shows you the front pages of newspapers from around the world, displayed on a Google Map. If it just stopped at that, it wouldn’t be much different from the well-known Newseum display of the same thing. But it doesn’t stop there. Unlike the Newseum, Newspaper Map lets you click on the front page to gain access to the entire newspaper. And, even better, with one quick click, you can choose the language you want the paper translated into. It’s very simple and easy to access.

This is how Worldcrunch describes itself:

Worldcrunch delivers the best global journalism previously shut off from English language readers: selecting, translating and editing content from top foreign-language outlets.

This is how preeeurop describes itself:

Presseurop.eu is a Paris-based news website publishing a daily selection of articles chosen from more than 200 international news titles, then translated into ten languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish and Czech).

Perspecs is a new free app that gives you three different perspectives on the same news topic:

Here are more details:

Perspecs is a new free app that curates the top news stories from a variety of established regional, national and international news sources. Unlike traditional aggregators and news curation services, Perspecs goes a step further and offers readers 3 polarised opinions of the same story.

How these opinions are categorised can vary. For political stories this could be in the form of ‘left’, ‘background’, ‘right’. For review items the categories could be ‘negative’, ‘neutral’, ‘positive’.

Unfiltered News, which only works in Chrome, provides visualizations of the most popular news stories in each country. In addition, you’re provided a list of less popular stories that you can click on to see where they’re being most covered.

Compare “Liberal” & “Conservative” Facebook News Feeds

“Checkology” Looks Like A Good Classroom Tool To Promote News Literacy

EuroNews

Here’s how Popular 50 describes itself:

Popular50.com serves as a 24/7 hub covering and curating the most viral and shareable video content across the web. It is a home for all videos of what is trending on the Internet. Choose your country, category and voilà, you have the best trending videos available on the internet. Currently, we are present in 40 countries and have 15 categories.

All Sides seems to have a lot of outsized purposes and goals, with a touch of naivete thrown-in about bringing folks with different viewpoints in conversation with one another. But it also does, indeed, have some materials that could be very useful to teachers. One feature I like is offering articles that offer different perspectives on the same social issue. The other resource that stands-out offers simple lesson plans on some of these same topics.

Newsmap.com (not to be confused with Newsmap.jp, which is on The Best Visually Engaging News Sites list, is an interactive map linking to local news media in different countries around the world. You can also filter it by language.

Simple Guide to Analyzing Media with Key Questions from @MediaLiteracyEd is from Lisa Nielsen.

IMPORTANT NY TIMES INTERACTIVE COMPARING HOW HISTORY TEXTBOOKS FROM DIFFERENT STATES TALK ABOUT THE SAME TOPICS

I’m very interested in hearing additional suggestions of resources, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.