Just goes to show you how nobody seems to agree on anything anymore.
I'd strongly disagree with calling the Washington Times "centerist", for example.
Let me start by suggesting that you begin with ABC News and CNN's websites, in particular the Politics section. Then, for a completely outside perspective, check out the articles about the US on the CBC and BBC websites.
As far as the others:
The New York Times is good, but keep in mind that it's been a couple of years since it's been considered the "newspaper of record". Fake articles by reporters have recently damaged its credibility, and now the news that it sat on the Bush spying scandal for a year have hurt it even further. Overall it's still a very good paper, but it's not infallible...and it's not exactly liberal.
The Washington Times doesn't have the credibility problems of the NYT, and some consider it liberal (because it's not afraid to write about administration scandals), but I don't.
I would hardly call CNN liberal either. I think of
them as centerist. They play it very safe, and since they were bought by TimeWarnerAOLetcetera, their news coverage has become less serious and more superficial.
The Wall Street Journal? Their editorial board seems to turn their eyes away from any conservative scandal.
Avoid Fox News or The Washington Times. Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who makes no bones about slanting his network toward the right. If you have to watch Fox, at least watch it (especially the talk shows) with a
very skeptical eye.
The Washington Times has been pretty much exposed in recent books as heavily slanting the news. Its editor, Wes Pruden, has been known to edit quotes or set the context in such a way as to make events look very different from how they happened.
Newsweek and Time are not particularly liberal either. (These days, "liberal" seems to be defined as anyone who writes a few articles critical of the administration, which is not at all the same thing. Newsweek and Time wrote plenty of articles harmful to Clinton, too.) They
are good source -- some of the best, actually -- for in-depth understanding of the issues.
Since you're just seeking to start out learning about politics, I'm going to tell you to avoid like the plague liberal
or conservative sites like Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, et. al. I have my own views about which ones tell the truth and which ones lie, but you are not well-served by starting out on
either the left or the right. Keep it objective until you find your own point of view.
You might want to talk to middle-age to older adults, of both conservative and liberal persuasions, who remember what politics was like before it became
this nasty. Conservatism as we know it today is nothing like it was prior to 1980. Many say it has taken a huge turn for the worse. So yes, I'd agree, a sense of history is well in order. See in particular if you can get a good understanding of both sides of the '60s revolution, repercussions of which still reverberate today. It is (IMO) often mischaracterized as a period of crazy ideals and loose morals, and there was an idealism, involvement and intolerance for corruption that seem to be missing today.
"Follow the money" might be good advice if you're talking about scandals. Deep Throat (of Watergate fame) was the one who originally said it, and if you're looking for people's motivations, by all means follow the money.
Don't automatically believe that the joys of capitalism should guide your beliefs. Capitalism, like any other system, has its faults, some of them pretty big ones, and a great many people believe that it has
way too much influence on how our politicians vote and are elected.
When you
do get into reading liberal or conservative sites,
don't abandon the objective "traditional" media for them. Left or right, you always need more objective sources to compare them to.
Do question heavily the motivations of the sites dedicated to the left and right. Ask yourself, assuming they're lying, what do they have to gain by it? Is the left
really what the right
characterizes it as...and vice versa?
Is that enough for you to start off with?
