½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

I have always found that a mixture of sources for both national and international news gives the best picture and allows one to avoid the bias of a single source; this is true regardless of one's command of the language. True, in Israel I am hampered by my poor Hebrew, but I have followed this principle also when I have lived in countries where I mastered the language. This is today much easier with the Internet. In Israel the major newspapers have online free editions in English (to get Haaretz stories, for example, you have to sign up, but it stays free). True, they don't have all the stories of the print versions, but upon comparing with the Hebrew print versions, I find that the stories left out are of little interest to me anyway. But Israeli news is not only in local papers. The BBC, Le Monde, etc. all follow the major Israeli stories (usually more objectively, although often a bit late). The local (Israel) Russian language MigNews site is detailed, although the quality of their journalism is often very poor. But a Google Search will find lots of stories on Israel, and one can filter out the silly ones. I gave up on TV a long time ago as being an inferior medium: if one wants visual background, there are plenty of good Internet sites carrying the same video content (and plenty of bad ones, of course). The same principles apply for international news.