Library & Cultural Services: Politics & International Relations: News. Media

News & media databases

Reputable news & media reports & analysis are relevant to many areas of politics and IR. A growing range of historical sources, with archives over decades and in some cases centuries, are also available, enabling research beyond current events.

All individual news sources (e.g. The Times, The New York Times, etc.) that the library has access to are listed in the library catalogue with links to full text. Type the name of the source you wish to locate into library search

News databases that the library has access to are listed on the library's databases & e-resources page

See also the extensive links to websites concerned with Media, Journalism & Fake News on the Politics subject guide.
Consult the Sociology subject guide for links to further resources, including Advertising, Social Media, Internet, AI.

BBC World News
Reasonable starting point for current events

Box of Broadcasts (BoB)
Box of Broadcasts is an archive of radio and TV broadcasts, going back to c.2007 for key UK radio & TV channels (but includes selected older programmes). Includes news programmes, investigative journalism & documentaries. Transcripts of broadcasts are searchable

Institutional login
Economist.com
The Economist online offers authoritative insight and opinion on international news, politics, business, finance, science and technology. It publishes all articles from The Economist print edition and maintains a searchable online archive that dates back June 1997. To access the electronic version of the weekly print edition, click on "Menu", navigate to "Weekly edition" and click on either "This week" or "Past editions".
Factiva
Factiva is the Library's key newspaper database, offering full text access to thousands of newspapers from around the world, in a variety of languages. It includes many key national newspapers of record, as well as more local or regional newspapers. Additional content comes from Web newspapers, news wires, and business information sources.

If you are interested in more historical sources these may be of interest:

Economist Historical Archive 1843-2015
The Economist Historical Archive 1843-2015 is the fully searchable complete facsimile edition of The Economist, the weekly paper which is essential reading for anyone engaged in politics, current affairs and all aspects of business and trade worldwide.

Shibboleth users

Europeana Newspapers
EU project to digitise historic European newspapers from the 17th century onwards. Huge resource, search facility can be slow

Gale Primary Sources
Gale Primary Sources provides full archival access to a number of key UK newspapers. These can be searched individually or collectively. Digital reproductions of the print originals for: The Times; The Independent; The Telegraph; The Financial Times; The Economist; British Library Newspapers

Shibboleth users

Pressemappe 20. Jahrhundert (20th century Press Archives)
Huge archive of around 16 million press clippings initially compiled by the Hamburg Kolonialinstitut, later the Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv, and now part of the Leibniz Association. Cuttings cover about 100 years up to 2005, are are divided into 4 sections: topics, products, companies, persons. Digitisation is making good progress, see Wikipedia for further details

Proquest Historical Newspapers
Proquest Historical Newspapers provides full archival access to a number of key newspapers, with more of a US and international emphasis than Gale Primary Sources. Titles can be searched individually or collectively. Digital reproductions of the print originals for 3 leading US newspapers: The New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; plus Black Historical Newspapers (10 titles). Also: The Guardian (UK); Hindustan Times; South China Morning Post; Le Monde

Institutional login

Wikipedia has some useful links to online newspaper archives (some free).

Specialist guides to sources in the library catalogue can be found using the keywords "Newspapers" and "Bibliography"

News websites

Here is a small selection of generally credible news sites with global or mostly global coverage:

ABC News
Al Jazeera
AP News
BBC News
CNN
Eurasia Review
Foreign Policy news
PBS Newshour
Reuters
Spiegel International

Additional country specific news sources may be found on the Area Studies subject guide, and for the US here

You can assess these and other news sources for left/right bias and factual credibility of reporting by doing some fact checking yourself, and/or using Media Bias/Fact Check and other tools to do so. For example:

Left-wing:

Novara Media

Right wing:

Fox News