“Does it really matter where you would read something like that?”

Absolutely. It’s not about mere commentary but in the way a story is reported.

One newspaper would skew the story to try and skew it into an argument for withdrawal from Baghdad, another as reason for further involvement. One source would note the women and children dead, another the soldiers. One might dismiss the reasons as being more examples of Muslim extremism, another might look into reasons why, or note that it was in response to the accidental shooting of a civilian by US forces a week prior. One might parrot the official lines or reprint an AP feed, while another might do some actual journalism. There’s also the way the news is reported – one paper might have the story as front page news with in-depth examination of the incident, another might make a half-page mention of it on page 9 having led with another story or some celebrity gossip.

All of that information is important, and different outlets will report different mixes of that information in different ways. Somewhere in between lies the truth.

Every news outlet has its biases. Some try to be as neutral as possible. Some wear them on their sleeve and create an echo chamber that skews the reader’s perceptions. You need to know this, and realise that no one source is correct all of the time.

To give a concrete example today, I looked at the covers of a few UK papers here: http://en.kiosko.net/uk/

Some newspapers lead on the same story (Labour leader Ed Milliband’s speech pledging energy reform). The headlines:

The Guardian (traditionally left wing broadsheet): “Milliband fires up faithful with assault on fuel prices”, main story

Daily Telegraph (right wing broadsheet): “Labour pledge to freeze fuel bills”, main headline

Daily Mail (very right wing): “Back To The Bad Old Days. Fixing energy prices. Grabbing land from property firms. Boosting minimum wage. Red Ed revives 70s socialism.”, main story

Daily Mirror (right wing tabloid): “Ed: Bed Tax Dead”, small corner headline, main cover focusses on a Simon Cowell sex allegation.

The Sun (right wing tabloid): No mention whatsoever on the front page, leading with a story on the Kenya massacre, a football story and a TV story.

Yes it’s VERY important where you get your news from, and the commentary might be a simple part of how they construct and advertise their newspaper in the first place. The story here is “Labour promise to reform energy prices if elected”, but what the reader will get from the stories is far different if they only read one source.

You can argue that this is all commentary and not the facts, but this is the filter through which people are reading the facts.