Yes, there are many privately owned sites that just repost a few stories each day, but not that I would name here for the party to see.

Sina Weibo users play a game of cat and mouse with Chinese censors, and users repost quite a lot of blocked stories, in both English and Chinese. You will need to know some Chinese to access it.

BBC news is mostly unblocked and you can get a reasonable take on the stories, as is Al Jazeera. If you read a broad sweep of the non-Chinese non-blocked sites you should be able to get a feel for the trends and hence what is likely to be true (or not).

Surprisingly I can access BBC radio via the official BBC app for Apple products.

Before, I could only access via TuneIn and a VPN

at least IMDB isn't blocked any longer. That was ridiculous.

CNN works pretty well for me, without major problem. You may also try Android or iPhone apps of the news you wanna access. With this way I was even able to access Facebook over my smartphone without VPN (it was LG's own Facebook app on Android 2.2 that surprisingly worked hehe)

I sent you a private message about how you can get any RSS feeds through HTTPS.

CNN and the Huffington Post work fine but NYT is blocked.

I actually prefer the SCMP out of Hong Kong.  I have a VPN but do not need it for the SCMP. All the news you need about China and the rest of the world.  Only problem is you have to delete your cookies after every four article you read because they want you to pay after that.

I access CNN ...BBC ..AL JAZEERA....KOREAN TIMES...JAPAN HERALD ..CBC .... AND OF COURSE  ... comedy central  and for the real truth I look at theonion ....how much more news could a guy need?