4 ms·

Objectivity is impossible in journalism. Even if you only report facts, what facts you choose as important enough to cover or not will introduce a bias.

andi999 6y ago
True. Although I found that the financial times is pretty neutral and the articles have a very high quality. You do not have to have Gell Mann amnesia to read it. Maybe it is the target audience. If you want to make money, you do not want your information to be politically biased.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  I think probably the problem there is, what is bias anyway? In the UK, Brexiters have been complaining for years that the FT is massively biased, because it isn't sufficiently complimentary of Brexit. A lot of people seem to define media bias as not being 'in the middle'; in the Brexit case, facts have a remain bias, so many people perceive the FT's largely factual reporting on Brexit as bias. The only way to produce Brexit reporting that would satisfy the 'in the middle' people would be, frankly, either to not print most of the news about Brexit, or to outright make stuff up.
  - newen 6y ago
    > facts have a remain bias ... Or, FT could actually acknowledge that the remain folks have legitimate arguments.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      Sure, and they do. But some people interpret that as bias, because it isn't occupying a largely imaginary position equidistantly between remain and leave. When the average person talks about media bias, they do _not_ actually mean 'factual reporting', or 'independent editorial policy', or anything like that; they mean either 'agrees with me' or 'occupies a weird artificial center position'. Some (usually public) broadcasters actually have 'equal-time' rules, which can produce fairly bizarre results.
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
I don't think that is true - rather, objectivity is difficult. That is why it is important to have decentralized trustworthy news.
- tqi 6y ago
  How would decentralization help with objectivity?
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    It's impossible for everything to be perfectly objective - having more credible sources with different points of view allows for more objectivity. Centralized news is too easy to manipulate.
    - tqi 6y ago
      Thats interesting. It seems to me people are already overwhelmed with sources of news, unfortunately many of them are not "credible" or acting in good faith. I'm not sure I see a way to enforce credibility without a centralized authority. Furthermore, I think the recent history would say that when presented with multiple "objective" points of view, people will merely gravitate the ones that reinforce their priors, and I don't think that is what we would deem success either.
    - fullshark 6y ago
      Or would it just allow for a clearer connection between what the audience wants and what gets "printed" without an editorial influence? The problem isn't centralization, the problem is we're building confirmation bias engines.
chrchang523 6y ago
The candidates that a company chooses as important enough to give a job offer will be a biased subset of the population. However, employment law limits the severity of this bias along some important dimensions, and we're able to enforce this law with the help of statistical tests. The same applies to journalism and the galactic-scale sins of omission that are currently occurring. But government regulation is only effective against individual bad actors in a democracy. When the regulators themselves can be expected to be corrupt, government regulation is a cure at least as bad as the disease. Unfortunately, I don't see much hope for the US mainstream until a "Sputnik moment" happens that makes it clear to even those gaining the largest relative advantages from the status quo that they too stand to lose big if current practices continue. And that'll be too late for my family if the Sputnik moment takes the form of Taiwan falling to the PRC.
mStreamTeam 6y ago
This is such bad take. Perfection is impossible as well. But we should all strive to better ourselves. Objectivivity may be impossible. But journalists can still strive to be as unbiased as possible.
- haberman 6y ago
  It reminds me of the "All models are wrong" aphorism. It may be true, but it's still better to call the Earth a sphere than a plane or a torus. No one would defend a flat-earther on the basis that a sphere isn't a correct model, either.

andi999 6y ago

True. Although I found that the financial times is pretty neutral and the articles have a very high quality. You do not have to have Gell Mann amnesia to read it. Maybe it is the target audience. If you want to make money, you do not want your information to be politically biased.

rsynnott 6y ago
I think probably the problem there is, what is bias anyway? In the UK, Brexiters have been complaining for years that the FT is massively biased, because it isn't sufficiently complimentary of Brexit. A lot of people seem to define media bias as not being 'in the middle'; in the Brexit case, facts have a remain bias, so many people perceive the FT's largely factual reporting on Brexit as bias. The only way to produce Brexit reporting that would satisfy the 'in the middle' people would be, frankly, either to not print most of the news about Brexit, or to outright make stuff up.
- newen 6y ago
  > facts have a remain bias ... Or, FT could actually acknowledge that the remain folks have legitimate arguments.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    Sure, and they do. But some people interpret that as bias, because it isn't occupying a largely imaginary position equidistantly between remain and leave. When the average person talks about media bias, they do _not_ actually mean 'factual reporting', or 'independent editorial policy', or anything like that; they mean either 'agrees with me' or 'occupies a weird artificial center position'. Some (usually public) broadcasters actually have 'equal-time' rules, which can produce fairly bizarre results.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago

I don't think that is true - rather, objectivity is difficult. That is why it is important to have decentralized trustworthy news.

tqi 6y ago
How would decentralization help with objectivity?
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  It's impossible for everything to be perfectly objective - having more credible sources with different points of view allows for more objectivity. Centralized news is too easy to manipulate.
  - tqi 6y ago
    Thats interesting. It seems to me people are already overwhelmed with sources of news, unfortunately many of them are not "credible" or acting in good faith. I'm not sure I see a way to enforce credibility without a centralized authority. Furthermore, I think the recent history would say that when presented with multiple "objective" points of view, people will merely gravitate the ones that reinforce their priors, and I don't think that is what we would deem success either.
  - fullshark 6y ago
    Or would it just allow for a clearer connection between what the audience wants and what gets "printed" without an editorial influence? The problem isn't centralization, the problem is we're building confirmation bias engines.

chrchang523 6y ago

The candidates that a company chooses as important enough to give a job offer will be a biased subset of the population. However, employment law limits the severity of this bias along some important dimensions, and we're able to enforce this law with the help of statistical tests. The same applies to journalism and the galactic-scale sins of omission that are currently occurring. But government regulation is only effective against individual bad actors in a democracy. When the regulators themselves can be expected to be corrupt, government regulation is a cure at least as bad as the disease. Unfortunately, I don't see much hope for the US mainstream until a "Sputnik moment" happens that makes it clear to even those gaining the largest relative advantages from the status quo that they too stand to lose big if current practices continue. And that'll be too late for my family if the Sputnik moment takes the form of Taiwan falling to the PRC.

mStreamTeam 6y ago

This is such bad take. Perfection is impossible as well. But we should all strive to better ourselves. Objectivivity may be impossible. But journalists can still strive to be as unbiased as possible.

haberman 6y ago
It reminds me of the "All models are wrong" aphorism. It may be true, but it's still better to call the Earth a sphere than a plane or a torus. No one would defend a flat-earther on the basis that a sphere isn't a correct model, either.