13 ms·

Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? I find it appalling how people believe there is such a thing as unopinionated journalism. There's not, es

by henvic 6y ago

Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? I find it appalling how people believe there is such a thing as unopinionated journalism. There's not, especially in a world where much media outlet income and even access to information comes from its association with state actors. In some - if not most - parts of the world, there are even supposedly impartial media outlets whose most income comes from advertisings for state campaigns and politicians' agendas. Exclusive perks and access to state authorities for journalists is also another problem. While many people might say that it's essential for them to have close access to presidents, governors, and lawmakers to inform the general public, no one can argue that this doesn't have implications in behavior. You get reporters traveling alongside politicians in taxpayer-paid aircraft, bypassing immigration protocols, getting celebrities associated with authority, and their integrity is likely going to mold even if it is hard to see.

rsynnott 6y ago
> In some - if not most - parts of the world, there are even supposedly impartial media outlets whose most income comes from advertisings for state campaigns and politicians' agendas. Some, but probably not most; most developed democracies _severely_ limit spending on political campaigning. The US is something of an oddity there.
benlumen 6y ago
> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? It depends where you are - I'm in the UK where TV news still has objectivity regulation. I know that's been gone in the US for a long time. In general though I think when there were fewer publications and delivery channels that we had to share together (the newspaper stand), journalists had to appeal to a wider audience than they do now. Personal devices mean they have a direct route to you, on an article-by-article basis. So they can write whatever lands in a niche.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  > I'm in the UK where TV news still has objectivity regulation That's only for the BBC, as far as I know. And one could, er, definitely question how well it worked in the last election.
  - benlumen 6y ago
    The BBC is impartial by charter but I think it's for all of them to some degree. Ofcom regulates it. Sky actually stopped carrying Fox News over here because of it.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    It should apply to all news covered by OFCOM. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/section-five-due-impartiality-accuracy https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-co...
- henvic 6y ago
  Are you telling me that the BBC is impartial? No, it cannot be for two things: 1. It's a state-owned media company. 2. TV licensing is a tax in the UK owners of TV appliances must pay to support it. You also have to pay if you ever visit the BBC on your computer, and so on. No way such an entity might be impartial. Another thing to consider: not being impartial is not a problem per se. However, when combined with state actors, this is unlimited unchecked power that can be a massive problem for society. It can brainwash people by imposing a view of the world fabricated by government rulers.
  - benlumen 6y ago
    I didn't mention the BBC in the comment you're replying to at all, I was talking about Ofcom impartiality regulations which are a separate thing that all TV broadcasters need to mind when reporting the news. I think you might need to learn a little more about this topic. As for the BBC, many of us here think the BBC lean left and are biased against the right-wing government for example.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  The BBC is in no way impartial. They have a very specific way of directing interviews and such that push the narrative in a direction they control.
  - benlumen 6y ago
    As I said to the other commenter, I didn't even mention the BBC in the comment you're responding to. Ofcom rules mean that all TV news broadcasters must be impartial (i.e. can't openly support a particular side). Do people outside the UK think we only have the BBC or something?
gmtx725 6y ago
Exactly. There is no such thing as 'objective' journalism, even if the facts of a piece of reporting are correct, there is still an enormous degree of subjectivity in choosing what to report in the first place or what to emphasise within a report. The best we can hope for IMO is journalism that is up front about it's biases and political slant and clearly distinguishes factual and opinion reporting.
- hef19898 6y ago
  This, one hundred times! Journalists are humans like we all. Expecting them to be completely unbiased would be too much. But should hold them to the professional standard of being open about there biases, and be as neutral as possible in their reporting.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  There certainly is objective reporting. That online outlets put more focus on editorials doesn't change that. I couldn't name a US example to be honest, but the classic profession of journalism goes to great length to ensure objectivity. Maybe don't call it objectivity and just detachment if that resonates more.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Detachment and objectivity are much different things. Detachment can create an illusion of objectivity under some conditions, but it is not the same at all.
    - raxxorrax 6y ago
      Completely true if you are meticulous. But it stands in contrast to activist journalism and would already lead to much better results, even if it isn't the same.
  - _jal 6y ago
    That is referred to as the "view from nowhere". It is just a stylistic choice that, among other things, attempts to both sound authoritative and hide the speaker. More and more it just sounds pompous, dodgy and artificial to me.
notmyfriend 6y ago
Yes there might not be anything called objective journalism but that does not mean journalists in the past did not strive to. Now they don't even try and we have entered the age of the activist journalist.
vsareto 6y ago
>I find it appalling how people believe there is such a thing as unopinionated journalism It could be, but it would turn most news organizations into simple notification services that resemble weather reports. Some folks desire the opinions and biased views.
- flamble 6y ago
  Even that would be unfeasible. To report on most significant events, even for a simple factual description of what happened, you have to decide which of a variety of contradictory sources is correct, which is one kind of bias, or list all of the incompatible accounts, according equal credence to each, which is another kind of bias, even when the number of competing versions is manageable. In practice, journalists have to make judgments about what is likely to be true or relevant, and historically have been egregiously wrong about that in highly predictable ways.
  - vsareto 6y ago
    >To report on practically any political event, even for a simple factual description of what happened, you have to decide which of a variety of contradictory sources is correct It would be more like, "This campaign held an event at X location, here's a 90 minute uncut video of the stage" and that's the entire post. No quotes, official statements, no conclusions by reporters, just that it happened with proof. The weather isn't perfect either, but we could strip out 95% of what's in most news reports. It's not completely free from bias, but there's no proof true objectivity exists in journalism. All news is biased against people who reflexively deny the obvious (like the earth is flat). Politics is tricky anyway because people intentionally lie, so you go from trying to sort out bias to actually discovering lies. That kind of reporting cannot be unbiased because you think they're lying and they pretend they're not.
  - CM30 6y ago
    Seems like the news sections on many wikis might be pretty close to that. For example, in Wikipedia's 'In the News' section right now: > Comet NEOWISE (pictured) is visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere. Or from the Mario Wiki news section: > Donkey Kong Country was released on Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online on July 15, 2020. A completely objective news source would probably be that sort of thing for every story on the site. They'd be about two paragraphs long, be almost a bullet point list of facts and dates, and likely not be all that interesting to read. But I guess it could be possible.
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
It's not black and white and this is a common attack on the press - without which this nation would fall. The media can be more, or less objective. It can be more, or less impartial. Each source can have bias, more, or less. The problem becomes when sources centralize around political ideas and competition decreases. What was once nationwide respected newspapers and 1 hour evening news, became 3 major 24/7 news-channels, decimated newspaper industry controlled by conglomerates, and social media being gamed by everyone squeezing dollars out of an uneducated populace. I genuinely challenge people on here to read old newspapers and look at the difference in reporting. There were far more newspapers - every major city had one. The nightly news didn't have time to have a "panel" of "experts" discuss how "issue x will destroy america." And instead of addressing the real issue - the money behind politics (i.e. citizens united, coinciding with social media), you say it's "inherent to media." No it is not. media needs to be free and it needs to be decentralized. And no, it does not need to be perfect.
- godelzilla 6y ago
  Old newspapers? Like segregation era? Super objective times.
  - doctorOb 6y ago
    Or, more charitably, the 90s?
    - watwut 6y ago
      This is one journalist using 1996 is example of biased reporting https://twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status/1280862103297875969 https://twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status/12808621032978759...
      - koheripbal 6y ago
        An anecdote is not evidence of anything.
patresh 6y ago
I agree that there is no perfect objectivity journalism, even the choice of reporting something or not is a subjective choice. However, I find it misleading if not dangerous to claim that there is not even a continuum of objectivity or impartiality in journalism. If we just say that there is no impartiality, we put the news outlets that do a lot of research and strive to give news reports painting a balanced view of reality at the same level as propaganda machines that completely disregard facts.
tux1968 6y ago
> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? There's a difference between having a bias in your reporting and being an activist. Of course every viewpoint is biased. At the very least, there was always a heavy American bias in the mainstream media. But today they're rabidly and without much self reflection trying to destroy any opposition to creating a society at large that strictly conforms to their vision for the world. And they're doing so without much integrity or a commitment to accept those with alternative ideas as having any legitimacy.
- take_a_breath 6y ago
  ==But today they're rabidly and without much self reflection trying to destroy any opposition to creating a society at large that strictly conforms to their vision for the world.== This assumes that every member of the “mainstream media” (an oft-used, but rarely defined phrase) shares the exact same viewpoint. That seems bizarre given that they are direct competitors. They are driven by money more than ideology. We keep blaming “the media” for our ails when all they do is show us the things we want. Maybe we should look in the mirror?
  - tux1968 6y ago
    Of course we all have a personal responsibility to help shape a world worth living in. But there is a reason that every coup d'état also takes control of the media. It is a foundational building block of a cohesive society. If the media is corrupted, the world becomes much harder to navigate as an individual, and even moreso as a community.
  - reportgunner 6y ago
    > We keep blaming “the media” for our ails when all they do is show us the things we want. Maybe we should look in the mirror? The problem I have with your comment is that it states that "the media" are not a uniform group with hive mind, but then it implies that the whole population of the Earth is. (all they do is show _us_ the things _we_ want
    - 6y ago
lazyjones 6y ago
> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? 100%? No. But it was much more objective and impartial. Journalism ethics were more important than pandering to specific target audiences. Now it's become a popularity contest and truth is very unpopular.
bitcurious 6y ago
> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? "Objective" or "impartial" were never descriptive - they were aspirational. It's a philosophy that says "check your assumptions" and "let the reader draw conclusions." It's this aspiration that appears to be leaving the industry. I recently saw an article in the NY Times. Headline: "Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are A Major Source of Cases." Body (summarized): 650 cases linked to churches and religious events since the start of the pandemic. I believe this was published on the same day that the US crossed 3,000,000 cases, meaning that this "major source of cases" was linked to 0.022% of all cases. So, why I brought this up. Is there a fully objective way to share this news? Of course not - the very act of publishing an article about church transmission is political - looking for that data was a result of bias. But there clearly was a more objective way to publish it, by changing the title from one that's so obviously bullshit to one that just shares the facts. Edit: it appears that NYT changed the headline 2 days after publishing. DDG search, top result is the old headline, click through and it has a new one: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=churches+were+eager+to+reopen+site%3Anytimes.com&t=h_&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=churches+were+eager+to+reopen+site...
- II2II 6y ago
  > Is there a fully objective way to share this news? Of course not - the very act of publishing an article about church transmission is political - looking for that data was a result of bias. There are several ways to be objective about it. One is to write an article about the spread of covid in social gatherings, and include church gatherings as part of that piece. Another is to put the data into context, quantitatively. Yet another is to avoid the use of charged words, phrases, or examples. That article was designed to be political, so that is how it ended up. I'm not saying that you could write an article that everyone agreed was apolitical. Heck, if an evidence based article was written about the roundness of the Earth, someone would find a way to politicize it. Yet an article can be written that most people would agree is factual and avoids bias.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Headlines are frequently clickbait, unfortunately. You have to read the actual article and then decide hire slanted it is. It’s not uncommon for the article to actually be pretty good and then an editor slapped a bad headline on it.
gadders 6y ago
People aren't perfect, but I believe journalists can at least make a good faith effort to put both sides of a story. Or be open about whether they want to be an activist with a byline or not.
- mountainboot 6y ago
  The problem is there isn't always 2 sides to a story. Sometimes there is one, sometimes there are multiple. If one side says it is raining, one side says it is not, the journalist should stick their hand out the window, not report the two sides.
  - gadders 6y ago
    Very few news articles are this cut and dried. EG for reporting on an earthquake, fair enough. However, describing something more contentious like the economy or immigration policy, they absolutely should make a good faith effort to report both sides fairly.
II2II 6y ago
> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? With respect to the mainstream media, there was always some bias in terms of what was reported. What we are seeing today is something entirely different and very dangerous. The original article pointed to a couple of the problems with the media today, things like there being disagreement over what the facts are and how balanced reporting has a tendency to misrepresent the facts. I would go a step further by suggesting that facts and context have been abandoned altogether. The end result is that two media outlets can tell two very different stories about the same issue. Ignoring facts is how we end up with protests being described as riots, or being described as protests with undue emphasis upon violence (which is a clear case of balance misrepresenting the facts). At the opposite end of the spectrum, I have seen individual claims left unquestioned in the name of moral clarity. The sad part is that reporters could take a step back, look at what is happening at a societal level, and have damning evidence that backs their moral clarity with facts. If you believe that this is nothing new, I would suggest pulling up a full newspaper from thirty years ago. You would find that news reporting is clearly separated from other content. You would also find that moral clarity is in there, but it would be clearly presented in forms such as the editorial or human interest story. Lines were drawn instead of blurred.
zug_zug 6y ago
I agree that it seems like fallacy to think there was some golden age of neutrality (iirc Ben Franklin bought newspapers which he used to stir up revolution), I'd be curious to here which era supposedly had neutrality. However there are degrees, and this does NOT mean that neutrality is not worth fighting for. The points about authoritarian states serve to highlight how much worse it could be without a constant pressure toward objectivity (or as close as we can get).
joe_the_user 6y ago
Journalism has always involved the outlets having a broad social/political position and each story being spun to get attention. The claim to impartiality and unbiased-ness was indeed a way for certain papers to enhance their credibility and it's been concentrated more in the US than other countries, where each political party having a newspaper is a situation that doesn't raise eyebrows (still, papers in other countries do sometimes try for the mantle of objectivity, independence and so). That said, there are degrees of spin and non-spin. The papers that make up stories are below those that exaggerate facts who are below those that get the facts correct but use "framing" to put forward their positions. I think mass support for false facts is new for the industrializing world. It's kind of a throwback to times of pernicious superstition. And the result one can imagine are thus disturbing.

by henvic 6y ago

rsynnott 6y ago

> In some - if not most - parts of the world, there are even supposedly impartial media outlets whose most income comes from advertisings for state campaigns and politicians' agendas. Some, but probably not most; most developed democracies _severely_ limit spending on political campaigning. The US is something of an oddity there.

benlumen 6y ago

> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? It depends where you are - I'm in the UK where TV news still has objectivity regulation. I know that's been gone in the US for a long time. In general though I think when there were fewer publications and delivery channels that we had to share together (the newspaper stand), journalists had to appeal to a wider audience than they do now. Personal devices mean they have a direct route to you, on an article-by-article basis. So they can write whatever lands in a niche.

rsynnott 6y ago
> I'm in the UK where TV news still has objectivity regulation That's only for the BBC, as far as I know. And one could, er, definitely question how well it worked in the last election.
- benlumen 6y ago
  The BBC is impartial by charter but I think it's for all of them to some degree. Ofcom regulates it. Sky actually stopped carrying Fox News over here because of it.
- DanBC 6y ago
  It should apply to all news covered by OFCOM. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/section-five-due-impartiality-accuracy https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-co...
henvic 6y ago
Are you telling me that the BBC is impartial? No, it cannot be for two things: 1. It's a state-owned media company. 2. TV licensing is a tax in the UK owners of TV appliances must pay to support it. You also have to pay if you ever visit the BBC on your computer, and so on. No way such an entity might be impartial. Another thing to consider: not being impartial is not a problem per se. However, when combined with state actors, this is unlimited unchecked power that can be a massive problem for society. It can brainwash people by imposing a view of the world fabricated by government rulers.
- benlumen 6y ago
  I didn't mention the BBC in the comment you're replying to at all, I was talking about Ofcom impartiality regulations which are a separate thing that all TV broadcasters need to mind when reporting the news. I think you might need to learn a little more about this topic. As for the BBC, many of us here think the BBC lean left and are biased against the right-wing government for example.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
The BBC is in no way impartial. They have a very specific way of directing interviews and such that push the narrative in a direction they control.
- benlumen 6y ago
  As I said to the other commenter, I didn't even mention the BBC in the comment you're responding to. Ofcom rules mean that all TV news broadcasters must be impartial (i.e. can't openly support a particular side). Do people outside the UK think we only have the BBC or something?

gmtx725 6y ago

Exactly. There is no such thing as 'objective' journalism, even if the facts of a piece of reporting are correct, there is still an enormous degree of subjectivity in choosing what to report in the first place or what to emphasise within a report. The best we can hope for IMO is journalism that is up front about it's biases and political slant and clearly distinguishes factual and opinion reporting.

hef19898 6y ago
This, one hundred times! Journalists are humans like we all. Expecting them to be completely unbiased would be too much. But should hold them to the professional standard of being open about there biases, and be as neutral as possible in their reporting.
raxxorrax 6y ago
There certainly is objective reporting. That online outlets put more focus on editorials doesn't change that. I couldn't name a US example to be honest, but the classic profession of journalism goes to great length to ensure objectivity. Maybe don't call it objectivity and just detachment if that resonates more.
- watwut 6y ago
  Detachment and objectivity are much different things. Detachment can create an illusion of objectivity under some conditions, but it is not the same at all.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    Completely true if you are meticulous. But it stands in contrast to activist journalism and would already lead to much better results, even if it isn't the same.
- _jal 6y ago
  That is referred to as the "view from nowhere". It is just a stylistic choice that, among other things, attempts to both sound authoritative and hide the speaker. More and more it just sounds pompous, dodgy and artificial to me.

notmyfriend 6y ago

Yes there might not be anything called objective journalism but that does not mean journalists in the past did not strive to. Now they don't even try and we have entered the age of the activist journalist.

vsareto 6y ago

>I find it appalling how people believe there is such a thing as unopinionated journalism It could be, but it would turn most news organizations into simple notification services that resemble weather reports. Some folks desire the opinions and biased views.

flamble 6y ago
Even that would be unfeasible. To report on most significant events, even for a simple factual description of what happened, you have to decide which of a variety of contradictory sources is correct, which is one kind of bias, or list all of the incompatible accounts, according equal credence to each, which is another kind of bias, even when the number of competing versions is manageable. In practice, journalists have to make judgments about what is likely to be true or relevant, and historically have been egregiously wrong about that in highly predictable ways.
- vsareto 6y ago
  >To report on practically any political event, even for a simple factual description of what happened, you have to decide which of a variety of contradictory sources is correct It would be more like, "This campaign held an event at X location, here's a 90 minute uncut video of the stage" and that's the entire post. No quotes, official statements, no conclusions by reporters, just that it happened with proof. The weather isn't perfect either, but we could strip out 95% of what's in most news reports. It's not completely free from bias, but there's no proof true objectivity exists in journalism. All news is biased against people who reflexively deny the obvious (like the earth is flat). Politics is tricky anyway because people intentionally lie, so you go from trying to sort out bias to actually discovering lies. That kind of reporting cannot be unbiased because you think they're lying and they pretend they're not.
- CM30 6y ago
  Seems like the news sections on many wikis might be pretty close to that. For example, in Wikipedia's 'In the News' section right now: > Comet NEOWISE (pictured) is visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere. Or from the Mario Wiki news section: > Donkey Kong Country was released on Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online on July 15, 2020. A completely objective news source would probably be that sort of thing for every story on the site. They'd be about two paragraphs long, be almost a bullet point list of facts and dates, and likely not be all that interesting to read. But I guess it could be possible.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago

It's not black and white and this is a common attack on the press - without which this nation would fall. The media can be more, or less objective. It can be more, or less impartial. Each source can have bias, more, or less. The problem becomes when sources centralize around political ideas and competition decreases. What was once nationwide respected newspapers and 1 hour evening news, became 3 major 24/7 news-channels, decimated newspaper industry controlled by conglomerates, and social media being gamed by everyone squeezing dollars out of an uneducated populace. I genuinely challenge people on here to read old newspapers and look at the difference in reporting. There were far more newspapers - every major city had one. The nightly news didn't have time to have a "panel" of "experts" discuss how "issue x will destroy america." And instead of addressing the real issue - the money behind politics (i.e. citizens united, coinciding with social media), you say it's "inherent to media." No it is not. media needs to be free and it needs to be decentralized. And no, it does not need to be perfect.

godelzilla 6y ago
Old newspapers? Like segregation era? Super objective times.
- doctorOb 6y ago
  Or, more charitably, the 90s?
  - watwut 6y ago
    This is one journalist using 1996 is example of biased reporting https://twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status/1280862103297875969 https://twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status/12808621032978759...
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      An anecdote is not evidence of anything.

patresh 6y ago

I agree that there is no perfect objectivity journalism, even the choice of reporting something or not is a subjective choice. However, I find it misleading if not dangerous to claim that there is not even a continuum of objectivity or impartiality in journalism. If we just say that there is no impartiality, we put the news outlets that do a lot of research and strive to give news reports painting a balanced view of reality at the same level as propaganda machines that completely disregard facts.

tux1968 6y ago

> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? There's a difference between having a bias in your reporting and being an activist. Of course every viewpoint is biased. At the very least, there was always a heavy American bias in the mainstream media. But today they're rabidly and without much self reflection trying to destroy any opposition to creating a society at large that strictly conforms to their vision for the world. And they're doing so without much integrity or a commitment to accept those with alternative ideas as having any legitimacy.

take_a_breath 6y ago
==But today they're rabidly and without much self reflection trying to destroy any opposition to creating a society at large that strictly conforms to their vision for the world.== This assumes that every member of the “mainstream media” (an oft-used, but rarely defined phrase) shares the exact same viewpoint. That seems bizarre given that they are direct competitors. They are driven by money more than ideology. We keep blaming “the media” for our ails when all they do is show us the things we want. Maybe we should look in the mirror?
- tux1968 6y ago
  Of course we all have a personal responsibility to help shape a world worth living in. But there is a reason that every coup d'état also takes control of the media. It is a foundational building block of a cohesive society. If the media is corrupted, the world becomes much harder to navigate as an individual, and even moreso as a community.
- reportgunner 6y ago
  > We keep blaming “the media” for our ails when all they do is show us the things we want. Maybe we should look in the mirror? The problem I have with your comment is that it states that "the media" are not a uniform group with hive mind, but then it implies that the whole population of the Earth is. (all they do is show _us_ the things _we_ want
  - 6y ago

lazyjones 6y ago

> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? 100%? No. But it was much more objective and impartial. Journalism ethics were more important than pandering to specific target audiences. Now it's become a popularity contest and truth is very unpopular.

bitcurious 6y ago

> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? "Objective" or "impartial" were never descriptive - they were aspirational. It's a philosophy that says "check your assumptions" and "let the reader draw conclusions." It's this aspiration that appears to be leaving the industry. I recently saw an article in the NY Times. Headline: "Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are A Major Source of Cases." Body (summarized): 650 cases linked to churches and religious events since the start of the pandemic. I believe this was published on the same day that the US crossed 3,000,000 cases, meaning that this "major source of cases" was linked to 0.022% of all cases. So, why I brought this up. Is there a fully objective way to share this news? Of course not - the very act of publishing an article about church transmission is political - looking for that data was a result of bias. But there clearly was a more objective way to publish it, by changing the title from one that's so obviously bullshit to one that just shares the facts. Edit: it appears that NYT changed the headline 2 days after publishing. DDG search, top result is the old headline, click through and it has a new one: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=churches+were+eager+to+reopen+site%3Anytimes.com&t=h_&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=churches+were+eager+to+reopen+site...

II2II 6y ago
> Is there a fully objective way to share this news? Of course not - the very act of publishing an article about church transmission is political - looking for that data was a result of bias. There are several ways to be objective about it. One is to write an article about the spread of covid in social gatherings, and include church gatherings as part of that piece. Another is to put the data into context, quantitatively. Yet another is to avoid the use of charged words, phrases, or examples. That article was designed to be political, so that is how it ended up. I'm not saying that you could write an article that everyone agreed was apolitical. Heck, if an evidence based article was written about the roundness of the Earth, someone would find a way to politicize it. Yet an article can be written that most people would agree is factual and avoids bias.
amanaplanacanal 6y ago
Headlines are frequently clickbait, unfortunately. You have to read the actual article and then decide hire slanted it is. It’s not uncommon for the article to actually be pretty good and then an editor slapped a bad headline on it.

gadders 6y ago

People aren't perfect, but I believe journalists can at least make a good faith effort to put both sides of a story. Or be open about whether they want to be an activist with a byline or not.

mountainboot 6y ago
The problem is there isn't always 2 sides to a story. Sometimes there is one, sometimes there are multiple. If one side says it is raining, one side says it is not, the journalist should stick their hand out the window, not report the two sides.
- gadders 6y ago
  Very few news articles are this cut and dried. EG for reporting on an earthquake, fair enough. However, describing something more contentious like the economy or immigration policy, they absolutely should make a good faith effort to report both sides fairly.

II2II 6y ago

> Was the mainstream media ever objective or impartial? With respect to the mainstream media, there was always some bias in terms of what was reported. What we are seeing today is something entirely different and very dangerous. The original article pointed to a couple of the problems with the media today, things like there being disagreement over what the facts are and how balanced reporting has a tendency to misrepresent the facts. I would go a step further by suggesting that facts and context have been abandoned altogether. The end result is that two media outlets can tell two very different stories about the same issue. Ignoring facts is how we end up with protests being described as riots, or being described as protests with undue emphasis upon violence (which is a clear case of balance misrepresenting the facts). At the opposite end of the spectrum, I have seen individual claims left unquestioned in the name of moral clarity. The sad part is that reporters could take a step back, look at what is happening at a societal level, and have damning evidence that backs their moral clarity with facts. If you believe that this is nothing new, I would suggest pulling up a full newspaper from thirty years ago. You would find that news reporting is clearly separated from other content. You would also find that moral clarity is in there, but it would be clearly presented in forms such as the editorial or human interest story. Lines were drawn instead of blurred.

zug_zug 6y ago

I agree that it seems like fallacy to think there was some golden age of neutrality (iirc Ben Franklin bought newspapers which he used to stir up revolution), I'd be curious to here which era supposedly had neutrality. However there are degrees, and this does NOT mean that neutrality is not worth fighting for. The points about authoritarian states serve to highlight how much worse it could be without a constant pressure toward objectivity (or as close as we can get).

joe_the_user 6y ago

Journalism has always involved the outlets having a broad social/political position and each story being spun to get attention. The claim to impartiality and unbiased-ness was indeed a way for certain papers to enhance their credibility and it's been concentrated more in the US than other countries, where each political party having a newspaper is a situation that doesn't raise eyebrows (still, papers in other countries do sometimes try for the mantle of objectivity, independence and so). That said, there are degrees of spin and non-spin. The papers that make up stories are below those that exaggerate facts who are below those that get the facts correct but use "framing" to put forward their positions. I think mass support for false facts is new for the industrializing world. It's kind of a throwback to times of pernicious superstition. And the result one can imagine are thus disturbing.