4 ms·

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 varie

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.

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.