4 ms·

The real world doesn’t work like that and facts and opinions are almost always a mixed bucket. What you consider evidence or fact is not what someone else does.

The real world doesn’t work like that and facts and opinions are almost always a mixed bucket. What you consider evidence or fact is not what someone else does. Implicitly there is a possibility any claim is wrong with a normal title, but some titles and articles bias the user. If you titled an article “Giantrobot claims those aren’t examples of manipulative language” that’s fine but if the same article was titled “Without evidence, giantrobot claims those aren’t examples of manipulative language” then that is bias. Because your level of what constitutes fact, opinion, and evidence is different from everyone else’s. Another example: What is evidence someone was in a specific room at a specific time? Someone seeing someone come out of it? Seeing someone with an item that came from the room? Someone else saw someone come out? Or do you yourself need to physically see it? There are just so many levels. In your example of the sky made of honey, don’t you think without evidence isn’t needed at all to let someone understand the facts. Isn’t allowing the claim to speak for itself do the same job.

giantrobot 6y ago
First, bias happens. A journalist should aim to be objective but they are not saints of objectivity. Second, it's not unreasonable to editorialize a little bit when discussing statements that appear to a reasonable person to be made in bad faith or are self serving. If I routinely made claims of fact about the honey-like nature of the heavens despite frequent demonstrations of my claims' absurdity and falseness, it would not at all be unreasonable or "biased" to point out a priori that I still had not produced any evidence of my claims. It's certainly not unreasonable if I run late night TV commercials asking for money from pensioners to launch a mission to collect sky honey. As for evidence of an event occurring, you'll also notice journalists go out of their way to second source statements of facts. They want first-hand accounts from named sources in order to put an identity and reputation up for scrutiny. Ideally they also want a second named source but failing that they will often accept unnamed sources (to whom the journalist knows the identity but does not publicly reveal it). This is a common practice specifically because journalists are rarely in the room when and where events occur.

giantrobot 6y ago

First, bias happens. A journalist should aim to be objective but they are not saints of objectivity. Second, it's not unreasonable to editorialize a little bit when discussing statements that appear to a reasonable person to be made in bad faith or are self serving. If I routinely made claims of fact about the honey-like nature of the heavens despite frequent demonstrations of my claims' absurdity and falseness, it would not at all be unreasonable or "biased" to point out a priori that I still had not produced any evidence of my claims. It's certainly not unreasonable if I run late night TV commercials asking for money from pensioners to launch a mission to collect sky honey. As for evidence of an event occurring, you'll also notice journalists go out of their way to second source statements of facts. They want first-hand accounts from named sources in order to put an identity and reputation up for scrutiny. Ideally they also want a second named source but failing that they will often accept unnamed sources (to whom the journalist knows the identity but does not publicly reveal it). This is a common practice specifically because journalists are rarely in the room when and where events occur.