6 ms·

> To a considerable degree, this commercial imperative determined the journalistic style, with its impersonal voice and pretense of objectivity. This completel

> To a considerable degree, this commercial imperative determined the journalistic style, with its impersonal voice and pretense of objectivity. This completely ignores the fact that - in the US at least - many newspapers started as organs of the local political parties. They always wanted to get their news out to their people. Then it went into full fledged "yellow journalism" that was all about the headline and engaging emotions vs objectivity.. which should sound familiar. And that was the late 1800s! Around 50-60 years ago, as "mass market" became a thing and ad revenue exploded, newspapers and journalism as a whole veered towards objectivity because the local furniture store wanted to advertise to everyone not just one party. But if you read interviews, memoirs, notes, and the like of the journalists for that era, their stated goal for being a journalist was "to change the world." We can debate the specifics of what that means but it's not interchangeable with "neutral observer and reporter of facts." Like many things, this appears to be a pendulum and it's swung from neutrality/objectivity back towards the opinion-based, light on facts approach for now. How long we stay there and the consequences are yet to be determined..

federona 6y ago
Philosophically even truth is an opinion. There is no such thing as truth, just a frame that you are objectively reporting from. Say you cover news about a certain group but don't cover news from another group. Or you report the facts only in the rhetoric of commonly held norms, like so and so nation committed atrocities, while our nation bombed insurgents backed by so and so and accidentally killed a bunch of children. You always report in frame even if done objectively, otherwise your journalism would be considered inflammatory and you would find yourself without a job. So yes there is pure propaganda, etc, but in general news is propaganda of stuff as they, whoever they may be, want you to know it. If you want real news, then go to the country they are talking about and observe it for yourself. You will find things a lot more mundane than they are made out to be for the vast majority of people living there, until that passive propaganda gets them bombed or economic sanctions destroy their livelihoods. The justification of which is made in the objective reporting, even if journalists don't want to change they do so every time they report something. It's in the nature of the frame and the rhetoric they are writing from.
- drdeca 6y ago
  > There is no such thing as truth, just a frame that you are objectively reporting from. Nah. “If someone tells you that there is no truth, they are telling you not to believe them. So don’t” - Idr who this is a quote from. The claim that there is no truth is a pointless one. Well, it is pointless to believe*. There may be uses to making the claim. *exception: if someone can observe your innermost beliefs and is threatening that if you don’t believe it, then they will do something you don’t want, then it could be worthwhile. But that’s true of any belief.
  - federona 6y ago
    > “If someone tells you that there is no truth, they are telling you not to believe them. So don’t” - Idr who this is a quote from. Look at the number 9, now if I tell you that it's in fact the number 6 and you are looking at it wrong. Who are you going to believe. Now imagine it's something much much more complicated and there is no time to write out all the facts that would let us conclude that it could be a 9 or a 6. Am I lying to you by telling you it's a 6? Am I not lying by omission? How can you not lie without omission, if you have a limited amount of space to tell a story, any story. Where do you tell the truth. That is to say okay there is truth, but it's only partial and when it comes to reporting it's always partial and therefore not impartial and therefore not objective. Unless by objective you mean you have an objective or an agenda that you are trying to forward with the news, and that's your partial truth.
    - burnthrow 6y ago
      That's the great thing about math: It doesn't care how sincerely you believe that 6 and 9 are the same number. In other words, the kind of game you're talking about can only go on for so long before cold reality makes itself known.
    - Gimpei 6y ago
      The problem with this argument is that you are presenting truth and falsity as a binary quantity. While it's correct that there is no statement free of bias, it does not follow that all statements are equally biased. Fox news seems pretty darn biased to me. The NY times is less biased, but it's definitely slipped a lot.

federona 6y ago

Philosophically even truth is an opinion. There is no such thing as truth, just a frame that you are objectively reporting from. Say you cover news about a certain group but don't cover news from another group. Or you report the facts only in the rhetoric of commonly held norms, like so and so nation committed atrocities, while our nation bombed insurgents backed by so and so and accidentally killed a bunch of children. You always report in frame even if done objectively, otherwise your journalism would be considered inflammatory and you would find yourself without a job. So yes there is pure propaganda, etc, but in general news is propaganda of stuff as they, whoever they may be, want you to know it. If you want real news, then go to the country they are talking about and observe it for yourself. You will find things a lot more mundane than they are made out to be for the vast majority of people living there, until that passive propaganda gets them bombed or economic sanctions destroy their livelihoods. The justification of which is made in the objective reporting, even if journalists don't want to change they do so every time they report something. It's in the nature of the frame and the rhetoric they are writing from.

drdeca 6y ago
> There is no such thing as truth, just a frame that you are objectively reporting from. Nah. “If someone tells you that there is no truth, they are telling you not to believe them. So don’t” - Idr who this is a quote from. The claim that there is no truth is a pointless one. Well, it is pointless to believe*. There may be uses to making the claim. *exception: if someone can observe your innermost beliefs and is threatening that if you don’t believe it, then they will do something you don’t want, then it could be worthwhile. But that’s true of any belief.
- federona 6y ago
  > “If someone tells you that there is no truth, they are telling you not to believe them. So don’t” - Idr who this is a quote from. Look at the number 9, now if I tell you that it's in fact the number 6 and you are looking at it wrong. Who are you going to believe. Now imagine it's something much much more complicated and there is no time to write out all the facts that would let us conclude that it could be a 9 or a 6. Am I lying to you by telling you it's a 6? Am I not lying by omission? How can you not lie without omission, if you have a limited amount of space to tell a story, any story. Where do you tell the truth. That is to say okay there is truth, but it's only partial and when it comes to reporting it's always partial and therefore not impartial and therefore not objective. Unless by objective you mean you have an objective or an agenda that you are trying to forward with the news, and that's your partial truth.
  - burnthrow 6y ago
    That's the great thing about math: It doesn't care how sincerely you believe that 6 and 9 are the same number. In other words, the kind of game you're talking about can only go on for so long before cold reality makes itself known.
  - Gimpei 6y ago
    The problem with this argument is that you are presenting truth and falsity as a binary quantity. While it's correct that there is no statement free of bias, it does not follow that all statements are equally biased. Fox news seems pretty darn biased to me. The NY times is less biased, but it's definitely slipped a lot.