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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 cert

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
      Okay, in grey areas there is even more room for telling partial truths. If something objective as a number can lead to a valid disagreement, then what hope do we have for complicated political issues. To me in the end it breaks down into complicated power relations. We can tell whichever shade of grey that we want to tell that those who are listening to us what to hear in the frame and the rhetoric which appeals to them. Fox news is biased to tell the partial truth of a certain demographic which feels empowered by that rhetoric. If more people believe reality as told by Fox News it gives them more power within the system to get whatever they think it is that they want. Currently they are going after Cuomo, a democrat, in the sidebars there are criticisms of cancel culture.
    - caseysoftware 6y ago
      > The NY times is less biased, but it's definitely slipped a lot. The article describes the NYT's explicit decision to reject objectivity and engage in active advocacy. That's not a "slip" If you believe they're "less biased", it's likely because you agree with a) their approach or b) their goals. Either way, it translates to "bias is fine as long as I agree with it" which IS the major thesis of the entire post-journalism analysis.
  - techbio 6y ago
    The words in "objective truth", and in messaging to "serve an objective" are spelled the same, but have different definitions, and meanings. If you (a) know what you are saying and do not (b) intend to muddy the waters, you will explicitly note the difference.
- tt433 6y ago
  We're just meat bags with terrible sensory perception and reasoning skills. This is the reason I am more open to claims of "no reality" and the like. Plato's cave but no one sees the whole picture
  - drdeca 6y ago
    The claim “we cannot ever know anything with absolute perfect certainty” is a quite different statement than “nothing is true”. Even “we aren’t able to properly conceptualize any true statements” is, while not plausible, is still better than “nothing is true”. (It may be that many things we think are true are fundamentally confused/slightly-nonsensical in ways that we can’t correct by virtue of how our thought processes work, but I don’t consider it plausible that nothing we can believe is entirely true.)
slibhb 6y ago
> Philosophically even truth is an opinion. There is no such thing as truth, just a frame that you are objectively reporting from. This attitude is, at the bottom, responsible for the situation described in this article. The truth is an ideal and when we pursue that ideal, things go well. When we stop pursuing it, we get "post-journalism".
- federona 6y ago
  > The truth is an ideal and when we pursue that ideal, things go well. When we stop pursuing it, we get "post-journalism". My response to that is that this idea is subterfuge for resolving complicating political problems with propaganda rather than by proper system design. We are in this situation, because propaganda has lost its power over the masses after 100 years. We need better ways to resolve problems that appealing to ideals while a select elite push their agenda on the people who accept it unquestioningly. In many ways our methods of dealing with this has been akin to religion, which also appeals to religious ideals to gloss over real issues and silence them.
  - mc32 6y ago
    I don't think propaganda has lost its power. To me its more powerful than ever. For a different example, look at advertising. It as well is more successful than ever despite people knowing full well what it is, how it works and how it affects them.
  - slibhb 6y ago
    The notion that we can replace ideals with "proper systems design" is called Positivism. We've tried it, and variants like Marxism. None of them work. Humans are limited animals. Enlightenment ideals, which are (yes) secularized religions concepts, are the best we've been able to do so far. Maybe at some point in the future we'll be able to do better but I'm not holding my breath.
    - federona 6y ago
      > None of them work. Except when some humans which at the time were more backwards than the leaders of the world tried, they were simply shut down using propaganda and force. So as to deem what they were attempting to do completely feeble... mostly due to them being against this secular religion. It was in many ways a religious war in idealized secular terms. Therefore I would argue that no actual attempt has been made, because the power structure likes it this way. Their secular religious clergy does well for themselves in it and they don't want revolutions to change it. Not that it can't be done. No one has been allowed to actually try in good faith.
mushbino 6y ago
Everyone is talking around in circles here about what truth means and how journalists should handle bias. Truth in terms of journalism means, is this a story made of facts that would benefit the average citizen without regard to physical and social factors vs is this a story that skews or withholds facts for the benefit of a small group of elites with an outsized influence.
- federona 6y ago
  Average citizen of only your country belonging to the majority, I guess that's what you mean, because the content of the news these days could be very dangerous if you are not a citizen of the country doing the reporting. And if you belong to a minority from a country or an ethnicity that is not favoured it could be even more biased against people's perception of you as a person.
  - mushbino 6y ago
    That's exactly right and journalistic standards have been a reflection of the zeitgeist, for better or worse. It's never tended to be fair to those who have no power at all. Historically, the fairness and honesty part has skewed more towards the white middle class, shifting to the upper white middle class. The window has been shifting more toward the upper end. It's almost in the realm of competing propaganda.

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
    Okay, in grey areas there is even more room for telling partial truths. If something objective as a number can lead to a valid disagreement, then what hope do we have for complicated political issues. To me in the end it breaks down into complicated power relations. We can tell whichever shade of grey that we want to tell that those who are listening to us what to hear in the frame and the rhetoric which appeals to them. Fox news is biased to tell the partial truth of a certain demographic which feels empowered by that rhetoric. If more people believe reality as told by Fox News it gives them more power within the system to get whatever they think it is that they want. Currently they are going after Cuomo, a democrat, in the sidebars there are criticisms of cancel culture.
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    > The NY times is less biased, but it's definitely slipped a lot. The article describes the NYT's explicit decision to reject objectivity and engage in active advocacy. That's not a "slip" If you believe they're "less biased", it's likely because you agree with a) their approach or b) their goals. Either way, it translates to "bias is fine as long as I agree with it" which IS the major thesis of the entire post-journalism analysis.
- techbio 6y ago
  The words in "objective truth", and in messaging to "serve an objective" are spelled the same, but have different definitions, and meanings. If you (a) know what you are saying and do not (b) intend to muddy the waters, you will explicitly note the difference.
tt433 6y ago
We're just meat bags with terrible sensory perception and reasoning skills. This is the reason I am more open to claims of "no reality" and the like. Plato's cave but no one sees the whole picture
- drdeca 6y ago
  The claim “we cannot ever know anything with absolute perfect certainty” is a quite different statement than “nothing is true”. Even “we aren’t able to properly conceptualize any true statements” is, while not plausible, is still better than “nothing is true”. (It may be that many things we think are true are fundamentally confused/slightly-nonsensical in ways that we can’t correct by virtue of how our thought processes work, but I don’t consider it plausible that nothing we can believe is entirely true.)

slibhb 6y ago

> Philosophically even truth is an opinion. There is no such thing as truth, just a frame that you are objectively reporting from. This attitude is, at the bottom, responsible for the situation described in this article. The truth is an ideal and when we pursue that ideal, things go well. When we stop pursuing it, we get "post-journalism".

federona 6y ago
> The truth is an ideal and when we pursue that ideal, things go well. When we stop pursuing it, we get "post-journalism". My response to that is that this idea is subterfuge for resolving complicating political problems with propaganda rather than by proper system design. We are in this situation, because propaganda has lost its power over the masses after 100 years. We need better ways to resolve problems that appealing to ideals while a select elite push their agenda on the people who accept it unquestioningly. In many ways our methods of dealing with this has been akin to religion, which also appeals to religious ideals to gloss over real issues and silence them.
- mc32 6y ago
  I don't think propaganda has lost its power. To me its more powerful than ever. For a different example, look at advertising. It as well is more successful than ever despite people knowing full well what it is, how it works and how it affects them.
- slibhb 6y ago
  The notion that we can replace ideals with "proper systems design" is called Positivism. We've tried it, and variants like Marxism. None of them work. Humans are limited animals. Enlightenment ideals, which are (yes) secularized religions concepts, are the best we've been able to do so far. Maybe at some point in the future we'll be able to do better but I'm not holding my breath.
  - federona 6y ago
    > None of them work. Except when some humans which at the time were more backwards than the leaders of the world tried, they were simply shut down using propaganda and force. So as to deem what they were attempting to do completely feeble... mostly due to them being against this secular religion. It was in many ways a religious war in idealized secular terms. Therefore I would argue that no actual attempt has been made, because the power structure likes it this way. Their secular religious clergy does well for themselves in it and they don't want revolutions to change it. Not that it can't be done. No one has been allowed to actually try in good faith.

mushbino 6y ago

Everyone is talking around in circles here about what truth means and how journalists should handle bias. Truth in terms of journalism means, is this a story made of facts that would benefit the average citizen without regard to physical and social factors vs is this a story that skews or withholds facts for the benefit of a small group of elites with an outsized influence.

federona 6y ago
Average citizen of only your country belonging to the majority, I guess that's what you mean, because the content of the news these days could be very dangerous if you are not a citizen of the country doing the reporting. And if you belong to a minority from a country or an ethnicity that is not favoured it could be even more biased against people's perception of you as a person.
- mushbino 6y ago
  That's exactly right and journalistic standards have been a reflection of the zeitgeist, for better or worse. It's never tended to be fair to those who have no power at all. Historically, the fairness and honesty part has skewed more towards the white middle class, shifting to the upper white middle class. The window has been shifting more toward the upper end. It's almost in the realm of competing propaganda.