4 ms·

They used to try. Surely you can conceptualize a spectrum whereby on one the one side, people try very hard to be objective and be good at it, then where maybe

They used to try. Surely you can conceptualize a spectrum whereby on one the one side, people try very hard to be objective and be good at it, then where maybe they try a little less hard, or lack knowledge, or whatnot, and then continuing on the spectrum, where people throw up their hands and proclaim that no one can be objective, so who cares anyway. I cannot accept the framing as only the last one: that we've magically discovered being unbiased is no longer a worthwhile goal, so throw up our hands and take a stand on every controversial topic, pick a side every time. No.

runarberg 5y ago
Individual journalists indeed tried (and still do), however editors and upper management have always tried to steer their staff in the direction which mostly benefits their shareholders or their biggest advertisers. If journalists still persist and write stories exposing the wrong people, those journalists do loose their jobs and their stories do get canned or watered down (e.g. with equal presentation of “the other side”). Editors aren’t always evil and do this on purpose, however as humans we all have implicit biases. And our biases increase if we feel like we owe somebody a favor (this is why doctors are not allowed to accept gifts from pharmaceutical companies in many countries). If upper management tells a senior editor that company A is their biggest advertiser, and a journalist tells a story unfavorable to company A, then the senior editor might feel like company A doesn’t deserve this treatment and orders a counter story which exonerates the company to be presented on the same page.
- lazide 5y ago
  Eh, journalists are human and many have very strong political and ideological views that are quite apparent in their writing. Editors try to tie together the paper into a coherent voice and brand, which also needs to be able to ‘feed itself’ somehow. I wouldn’t put anyone on a high horse here.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    Yeah, just look at the following: 1. I believe that I am a rational human being 2. My rational way of thinking has lead me to certain set of beliefs about the world and how it operates 3. I don't think about these beliefs all the time, because they make sense to me, but I reserve the right to change them should my perception change 4. It may take a while for my beliefs to change since these are conclusions I have made after thinking about topics rationally for a period of time. A sunk cost of sorts, if you will. I think that most people would see that list and say hey, there's a person who is probably rational and introspective. Now add the following: 0. I am a journalist 5. I report facts objectively but my decision making process on what is important to the reader may be affected by my human brain and my idea of the situation garnered from my experience with the subject matter and my human beliefs This still isn't the dreaded "media bias," although it's clearly a bias. We have more accurate journalism right now than in any other part of human history. We just have more editorialising too. What I'm specifically arguing against is that there was ever a time when there WASN'T bias in journalism. That's nonsense.
  - runarberg 5y ago
    Journalism is a craft which takes a level of expertise to master. Many journalists have spent decades mastering this craft which sometimes includes a degree in higher education. Knowing and adjusting for your biases is very much a part of this craft and good journalists do get really good at that skill. In fact knowing and adjusting for your biases is such a big part of journalism that you can assume that a journalist that doesn’t possess this skill is gonna be pretty poor at their job. Now this is not to say that good journalists employ this skill effortlessly and infallibly. No of course not, however a good journalist will do this better then a person who is not skilled in the craft of journalism. You might claim that I’m putting journalists on a high horse here, however I’m only doing so by recognizing that they practice a craft with increasing skill levels. If this puts journalists on a high horse, then same can be said about physicists or doctors, in that they get better at their craft with practice.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
No, they didn't. That's my point. One of the most famous scenes in US TV News history was when Walter Kronkite, America's news daddy, finally had enough regarding the bullshit peddled by national television networks regarding the Vietnam war. It was NEVER unbiased. People love to believe that the news USED to be unbiased because the news produced at the time reconciles with their memory of the events they want to believe to be true. But we keep clippings of literally everything, and the one thing that is crystal clear is that what is being reported has always been focused through the lens of the mind of the person doing that reporting. Go look at this link, which is a collection at Kent State University of articles written about the massacre at the school from the time of the shootings: https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/kent-state-shootings-selected-articles https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archive... Tell me how all of these articles are simultaneously unbiased from the headlines.
- therealjumbo 5y ago
  Biased and manipulated news is a spectrum like security. You can find instances of anything in the past of you look hard enough. We are currently in a time of more bias and manipulation than the 60s/70s. Additionally, pointing out that Facebook lacks any fundamental principles and is just a reed in the wind is a great observation.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    > We are currently in a time of more bias and manipulation than the 60s/70s. No, we are not.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Not even close - look up COINTELPRO and how many of the letters that were sent by the discoverers of that information ACTUALLY made it, let alone how few that did make it actually got published. Hint : very few. The media has always had to kowtow to some degree to local authority, and there is always the element of ‘the truth we choose to believe’ (or are being told to believe) being published over harder reality. The west tends to be more transparent than most, and more honest than most, but everyone is very far from, and has always been very far from, any sort of unbiased view.
iso1631 5y ago
The news I consume presents multiple angles on stories. I heard an interview with a Douma member a couple of days ago who was claiming that Ukraine was bombing its own citizens The journalist asked her what evidence they had, she said she had some, but when pushed she said "Russians just don't [bomb cities]", and couldn't produce any evidence. other than kept repeating that "Russian Troops do not bomb Ukrainian cities". It's an astounding claim given that we see Ukrainian cities being bombed and we see Russian troops in Ukraine. There is objective truth, and there is objective lying. Maria Butina was the latter.
landemva 5y ago
NYT has history of not being objective. 1930s New York Times purposefully lied about famine in Ukraine which purposefully starved millions. Walter Duranty got a Pulitzer Prize for that fake journalism. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/red-famine-anne-applebaum-ukraine-soviet-union/542610/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/re...
qiskit 5y ago
> They used to try. Simply not true. Read about the news industry from the founders to yellow journalism to the world wars to present day. There was never a time when news was objective. It wasn't created to be. > I cannot accept the framing as only the last one: that we've magically discovered being unbiased is no longer a worthwhile goal It was never an achievable goal. So what we should strive for is a diversity of opinions via a genuine set of diverse news organizations. Sadly, most of the media is owned by a few multinationals who themselves are owned by the same controlling interests.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> They used to try. No, they didn't, much more than they do now. But the ideological bias among the major media was more consistent, and when you get the same bias everywhere you look, it seems a lot like objectivity.

runarberg 5y ago

Individual journalists indeed tried (and still do), however editors and upper management have always tried to steer their staff in the direction which mostly benefits their shareholders or their biggest advertisers. If journalists still persist and write stories exposing the wrong people, those journalists do loose their jobs and their stories do get canned or watered down (e.g. with equal presentation of “the other side”). Editors aren’t always evil and do this on purpose, however as humans we all have implicit biases. And our biases increase if we feel like we owe somebody a favor (this is why doctors are not allowed to accept gifts from pharmaceutical companies in many countries). If upper management tells a senior editor that company A is their biggest advertiser, and a journalist tells a story unfavorable to company A, then the senior editor might feel like company A doesn’t deserve this treatment and orders a counter story which exonerates the company to be presented on the same page.

lazide 5y ago
Eh, journalists are human and many have very strong political and ideological views that are quite apparent in their writing. Editors try to tie together the paper into a coherent voice and brand, which also needs to be able to ‘feed itself’ somehow. I wouldn’t put anyone on a high horse here.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Yeah, just look at the following: 1. I believe that I am a rational human being 2. My rational way of thinking has lead me to certain set of beliefs about the world and how it operates 3. I don't think about these beliefs all the time, because they make sense to me, but I reserve the right to change them should my perception change 4. It may take a while for my beliefs to change since these are conclusions I have made after thinking about topics rationally for a period of time. A sunk cost of sorts, if you will. I think that most people would see that list and say hey, there's a person who is probably rational and introspective. Now add the following: 0. I am a journalist 5. I report facts objectively but my decision making process on what is important to the reader may be affected by my human brain and my idea of the situation garnered from my experience with the subject matter and my human beliefs This still isn't the dreaded "media bias," although it's clearly a bias. We have more accurate journalism right now than in any other part of human history. We just have more editorialising too. What I'm specifically arguing against is that there was ever a time when there WASN'T bias in journalism. That's nonsense.
- runarberg 5y ago
  Journalism is a craft which takes a level of expertise to master. Many journalists have spent decades mastering this craft which sometimes includes a degree in higher education. Knowing and adjusting for your biases is very much a part of this craft and good journalists do get really good at that skill. In fact knowing and adjusting for your biases is such a big part of journalism that you can assume that a journalist that doesn’t possess this skill is gonna be pretty poor at their job. Now this is not to say that good journalists employ this skill effortlessly and infallibly. No of course not, however a good journalist will do this better then a person who is not skilled in the craft of journalism. You might claim that I’m putting journalists on a high horse here, however I’m only doing so by recognizing that they practice a craft with increasing skill levels. If this puts journalists on a high horse, then same can be said about physicists or doctors, in that they get better at their craft with practice.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

No, they didn't. That's my point. One of the most famous scenes in US TV News history was when Walter Kronkite, America's news daddy, finally had enough regarding the bullshit peddled by national television networks regarding the Vietnam war. It was NEVER unbiased. People love to believe that the news USED to be unbiased because the news produced at the time reconciles with their memory of the events they want to believe to be true. But we keep clippings of literally everything, and the one thing that is crystal clear is that what is being reported has always been focused through the lens of the mind of the person doing that reporting. Go look at this link, which is a collection at Kent State University of articles written about the massacre at the school from the time of the shootings: https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/kent-state-shootings-selected-articles https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archive... Tell me how all of these articles are simultaneously unbiased from the headlines.

therealjumbo 5y ago
Biased and manipulated news is a spectrum like security. You can find instances of anything in the past of you look hard enough. We are currently in a time of more bias and manipulation than the 60s/70s. Additionally, pointing out that Facebook lacks any fundamental principles and is just a reed in the wind is a great observation.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > We are currently in a time of more bias and manipulation than the 60s/70s. No, we are not.
- lazide 5y ago
  Not even close - look up COINTELPRO and how many of the letters that were sent by the discoverers of that information ACTUALLY made it, let alone how few that did make it actually got published. Hint : very few. The media has always had to kowtow to some degree to local authority, and there is always the element of ‘the truth we choose to believe’ (or are being told to believe) being published over harder reality. The west tends to be more transparent than most, and more honest than most, but everyone is very far from, and has always been very far from, any sort of unbiased view.

iso1631 5y ago

The news I consume presents multiple angles on stories. I heard an interview with a Douma member a couple of days ago who was claiming that Ukraine was bombing its own citizens The journalist asked her what evidence they had, she said she had some, but when pushed she said "Russians just don't [bomb cities]", and couldn't produce any evidence. other than kept repeating that "Russian Troops do not bomb Ukrainian cities". It's an astounding claim given that we see Ukrainian cities being bombed and we see Russian troops in Ukraine. There is objective truth, and there is objective lying. Maria Butina was the latter.

landemva 5y ago

NYT has history of not being objective. 1930s New York Times purposefully lied about famine in Ukraine which purposefully starved millions. Walter Duranty got a Pulitzer Prize for that fake journalism. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/red-famine-anne-applebaum-ukraine-soviet-union/542610/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/re...

qiskit 5y ago

> They used to try. Simply not true. Read about the news industry from the founders to yellow journalism to the world wars to present day. There was never a time when news was objective. It wasn't created to be. > I cannot accept the framing as only the last one: that we've magically discovered being unbiased is no longer a worthwhile goal It was never an achievable goal. So what we should strive for is a diversity of opinions via a genuine set of diverse news organizations. Sadly, most of the media is owned by a few multinationals who themselves are owned by the same controlling interests.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> They used to try. No, they didn't, much more than they do now. But the ideological bias among the major media was more consistent, and when you get the same bias everywhere you look, it seems a lot like objectivity.