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The point is that the closest definition people see for impartiality is "something that doesn't move the needle either way." In other words, maintaining the sta

The point is that the closest definition people see for impartiality is "something that doesn't move the needle either way." In other words, maintaining the status quo. Protecting the way things are now is not true impartiality, it's prolonging systems. It's inertia.

goatlover 2y ago
I don't see how an independent press striving for impartiality is somehow maintaining the status quo. It's just trying to report whatever news it has, which may or may not be challenging to the status quo. The alternative is propaganda. Also, I don't know why the status quo is inherently a bad thing, wouldn't it all depend on what that status quo was in relation to whatever issue? Shouldn't we ant a society where the status quo is optimal? Not simply being contrarians.
- lazide 2y ago
  Being relative to the status quo means the news would be focused on maintaining the current state, regardless of if it is optimal or not (and optimal for whom, anyway?).
  - Jensson 2y ago
    No, focused on maintaining current state would be partial to maintaining the current state so would say that any change is bad. An impartial news would talk about positives of different changes, not say that change is bad, so no it isn't biased towards status quo.
    - lazide 2y ago
      You might want to read the parent comment.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
BrenBarn 2y ago
Maybe, but I think that's also a misconception that shouldn't be kowtowed to. Impartiality has nothing to do with moving needles. It's not about what's going to happen. It's just about accurate statements about things that have already happened.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  There are an infinite number of possible events to report, an infinite number of facts about those events to report on, and in most interesting cases the "facts" may not be known or objective. Take these two different summaries of the arrest of O.J. Simpson: AP: O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and friend Ronald Goldman are found dead in Los Angeles. Simpson is arrested after a widely televised freeway chase in his white Ford Bronco. Alternate: O.J. Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman, 25, were stabbed and slashed to death outside her condominium in the trendy Brentwood neighborhood. The former football star was arrested after fleeing from police in a 90 minute chase along the 405. These are both accurate descriptions of what happened, and they give the reader wildly different impressions.
  - 1659447091 2y ago
    Maybe the statement above yours on accurate statements about things that have already happened. should be amended with: accurate statements about things that have already happened, => minus any added linguistic flair That second example has unnecessary additives that nudge emotion and has no place in journalistic integrity. At that point it becomes creative writing.
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      Journalistic integrity is more difficult and nuanced than you can encapsulate in a one-sentence definition. "Linguistic flair" is an important part of effective communication. We're naturally used to picking up subtle hints that communicate meaning and what's important within a story (which all reporting inherently is). Stripping that out is changing the meaning of the reporting. The effect usually minimizes the impact of the story and implicitly supports the status quo. This kind of neutral fact based reporting was actually a staple of American reporting from the early 20th century, so-called "hard news". It fell out of favor in large part because it wasn't able to adequately communicate the gravitas of particularly emotional events. To illustrate, here's another AP story on the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, chosen as a deliberately extreme example of linguistic flair being used to educate an American audience on the little-known horrors of the Holocaust being uncovered in Europe: The U.S. 42nd and 45th divisions captured the infamous Dachau prison camp today and freed its 32,000 captives. [...] Jan Yindrich and I a few minutes later saw the same thing that greeted the soldiers -- 39 open-type railroad cars ... which went through the walls of Dachau camp. At first glance the cars seemed loaded with dirty clothing. Then you saw feet, heads, and bony fingers. More than half the cars were full of bodies, hundreds of bodies. Downward was driving a jeep along a string of cars when a soldier shouted: "Come here, quick, Colonel, here's a live one!" [...] This grisly spectacle was outside the walls of the camp -- along a widely traveled road inside the city of Dachau where Bavarians passed daily. I hope we can agree that omitting the emotive "linguistic flair" have been an inappropriate choice here.
eli_gottlieb 2y ago
If I tell you that the sky is blue, COVID kills people, and coal emits CO2, that's "impartial" in the sense of being facts.
- ryandv 2y ago
  As one who is steeped in the language, culture, and thought processes of science, engineering, technology, and medicine (STEM) fields you may be forgiven for believing that facts still exist. > I'm not ceding this ground. [...] The customer is not always right, and everything is not relative. The humanities have long ago dispensed with facts since the advent of postmodernism; the ground has already been ceded. Yuval Noah Harari summarizes this eloquently in his latest work Nexus: In the late twentieth century, for example, intellectuals from the radical left like Michel Foucault and Edward Said claimed that scientific institutions like clinics and universities are not pursuing timeless and objective truths but are instead using power to determine what counts as truth, in the service of capitalist and colonialist elites. These radical critiques occasionally went as far as arguing that “scientific facts” are nothing more than a capitalist or colonialist “discourse” and that people in power can never be really interested in truth and can never be trusted to recognize and correct their own mistakes.
- lazide 2y ago
  Not arguing with you per-se, but…. The sky is also yellow, red, and purple in the mornings and evenings. It is also gray when there are storms, and black at night. Covid kills people, but is it a lot? Or a little? Many things kill people, but I don’t get worried about lightning or sharks. Some people do. Relative to those, how dangerous is it? Coal emits co2, but why should I care?
- beau_g 2y ago
  What would your feelings be on a news outlet called "Public Health Watch" publishing 250 well researched, factually verified articles on dangers of wearing masks long term from 2020-2021 and zero articles on COVID mortality? How about a source called "Atmosphere Guardian" publishing hundreds of factual articles on pollution from solar panel production and li-on battery recycling while publishing zero on coal? The curation and focus of news sources can do a lot to not be impartial even when only dealing in factual information.
wisty 2y ago
Impartiality is a process to get closer to the truth. If something is contested, then seek statements from both sides. Trust that eventually the audience will figure it out, and things will eventually no longer be contested (beyond some "lizardman constant" that is ignored - you don't need to seek views that are totally insignificant). The alternative is that people decide the other side is "false news" and now everyone drifts into polarised bubbles.
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  And what if a side is false news? There is news reported from both CNN and Fox that has been completely false. It would not be impartial to let them lie in an effort to get to the truth. You would have to correct them, at which point someone is going to call you partial. Journalism is about actively finding the truth, but you can see in this thread, people's idea of impartiality is letting everyone talk and shrugging.
felipeerias 2y ago
The status that journalism still enjoys comes from providing an impartial and objective account of reality. A journalism that openly becomes just another form of political activism will lose what is left of that status. Why should someone listen to a journalist instead of to a random guy on social media, if neither of them is striving to be impartial and reliable?
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  This is a question that presupposes there are any impartial journalists. That is the point. I understand everyone thinks the news they listen to is impartial.

goatlover 2y ago

I don't see how an independent press striving for impartiality is somehow maintaining the status quo. It's just trying to report whatever news it has, which may or may not be challenging to the status quo. The alternative is propaganda. Also, I don't know why the status quo is inherently a bad thing, wouldn't it all depend on what that status quo was in relation to whatever issue? Shouldn't we ant a society where the status quo is optimal? Not simply being contrarians.

lazide 2y ago
Being relative to the status quo means the news would be focused on maintaining the current state, regardless of if it is optimal or not (and optimal for whom, anyway?).
- Jensson 2y ago
  No, focused on maintaining current state would be partial to maintaining the current state so would say that any change is bad. An impartial news would talk about positives of different changes, not say that change is bad, so no it isn't biased towards status quo.
  - lazide 2y ago
    You might want to read the parent comment.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

BrenBarn 2y ago

Maybe, but I think that's also a misconception that shouldn't be kowtowed to. Impartiality has nothing to do with moving needles. It's not about what's going to happen. It's just about accurate statements about things that have already happened.

AlotOfReading 2y ago
There are an infinite number of possible events to report, an infinite number of facts about those events to report on, and in most interesting cases the "facts" may not be known or objective. Take these two different summaries of the arrest of O.J. Simpson: AP: O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and friend Ronald Goldman are found dead in Los Angeles. Simpson is arrested after a widely televised freeway chase in his white Ford Bronco. Alternate: O.J. Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman, 25, were stabbed and slashed to death outside her condominium in the trendy Brentwood neighborhood. The former football star was arrested after fleeing from police in a 90 minute chase along the 405. These are both accurate descriptions of what happened, and they give the reader wildly different impressions.
- 1659447091 2y ago
  Maybe the statement above yours on accurate statements about things that have already happened. should be amended with: accurate statements about things that have already happened, => minus any added linguistic flair That second example has unnecessary additives that nudge emotion and has no place in journalistic integrity. At that point it becomes creative writing.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    Journalistic integrity is more difficult and nuanced than you can encapsulate in a one-sentence definition. "Linguistic flair" is an important part of effective communication. We're naturally used to picking up subtle hints that communicate meaning and what's important within a story (which all reporting inherently is). Stripping that out is changing the meaning of the reporting. The effect usually minimizes the impact of the story and implicitly supports the status quo. This kind of neutral fact based reporting was actually a staple of American reporting from the early 20th century, so-called "hard news". It fell out of favor in large part because it wasn't able to adequately communicate the gravitas of particularly emotional events. To illustrate, here's another AP story on the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, chosen as a deliberately extreme example of linguistic flair being used to educate an American audience on the little-known horrors of the Holocaust being uncovered in Europe: The U.S. 42nd and 45th divisions captured the infamous Dachau prison camp today and freed its 32,000 captives. [...] Jan Yindrich and I a few minutes later saw the same thing that greeted the soldiers -- 39 open-type railroad cars ... which went through the walls of Dachau camp. At first glance the cars seemed loaded with dirty clothing. Then you saw feet, heads, and bony fingers. More than half the cars were full of bodies, hundreds of bodies. Downward was driving a jeep along a string of cars when a soldier shouted: "Come here, quick, Colonel, here's a live one!" [...] This grisly spectacle was outside the walls of the camp -- along a widely traveled road inside the city of Dachau where Bavarians passed daily. I hope we can agree that omitting the emotive "linguistic flair" have been an inappropriate choice here.

eli_gottlieb 2y ago

If I tell you that the sky is blue, COVID kills people, and coal emits CO2, that's "impartial" in the sense of being facts.

ryandv 2y ago
As one who is steeped in the language, culture, and thought processes of science, engineering, technology, and medicine (STEM) fields you may be forgiven for believing that facts still exist. > I'm not ceding this ground. [...] The customer is not always right, and everything is not relative. The humanities have long ago dispensed with facts since the advent of postmodernism; the ground has already been ceded. Yuval Noah Harari summarizes this eloquently in his latest work Nexus: In the late twentieth century, for example, intellectuals from the radical left like Michel Foucault and Edward Said claimed that scientific institutions like clinics and universities are not pursuing timeless and objective truths but are instead using power to determine what counts as truth, in the service of capitalist and colonialist elites. These radical critiques occasionally went as far as arguing that “scientific facts” are nothing more than a capitalist or colonialist “discourse” and that people in power can never be really interested in truth and can never be trusted to recognize and correct their own mistakes.
lazide 2y ago
Not arguing with you per-se, but…. The sky is also yellow, red, and purple in the mornings and evenings. It is also gray when there are storms, and black at night. Covid kills people, but is it a lot? Or a little? Many things kill people, but I don’t get worried about lightning or sharks. Some people do. Relative to those, how dangerous is it? Coal emits co2, but why should I care?
beau_g 2y ago
What would your feelings be on a news outlet called "Public Health Watch" publishing 250 well researched, factually verified articles on dangers of wearing masks long term from 2020-2021 and zero articles on COVID mortality? How about a source called "Atmosphere Guardian" publishing hundreds of factual articles on pollution from solar panel production and li-on battery recycling while publishing zero on coal? The curation and focus of news sources can do a lot to not be impartial even when only dealing in factual information.

wisty 2y ago

Impartiality is a process to get closer to the truth. If something is contested, then seek statements from both sides. Trust that eventually the audience will figure it out, and things will eventually no longer be contested (beyond some "lizardman constant" that is ignored - you don't need to seek views that are totally insignificant). The alternative is that people decide the other side is "false news" and now everyone drifts into polarised bubbles.

Capricorn2481 2y ago
And what if a side is false news? There is news reported from both CNN and Fox that has been completely false. It would not be impartial to let them lie in an effort to get to the truth. You would have to correct them, at which point someone is going to call you partial. Journalism is about actively finding the truth, but you can see in this thread, people's idea of impartiality is letting everyone talk and shrugging.

felipeerias 2y ago

The status that journalism still enjoys comes from providing an impartial and objective account of reality. A journalism that openly becomes just another form of political activism will lose what is left of that status. Why should someone listen to a journalist instead of to a random guy on social media, if neither of them is striving to be impartial and reliable?

Capricorn2481 2y ago
This is a question that presupposes there are any impartial journalists. That is the point. I understand everyone thinks the news they listen to is impartial.