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I recall taking a class on journalism and we argued about whether or not true objectivity could ever exist. Some people pointed out that it was possible to writ

I recall taking a class on journalism and we argued about whether or not true objectivity could ever exist. Some people pointed out that it was possible to write an article that consisted only of factual statements, and therefore such an article proved that objectivity was possible. There were several counter-arguments: what about the factual statements that were not included? You could factually say "The nation of x invaded the nation of y and slaughtered 10,000 innocents." That makes the nation of x sound pretty bad. It might also be factually true that the nation of y had invaded the nation of x the previous month, but if you leave that out, is your article still objective? It only consists of factual statements, but those factual statements paint a misleading portrait. I recall the professor of that class insisted that most of the bias he saw in newspapers happened at the level of deciding what subjects to cover. During his career he had seen the following scenario: a newspaper might run an objective article about corruption in Egypt, and an objective article about the brutality of the Iranian government, but then the paper would perhaps never run an article that objectively covered the treatment of some people under Israeli rule. Each article was objective, but the overall coverage was biased. And so too, with Wikipeida. 85% of the editors are male. Does that have an impact one what decisions get made? This opening is interesting: "LATE last month Amanda Filipacchi, an American writer, discovered that the editors of Wikipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopaedia, were re-categorising female American authors from "American Novelists" to to "American Women Novelists". No corresponding "American Men Novelists" subject area existed at that time. " Even if each article tries to acheive Neutral Point Of View, there can still be bias merely in the way things get categorized.

nwzpaperman 14y ago
Messaging is never neutral and I don't trust people that deny having a position on meaningful subjects. What's more important for news and journalism going forward is that writers are transparent about their perspective and let the reader evaluate the merits of the information the journalist shares. Those values are what are built into nwzPaper at least.
dragonwriter 14y ago
> You could factually say "The nation of x invaded the nation of y and slaughtered 10,000 innocents." Probably not. "Innocents" is not a factual description, nor is "slaughtered", and "invaded" is dubious. More importantly, even to the extent that that statement could be rephrased into a series of fact claims, that doesn't make it objective. Fact claims aren't inherently objective, as belief in a fact claim is generally based on subjective interpretation of evidence for that claim. Striving to eliminate as much as possible the reporter's subjectivity results in what we see frequently in the media today: "He said, she said" journalism where the reported facts consist merely of reports that varying parties made various claims.
- glenra 14y ago
  > Striving to eliminate as much as possible the reporter's subjectivity results in what we see frequently in the media today: "He said, she said" journalism where the reported facts consist merely of reports that varying parties made various claims. Wikipedia does that too to some degree. The goal for claims in a wikipedia article is that they be verifiable, not that they be true. The definition of a "verifiable" claim is that somebody made that claim in a "reliable source". So people wanting to push a point of view will pad out the article with references to other people expressing that view. Pointing out that the view is wrong and explaining why tends to be discarded as "original research". In instances when the conventional wisdom is wrong but widely reported, wikipedia will tend to report that conventional wisdom. The good news is that often when this happens, you can find what contrary points of view are being suppressed by skimming the associated talk page. It's usually worth doing that on controversial and/or current topics.
  - dragonwriter 14y ago
    > Wikipedia does that too to some degree. The goal for claims in a wikipedia article is that they be verifiable, not that they be true. Tertiary sources are by design about summarizing and relaying what secondary (and sometimes primary) sources have stated about subjects. They serve a different function than news reporting. What is a sensible approach for an encyclopedic reference is not a sensible approach for news reporting.

nwzpaperman 14y ago

Messaging is never neutral and I don't trust people that deny having a position on meaningful subjects. What's more important for news and journalism going forward is that writers are transparent about their perspective and let the reader evaluate the merits of the information the journalist shares. Those values are what are built into nwzPaper at least.

dragonwriter 14y ago

> You could factually say "The nation of x invaded the nation of y and slaughtered 10,000 innocents." Probably not. "Innocents" is not a factual description, nor is "slaughtered", and "invaded" is dubious. More importantly, even to the extent that that statement could be rephrased into a series of fact claims, that doesn't make it objective. Fact claims aren't inherently objective, as belief in a fact claim is generally based on subjective interpretation of evidence for that claim. Striving to eliminate as much as possible the reporter's subjectivity results in what we see frequently in the media today: "He said, she said" journalism where the reported facts consist merely of reports that varying parties made various claims.

glenra 14y ago
> Striving to eliminate as much as possible the reporter's subjectivity results in what we see frequently in the media today: "He said, she said" journalism where the reported facts consist merely of reports that varying parties made various claims. Wikipedia does that too to some degree. The goal for claims in a wikipedia article is that they be verifiable, not that they be true. The definition of a "verifiable" claim is that somebody made that claim in a "reliable source". So people wanting to push a point of view will pad out the article with references to other people expressing that view. Pointing out that the view is wrong and explaining why tends to be discarded as "original research". In instances when the conventional wisdom is wrong but widely reported, wikipedia will tend to report that conventional wisdom. The good news is that often when this happens, you can find what contrary points of view are being suppressed by skimming the associated talk page. It's usually worth doing that on controversial and/or current topics.
- dragonwriter 14y ago
  > Wikipedia does that too to some degree. The goal for claims in a wikipedia article is that they be verifiable, not that they be true. Tertiary sources are by design about summarizing and relaying what secondary (and sometimes primary) sources have stated about subjects. They serve a different function than news reporting. What is a sensible approach for an encyclopedic reference is not a sensible approach for news reporting.