Yes, it is important to know the reporter's bias, but I think we need a lot less opinion than we are currently getting. For example, we spent a huge amount of time talking about the health care bill in the USA. Lots of people shooting their mouths off on both sides, but no news agency actually going through the bill and getting people to translate it from legalese to human. That would have been useful, but opinion fills the pages and generates revenue.
Unfortunately the opacity was a feature created and perpetuated by the legislators (of both flavors). This, and other bills like USA PATRIOT, were kept close to the chest. Even the legislators themselves weren't given enough time to read the bill before being forced to vote on it.
Journalists need to help us with this problem, but since they can't see the bills either, they need to be more vocal about the lack of transparency in governmental processes.
To a point, but the text of the bill was out there for a couple of days before the vote and even afterwords they didn't bother to really talk about it.
The bill was 1017 pages, and reads like a legalese styled diff-output (i.e., "the word XXX in HR YYYY shall be changed to ZZZZ"). Besides, it's also important what was left out of the bill (e.g., the Heller amendment).
It really isn't much different then any other bill in form. I still haven't heard any follow-up on the rule making process that the bill set in motion. Some of that stuff (according to the bill, and I am sure there are reporters more qualified to read it then me) was on a 90 and 180 day time frame.
I expect them to spend the time and report on what actually affects the most people's lives. I would bet more in-depth analysis has been done on the Lohan sentence (90 days - too much?) then on the followup rules making on this bill.
It's absolutely impossible to write without bias. If nothing else, you must choose an order in which to present the information, and that necessarily forces you to give preference to some things over others. But of course it runs much deeper than that, to assumptions the writer is making that he may not even be aware of.
I think that a journalist would be doing his readers a good service by allowing them to know his feelings, so that the reader could be better prepared to identify any biases, accidental or otherwise.
Yes. I actually stopped reading "news" and I only read people's opinions. Opinions are much more concise and it's far more informative to read two opposing opinions than to read one long meandering piece that tries to avoid having an opinion. The recipe for "news" at the NYT is an exhausting example of this:
"Some decision was made. Someone important said it was good b/c of A but others say it is bad b/c of B. 10 years ago when a similar decision was made, A was the result. But on the other hand it is very hard to measure B, and it's effects can be mitigated by C. An expert acknowledged the risk of B but said that the benefits of A made it worth it."
Usually the reporter's actual opinion was whatever side he gave the last word. In this case A. I find it tedious to play this passive aggressive game. I would rather read two articles saying:
This decision is good b/c of A.
and
This decision is bad b/c of B.
Like Arrington said, at least I know where they stand and why.
Firstly I don't think journalists are generally sacked over putting their opinions into their work - it is just those issues are contentious so the media company plays it safe (this is wrong - but possibly another, wider, issue).
And he has a strong point about knowing bias's to help put media into context.
But putting opinion into stories? It has it's place (editorial, columns) and we should see more of that! It also has it's place in the general commentary about a writer - so we can see their bias.
But directly in news? I think that is a bad idea - I like my news to at least try to be non-biased. If I know the leanings of the reporter I am happy I can pick out bias that has crept in and dig into those issues more. That becomes difficult if opinion is liberally sprinkled into reportage.
My ideal News website would have the following; unbiased, factual news reports with attached commentary/editorial from writers with complementary bias. That would be cool.
Fact checking isn't usually too bad in the bigger media organisations; I'm not suggesting anything on the level of detail, say, Wikipedia, demands. What we have now is fine.
Just an effort to report only the facts and then report the opinions as companion/complementary work.
I would be surprised if Wikipedia was, on average, more accurate than the NY Times. You'd have to account for what's knowable in some way, and the timing of what was published.
Fact checking is actually not as good in technical articles. Look at any article that you are knowledgable about, then think about all the stuff they missed in the other articles. I seem to remember a couple of "This Week in Media"s where this was discussed in-depth.
In theory this makes logical sense, less bias being preferable to more. In practice, for me, this is like asking for your food to be mostly non-poisonous or for your security system to work most of the time. That is to say, you're probably best served, in order, by having none of these things, then 100% of these things, then everything else.
There's plenty of room for opinion in news but the risk is you will end up with a conversation that is totally abstracted from the substance of the issue. You're not longer talking about facts but instead debating the merits of other people's opinions. This tends to close the door on any chance the reader/viewer could formulate their own unique opinion. At best they can walk away with an opinion about competing opinions. The echo chamber effect of modern news is probably one of the worst things that has ever happened to this country. If you repeat an opinion often enough you can make it become fact.
Most reporters have a fairly similar world view, and it is reflected in their reporting. This isn't unique to reporters, many professions share a certain "tribal" (for lack of a better word) outlook. As it currently stands, reporters are often viewed as neutral observers, which gives their views more weight than others.
If reporters made their tribal outlook obvious, then people would take reporters opinions as seriously as they take the opinions of any other "tribe". This would dramatically reduce the influence and status of reporters, which is why the journalistic mainstream does not directly [1] reveal their views.
[1] They reveal their views indirectly, by their choices of what to cover and some implicit assumptions. For example, in this article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07...), the opinion of the reporter is revealed by the word "despite".
These were exactly my thoughts when I read this piece. I don't understand how anyone could be confused. News organizations don't claim that it's better for society that they hide their biases; they claim it's better for the status of the news organization. I mean, it's right in the quote from the Washington Post:
> "..could be perceived as reflecting political racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.”
Likewise, in the conversation that Arrington mentions, the reporter never says that it his motivations for keeping his views secret are for the public good.
However, none of this suggests, as Arrington argues, that there should be more opinions in our news. Rather, reporters should (for the public good) strive to make their writing as opinion- and bias-free as possible while simultaneously being up front about their personal biases and political persuasions.
Until I was actually creating news this wasn’t so obvious to me. Now I can read any news piece and tell you the subtle or not so subtle bias of the author in a heartbeat. All this bullshit about objectivity in journalism is just a trick journalists use to try to gain credibility, and the public eats it up.
Why yes, I am a notorious con man; that's why you need my book, 'Secrets of the Scam Artists.' Most people aren't smart enough to protect themselves from shady dealers and fraud. But you're different; you understand the value of insider knowledge...
BS. We need better reporters and way less 'opinion'/preachers/etc in the US. I have absolutely no interest in what a journalist thinks. Their job is to communicate news and facts to me in ways that are useful.
Watch Newsnight on BBC for an example of real unbiased journalism (And some of the best debates you'll find anywhere).
What the US needs is a Jeremy Paxman / Dimbleby etc.
I agree that we need better reporters, but the way to do it is not to keep pretending that they objectivity, but for their biases to be out in the open.
It's like bugs in software: rather than pretending your software is bug-free, you should instead try to measure just how many bugs it has and their severity.
The inability to escape bias does not mean attempts to minimize its impact are useless. I frequently see people making the same argument Arrington is, and I'm always astounded by the sloppiness of their reasoning.
If I could upvote this more times I would. It's as if people would rather throw their arms in the air and give up than work in an imperfect system — rather than deal with occasional shoplifting, close up shop and live on the street.
People say they want to know the reporter's opinion, but the thing is, it's relatively unimportant information. The reporter's opinion is nowhere near as important as the facts of the story in most cases. The reporter is just some guy whose opinion is worth about as much as anyone else's. His value to me is in the quality of his information-gathering and his explanation of that information. In an opinion-based piece, these take the backseat to proving the writer's thesis, which does me little good.
The London newspapers provide a pretty good example of this. Each is more or less open about its own political stance, and as a result you can often pretty much determine the true story by reading both the Guardian and the Telegraph.
Also, political bias forms a sensible point of differentiation in the market, which enables the London market to support more competing newspapers than any other city that I know of.
Of the US news sources, Fox News is fairly open about their bias (there's an implicit nod and wink in their Fair And Balanced slogan), but the others seem to be hanging on to the illusion that they're unbiased.
Totally disagree, we need our media to talk more about the facts and less about opinion. Debate the facts, not the debate. I would love to have a purely data-based news feed, maybe something for a startup: have some kind of microformat attached to news stories that contains the metadata about the topic & the hard facts. Something like Freebase for news?
Personally, news (spoken and written) should be providing facts and context, then ending with opinion and reasoning, preferably from people with multiple informed opinions and done in a civilized manner. Done right, it could be entertaining, but then again I love history.
26 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 31.8 ms ] threadJournalists need to help us with this problem, but since they can't see the bills either, they need to be more vocal about the lack of transparency in governmental processes.
I think you expect too much from reporters.
I expect them to spend the time and report on what actually affects the most people's lives. I would bet more in-depth analysis has been done on the Lohan sentence (90 days - too much?) then on the followup rules making on this bill.
It's absolutely impossible to write without bias. If nothing else, you must choose an order in which to present the information, and that necessarily forces you to give preference to some things over others. But of course it runs much deeper than that, to assumptions the writer is making that he may not even be aware of.
I think that a journalist would be doing his readers a good service by allowing them to know his feelings, so that the reader could be better prepared to identify any biases, accidental or otherwise.
"Some decision was made. Someone important said it was good b/c of A but others say it is bad b/c of B. 10 years ago when a similar decision was made, A was the result. But on the other hand it is very hard to measure B, and it's effects can be mitigated by C. An expert acknowledged the risk of B but said that the benefits of A made it worth it."
Usually the reporter's actual opinion was whatever side he gave the last word. In this case A. I find it tedious to play this passive aggressive game. I would rather read two articles saying:
This decision is good b/c of A.
and
This decision is bad b/c of B.
Like Arrington said, at least I know where they stand and why.
Firstly I don't think journalists are generally sacked over putting their opinions into their work - it is just those issues are contentious so the media company plays it safe (this is wrong - but possibly another, wider, issue).
And he has a strong point about knowing bias's to help put media into context.
But putting opinion into stories? It has it's place (editorial, columns) and we should see more of that! It also has it's place in the general commentary about a writer - so we can see their bias.
But directly in news? I think that is a bad idea - I like my news to at least try to be non-biased. If I know the leanings of the reporter I am happy I can pick out bias that has crept in and dig into those issues more. That becomes difficult if opinion is liberally sprinkled into reportage.
My ideal News website would have the following; unbiased, factual news reports with attached commentary/editorial from writers with complementary bias. That would be cool.
Just an effort to report only the facts and then report the opinions as companion/complementary work.
In theory this makes logical sense, less bias being preferable to more. In practice, for me, this is like asking for your food to be mostly non-poisonous or for your security system to work most of the time. That is to say, you're probably best served, in order, by having none of these things, then 100% of these things, then everything else.
If reporters made their tribal outlook obvious, then people would take reporters opinions as seriously as they take the opinions of any other "tribe". This would dramatically reduce the influence and status of reporters, which is why the journalistic mainstream does not directly [1] reveal their views.
[1] They reveal their views indirectly, by their choices of what to cover and some implicit assumptions. For example, in this article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07...), the opinion of the reporter is revealed by the word "despite".
> "..could be perceived as reflecting political racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.”
Likewise, in the conversation that Arrington mentions, the reporter never says that it his motivations for keeping his views secret are for the public good.
However, none of this suggests, as Arrington argues, that there should be more opinions in our news. Rather, reporters should (for the public good) strive to make their writing as opinion- and bias-free as possible while simultaneously being up front about their personal biases and political persuasions.
Why yes, I am a notorious con man; that's why you need my book, 'Secrets of the Scam Artists.' Most people aren't smart enough to protect themselves from shady dealers and fraud. But you're different; you understand the value of insider knowledge...
Watch Newsnight on BBC for an example of real unbiased journalism (And some of the best debates you'll find anywhere).
What the US needs is a Jeremy Paxman / Dimbleby etc.
I agree that we need better reporters, but the way to do it is not to keep pretending that they objectivity, but for their biases to be out in the open.
It's like bugs in software: rather than pretending your software is bug-free, you should instead try to measure just how many bugs it has and their severity.
People say they want to know the reporter's opinion, but the thing is, it's relatively unimportant information. The reporter's opinion is nowhere near as important as the facts of the story in most cases. The reporter is just some guy whose opinion is worth about as much as anyone else's. His value to me is in the quality of his information-gathering and his explanation of that information. In an opinion-based piece, these take the backseat to proving the writer's thesis, which does me little good.
Also, political bias forms a sensible point of differentiation in the market, which enables the London market to support more competing newspapers than any other city that I know of.
Of the US news sources, Fox News is fairly open about their bias (there's an implicit nod and wink in their Fair And Balanced slogan), but the others seem to be hanging on to the illusion that they're unbiased.
I'm tired of people lacking any historical clue spouting off their opinions. Take a listen to http://myhistorycanbeatupyourpolitics.blogspot.com/ or http://dancarlin.com/.
Personally, news (spoken and written) should be providing facts and context, then ending with opinion and reasoning, preferably from people with multiple informed opinions and done in a civilized manner. Done right, it could be entertaining, but then again I love history.