I think the press SHOULD be unabashedly biased.

[eeyore]

Okay, I was a journalism major at a very liberal school, though I'm not a journalist today.

We were always taught that a key to a free press is that jounalists must uphold an ethical standard of neutrality to what they are reporting. I have decided that this model is nothing more than the ultimate in living in denial.

Every person has a bias, and every corporate news organization has advertisers to be beholden to. Bias is inherent in every story you read. The personal is political and the corporate is political and that cannot be hidden.

Why can't we just go back to the days when the newspapers named themselves the Republican or the Democrat, and let people know up front where the reporting stands? Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot more truthful?

I think we may be heading back that way with the internet and blogging. I would prefer to get my news from people who respect my point of view. At least I know where they stand.

I think that the old model is for the Dinosaur corporate news readers.

So, I say, fuck the notion of hiding behind the notion of neutrality. Bring on the Socialist News Hour, The NeoCon Times, and The Democratic Report!

There is no such thing as neutrality anymore. You're either against them or you're against me!

Are you with me?
Or are you against me?

:nuke:

[thefloyd]

1. You make good points

Americans probably make more informed decisions by reading all sides of a story instead of equating Faux to truth. No more subliminal propaganda.

[eeyore]

3. Wooohooo!

Somebody's with me!

I want to hear unfiltered Republican propaganda in all it's glory!

I want to hear the crazy assed Libertarians justify their positions!

Let's have a truth war!

[WritingIsMyReligion]

8. I'm with you, too.

I'd rather see people's opinions straight up than deal with this shit-subliminal propaganda.

:D :D

[Tace]

2. I Don't Consider It To Be A Matter Of Neutrality

I'm a journalism school graduate, with a long career as a wire service editor. At J-school we were taught "interpretative journalism," the goal of which is to inform people about world events so that they can make informed decisions about their lives.

The key point, or bias, is toward The People, rather than corporations or government.

[eeyore]

5. That's just not possible today.

There is way too much money at stake in the world of corporate journalism.

They just don't give a rat's ass about "the people" anymore. All they care about is the health of the corporation, the ratings, and not pissing off advertisers.

The old model is dying, hopefully fast. People just don't believe their shit anymore. Hell, even the right doesn't trust them. Every believes them to be full of shit.

Time to move on to a new model.

[Burning Water]

9. Why can't the bias

be toward the facts. 'Truth' can take care of itself. There is a difference, at least as the words are sometimes used. I just want the facts, I'll figure out the truth on my own.

[eeyore]

12. The facts are always filtered through someone's views

Whether it be an editor, the CEO, the board of directors, or the journalist, someone's agenda will always poke through. We are human, and that's what we do.

Why can't we just let it all out and report with the notion that "This is the way I think it happened"? That's what we get anyway.

Think about how much you filter yourself just as you sit and write.

I just don't trust giant corporate entities to ever give me facts. Journalistic integrity is a charade in the world of conglomerate news organizations.

[Burning Water]

17. You are absolutely correct in

that all the reports are filtered by someone. So instead of an anchor sitting up there pretending to be unbiased and leading us down the road to perdition, why don't we just find out what their personal views are? then we will know how to evaluate what they say, and more importantly, what they are probably leaving out.

[driver8]

13. Exactly!! That is what I was taught, as well.

I do not work as a journalist but took many, many classes in college on the subject. I was taught to report the facts as I know them and let the reader make his/her judgement.

I'm afraid the corportations have killed that way of doing things.

[melody]

4. The problem is spin

Granted, every story is slanted - no matter the writer. Every writer has a bias. I'm a writer, also, I'm aware of this. That said, what Fox News does is a whole generation beyond that -- it fabricates information consciously and spreads propaganda in order to serve a corporate interest while calling itself what it clearly is not. That isn't bias in journalism -- that's fascism. It acts as nothing less than the official Gestapo news organ.

It is serving a corporate and a government interest. That is not simple journalism of any kind.

[eeyore]

6. Agreed...

But it wouldn't be spin if they were called the Republican News Organization. It would just be news from their perspective, like it or not.

I just don't think it's possible to keep up the charade any longer.

[melody]

11. They're not just the GOP News

They're also using the government to keep their market share and their advertisers. That's not a free marketplace journalism. It's a propaganda ministry.

[eeyore]

15. Agreed...

I don't know what to call them.

Maybe the Global Corporatist News Conglomerate?:shrug:

Actually, I think all broadcast news could be called something like that.

[Burning Water]

7. I'm with you.

Humans are biased, so they should be upfront about their positions, and let people judge their stories for their honesty, rather than their politics.

[eeyore]

10. Right on!

Welcome to the bright side of the street!


:toast:

[driver8]

14. The problem I see with your idea of a "biased media" is that we

will never be able to tell who is telling the truth. Granted, it is hard these days to figure out the truth, but it would be impossible if we had a biased media.

[Burning Water]

16. Sure we can.

That's what we have brains for. If a story just doesn't hang together, for instance, reject it. If you catch a lie, look at the rest of the article or show with a jaundiced eye. Learn to think logically, and you will have few problems, and will generally make the right decision.

[Oeditpus Rex]

22. driver8 is right

Rather amazing timing here. Here's an example — from links in a thread I posted only moments ago — of why this is a bad idea. The first excerpt is from a right-wing publication's story on a speech to a convention of Baptist student journalists by Washington Times White House reporter Bill Sammon:


Another moment for bringing moral clarity to news coverage occurred when Sammon covered Al Gore’s campaign during the 2000 presidential election. On one campaign stop, Gore took a canoe ride down the Connecticut River to promote his support of environmental policies.

Sammon learned that Gore had instructed local officials to release water from a dam upriver and raise the water level by a foot in order to facilitate his canoe ride. Because the area was experiencing a drought, the water level in the river had fallen. Officials refused to raise the water level previously in order to preserve water for other uses.

After confirming his information, Sammon wrote a front-page story for The Washington Times exposing Gore’s promotion of policies to protect the environment while simultaneously wasting water during a drought.

“It caused quite a little scandal for a number of days and even weeks,” he said.


This is from a post at Poynter Online in response to that story:


And that Al Gore Gotcha he mentions turns out to be a bit different from what Mr. Morals, er, excuse me, Mr. Sammon, reported. This excerpt is from an Eric Boehlert piece in the Dec. 6, '01 edition of Rolling Stone:

"In retrospect, the most notable thing about the whole story was just how murky the facts were. Nobody from the Gore campaign asked for the water to be released. (Concerned about security, the Secret Service did.) As for the amount of water released, it was 500 million gallons, not 4 billion - a fact that Sammon reported a week later, long after other media ran with the original story. And the local utility company that operates the dam was already dumping millions of gallons of water into the parched Connecticut River every day. The routine release had simply been moved up a couple of hours to accommodate Gore's trip. The $7 million figure turned out to be completely inaccurate, since the water was not wasted. Instead, it passed through hydroelectric turbines and generated power that the utility company sold to other utilities."


If you'd read only Sammon's story, you wouldn't know the truth — or, more accurately, you'd know only that part of the truth Sammon wanted you to know. Is that what you want — to know only partial truths or non-truths? You think it's bad now? Just open up this can of worms.

(Edited for formatting.)

[eeyore]

23. I think you actually made my point...

What you have there is Rolling Stone, a purported liberally slanted "news" outlet, disputing what was reported in the Washington Times.

Most people would not consider whether or not The Washington Times has a bias. They just think of them as mainstream American media.

Rolling Stone, on the other hand, has it's roots firmly planted as a Hippie/Liberal publication. Some people trust them, others loathe them. You obviously trust them to be on the side of truth.

However, if the the Washington Times story had come from an unabashedly conservative outlet, rather than a Moonie owned clandestine conservative propaganda machine, people would have taken the story with a grain of salt.

So, yes, that is what I want. I want people to understand who is feeding them stories, and to be aware of the biases they most certainly have. Even Rolling Stone. I want people to know that they have a liberal bias, and that that is where they are coming from.

I don't believe any news outlet out of whole cloth anymore, especially not American corporate news.

But if I had to believe the Moonie Times versus Rolling Stone, I'd believe that Rolling Stone was closer to the truth.

[Oeditpus Rex]

24. The sources I posted in my example

may as well have been anonymous. I used them as examples of two kinds of truth, nothing more. I honestly don't know which was right — though, yes, I'd tend to believe RS was. But all that proves is the RS story is more in line with what I want to believe. And, aye, there's the rub.

Under this thread's proposal, the Liberal News would report A while the Conservative Press would report C. Liberals would, of course, read the Liberal News and would belive A, while conservatives would read the Conservative Press and believe C. As there would be no one reporting B, it would be up to us to decide whether A or C is true — which is exactly what we do now, even though we have a news media that is, whether you believe it or not, predominantly B.

It's our biases that affect how we see the news — not any bias of the news itself. Because we're much more biased than the vast majority of all U.S. news associations.

[Burning Water]

25. No, you try

to read both stories and make up your mind who's telling the truth and who is not. It's the citizen's personal responsibility to stay informed. He does not need the press pre-digesting the information for him. I simply want journalists to come clean about their own biases, and I will take care of mine.

[eeyore]

18. We already have a biased media...

They just pretend not to be!

The problem is that we are trusting mega-corporations to tell the people the truth. That's just not going to happen. It's all about the bottom line for them.

I've seen reports that Murdoch has been having talks with Hillary Clinton about possibly backing her for President. He did the same with Tony Blair. He doesn't give a shit about anybody's truth, it's all about his stock portfolio.

If people understood this, maybe they wouldn't trust Faux news to tell them what's going on in their country.

I'd rather read everyone's unabashedly biased opinions, judge who I think is telling the right side of the story, and move on. Hell, I already do that, I just end up saying they are all completely full of shit now.

I'd like to see a Democratic news channel on cable that tells people that that's what they do.

[AX10]

19. That's how I feel. I want to hear more about my side.

All we hear is about the other side to often. We should get to have our views too.
Are you with me?
Or are you against me?

[eeyore]

20. I'm with you!

I'm right there with you, my friend of undeclared gender!

:toast:

[The Gunslinger]

21. Thats how it should be

I would never watch Fox news, but I would respect thier right to their viewpoints if they just said "Fox News, Administration run right wing news", instead of this Fair and Balanced BS

[Bridget Burke]

26. Most cities had more than one newspaper in the old days....

Once, the "Houston Post" was our more liberal paper & the "Chronicle" more conservative. The "Houston Press" was on its last legs & folded when I was a child--the free weekly called "Houston Press" is not connected.

The Chronicle bought the Post & shut it down. Since then, the Chronicle has become more liberal--Houston is not 100% conservative. But I agree that we need more voices.

Back when I was deciding on a major, I took "Intro to Communications"--taught by the head of the Department. He said the first duty of any communications company was to Stay in Business! They weren't calling it "journalism" & ethics had nothing to do with it. So, I decided that would NOT be my major.

[triguy46]

27. Historically, the press has been heavily biased...

you bought the sheet that espoused your views. To an extent we do that today. I choose the tulsa world over the Daily Disappointment (the worst daily in the US by Columbia School) Oklahoman because of editorial stance.

I'm not sure we should trust the press to be "neutral", they have some proving up to do as far as that would go.

[tx_dem41]

28. Let's hope you're aren't a journalist then.

At least a reporter. A columnist would be fine.