drphungky

Totally hear where you’re coming from, and I think in a perfect world, a journalist could recuse themselves of reporting on things where they are hopelessly biased (see Cuomo incident before the later revealed stuff), but I still argue the goal should be to examine and eliminate biases as much possible, and avoid the appearance of minor ones unless they are somehow damning. The introspection necessary to examine your own biases rather than just avoid them helps make you more capable of being more impartial overall, in my opinion.

I think there’s real debate on if through such a concerted effort to not give into to one’s own biases, you swing too far and start favoring the opposition, but that happens with anyone trying to avoid appearances of impropriety. Not giving your kid the starting pitching slot even if he deserves it because you’re the coach, a judge not accepting a free ride to a conference everyone else gets, etc etc.

Then you get a spot writing op-eds so you can dunk on strawmen who don’t have the reach or voice to argue with you!

You’re literally advocating for what is essentially approved propaganda. That you think there is an objectively correct bias terrifies me, and if you had sense, it would terrify you too.

No, there is no “correct bias”. No bias is the goal. In fact, the goal is to be beyond even an appearance of bias. That’s the only way you can be trustworthy. That’s why the Times doesn’t let their writers sign open letters. That’s why they can’t join lobbying orgs and don’t give money to political candidates. These are just sacrifices you make if you want to be a hard news journalist. Same as having to watch what you say if you’re a spokesperson or CEO, same with having to stay fit if you’re a firefighter, same with a ton of jobs that have requirements that you may find unreasonable but are widely accepted because they’re good for the job and the industry.

There is no such thing as objective truth, just perception and bias, and you truly believe it’s not okay to speak out against genocide?

You wanna talk about terrifying. This sentence is terrifying. No such thing as objective truth?! You’ve bought into the fake news, alternative facts propaganda being pushed for the last decade.

-Trump said x.

-Israel did Y.

-The president released a statement saying Z.

-A rocket exploded at a hospital in Gaza, it is unclear at the moment who fired it

-Here is an investigative report featuring video highlights, statements, and photos piecing together what likely happened in that rocket explosion

These are objective, unbiased facts. It obviously gets stickier when you start talking about what facts to report. Then you start talking about reporting on commentary on facts by people and orgs with clear biases themselves. Usually (or at least historically) journalists could cover their bases by finding both sides of an argument , and letting those players describe and clarify the facts themselves.

This is where the whole modern argument comes in over modern journalists giving too much weight to countervailing theories or crackpots in the interest of appearing unbiased. You may have heard it described as “both sides” reporting. For a long time, this was by far the best way to report facts, appear unbiased, and make sure everyone was heard and reported on. But recently there have been HUGE debates within journalism over how to report on say, climate change, when the vast vast majority of scientists say that it’s happening, and it’s man-made, and offer more and more conclusive studies supporting that. You can still find a few crackpots, but at what point are you choosing facts (“this crazy org said this about the new study”) that themselves create a bias? Since climate change has been seen as a political issue for years, journalists have been worried about appearing unbiased, because a sniff of impropriety can drive people away from mainstream media and to the newer, very biased, lacking in ethics orgs. They started shifting away from this, and now people are both leaving unbiased news and those unbiased sources remaining are STILL getting hammered by media critics and commentators on the “both sides” narrative issues.

The point, though, is that people deeply care about and deeply debate this stuff on the margins. How do we best remain and appear unbiased? How do we best inform and explain current events? And then they debate this stuff at the margins because there are different opinions on it. But no one is saying news journalists should be able to sign petitions and open letters. It is so far outside of acceptable that I bet you could poll newsrooms at the Times, Post, Tribune and not get a single journalist who thinks going on public record about current events should be A-ok.

I hope the history books of the future describe the atrocities of the present, because clearly we can’t rely on the news.

If you’re not aware of these very basic ethical and functional debates in journalism, that are covered and discussed ad nauseum in papers of every slant and those in the middle, my guess is you’re just not consuming much news. It’s impossible to miss this stuff. So I can’t imagine you’re going to pick up history books if you’re missing this stuff as it’s happening.

Thank you! It’s crazy to me that people can’t understand appearance of bias and why a paper would want to avoid it. Do people not work in industries with professional ethics? There are whole courses taught in this stuff when getting a degree in journalism, it’s debated in newsrooms and by editors, even in op-eds writing commentary about the news. Did people just fall asleep during the Trump years as people were figuring out how to handle that?

You know what terrifies me? Someone saying, unironically, “there is no such thing as objective truth, just perception and bias.” Russian disinfo and the Trump campaign appear to have won - we live in a post truth society where not only do facts not matter - they don’t exist. Why bother reporting only on them?

You literally can police people’s bias if they want to be a good journalist. That’s why the NYT has a clear policy on this stuff, that she violated twice! Some people can’t control their biases or don’t want to, and that’s fine. They don’t get to be journalists at organizations that have to maintain strict impartiality.

Also, if you think the newsroom doesn’t have deeply debated guidelines and rules on how and when you use the label terrorist vs freedom fighter, or how to avoid using either term, you’re kidding yourself. This is why editors exist.

It’s wild that we live in such polarized times that every single comment in this thread is talking about how this is wrong because of some variant of “she’s being fired for calling it like it is.”

That’s not what happened. She was fired (forced to resign, same difference) because she went on record with a political viewpoint and made value judgements. YOU DONT GET TO DO THAT AS A JOURNALIST. It doesn’t matter if she’s right (she is, in my opinion, before someone accused me of supporting apartheid and misses the point). What matters is she has taken away any appearance of being unbiased, both for her and by association for the paper. It’s crazy damaging and the Times should have fired her instead of letting her resign. This is like journalistic ethics 101. My parents were both journalists and wouldn’t even talk to me about who they voted for - and they weren’t even in hard news.

I know these days there are so many biased news agencies and lots of opinions masquerading as news, but for hard news agencies this kind of thing does not, and should not fly. The woman was dumb and I hope she was ready for a career writing op-eds and being a partisan talking head, because she’ll never write hard news at a reputable source again.