Objective Journalism?

Toyman01 wrote: So, that begs the question, who is to blame? Us for accepting what is foisted off on us as news? News outlets for accepting and encouraging biased opinion pieces to increase ratings? Journalism schools for not teaching journalism?

Yes. Yes. Yes. It's a systemic, self-reinforcing cycle.

Is there any way to encourage reporters to report or do we have to keep wading through countless sources to garner the few nuggets of fact. I know my philosophy bleeds through everything I write, so how can I expect someone else to be better than me?

The way to encourage them is to be more picky about your news sources. I find newspapers and NPR to be the best I've found for hard news. Encourage your friends to do the same.

The sky is not falling. It's not all "Their" fault. The issues facing this country are complicated and nuanced. No one entity has all the right answers. For all that we get wrong, we get a whole heck of a lot more right. Relax a little bit. Convince your friends to relax a little bit.

If you really want to be well informed, you need to get your news from more than one source. Even the less-biased ones still have some form of bias, even if that is as little as what they decide are the most important stories and what to devote more/less time to. That does take more time and energy though, but you can pick better news outlet sources with just a bit of effort.

I agree. Hard Print papers seem to be the most objective (though they do have their slants) and NPR (no matter what some talking heads say) is usually very objective. They make it a point to have both conservative and liberal shows on.

NPR is much better than it used to be ... yrs ago it was left leaning enough to make MSNBC look centrist ... having lost much of their government money seems to have made a huge change in the way things get reported ( at least here locally )

This is something I've noticed too. Cronkite would report the facts as they were given to him and tell you when it was his opinion, before that Edward R. Murrow did the same thing. When the movie 'Network' came out, it was said that it was farcical and that the news outlets would never let that happen for-real. Um, no. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(film)

CNN was the original 24 hour news channel and used to come across as somewhat unbiased, then MSNBC, Fox etc began chasing ratings in the manner of 'Network' and the news outlets were off to the races. It's only gotten worse, to the point that it's nearly impossible to know who to believe.

Print media unbiased? Sorry, no. I know this one first hand. There was a situation involving my dad several years ago which was reported extensively in the local scandal rag. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the coverage was most definitely biased and to make it even better a 'sneak' picture of him holding a .45 automatic was taken after he specifically requested during an interview that no pictures be taken. The picture was front page news the next morning. I have been asked by this same paper to speak out on a couple of issues on two different occasions and in both instances I have refused, citing their treatment of him.

NPR unbiased? No. They may read things in scholarly tones, have conservative viewpoints aired etc but they are most definitely biased toward the liberal end of the political spectrum. 'All Things Considered' once aired a environmental activist who advocated burning houses and SUVs as a way to control what she viewed as excessive consumption. The best part of that? It was aired right behind a story of some Earth First! types who burned some partially completed houses in (IIRC) Arizona. Sure, they are unbiased.

The most telling thing: when the news media do get caught with their pants down and have to admit a mistake, the original story was generally a front page or lead story issue. The apology, if there is one, is generally buried deep in the paper or is a quick blurb. Remember the 1992 'exploding fuel tanks' story on Dateline NBC which turned out to be rigged? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_C/K#Sidesaddle_fuel_tank_controversy

Text of NBC's apology: http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1993/Text-Of-NBC-s-Statement-On-Settlement-Of-GM-Suit-With-PM-NBC-GM-Safety-f0013/id-72180d14c165619981cd6e25c1a597f1

NBC's apology took approximately 3 1/2 minutes of airtime, the original story was something like 20 minutes. The worst part was that it ever happened at all.

At least if I watch Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, I know for sure that they are bullE36 M3ting me. The others, not so much.

In reply to Curmudgeon:

I said less-biased, not un-biased. There is no such thing as unbiased reporting.

And with any news source it depends a lot which shows/sections you are paying attention to. In the case of NPR, something like "Morning Edition" is definitely more strait reporting than say "All Things Considered" which is waaaay more than the "Tavis Smiley Show".

But I'm totally with you on "The Daily Show", and my favorite NPR program is "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me".

Is it bad if I get all my news from neighbor "Toothless Joe"? He may be biased but at least he is passionate!

In reply to logdog:

Well, the Chinese national People's Daily believes what The Onion reports.

I havent watched the mainstream news channels(CBS, NBC, or ABC) for years and havent read a paper for decades. It was so obviously biased to left wing crap even before Rush Limbaugh or others made it obvious and gave another side of the story. If you remember when the Republicans won the congress back in the 90's the mainstream reporters all looked like they lost their favorite dog or got kicked in the nads. When Obama was elected it was the best thing that ever happened and they couldnt hold back their obvious love of him and his socialist politics.

Any story relayed through another person will be slanted somehow to mold to that person's beliefs.....Either way, certain truths or facts will be left out.

FWIW, the Vietnam war was lost before it began........blame the idiots who refused to enter North Vietnam on the ground. That was proof air power alone CANNOT win a war.

I may get torn apart for this but NPR is where I get all my news. I know it is slightly left leaning but they do a much better job objectively reporting the news and they will air both sides without any of the shouting of other networks. I am convinced that 90% of the reason people view NPR has so liberally biased is that Fox "news" says it is. FYI I am not a liberal and I can't stand MSNBC just so people don't think I am super liberal.

I won't tear you apart, but they're all done by humans. Humans live to inflict their opinion on others.....I see no future of this changing. Everyone thinks they are right, myself included......we've all seen how well that goes on here.

93EXCivic wrote: I may get torn apart for this but NPR is where I get all my news. I know it is slightly left leaning but they do a much better job objectively reporting the news and they will air both sides without any of the shouting of other networks. I am convinced that 90% of the reason people view NPR has so liberally biased is that Fox "news" says it is. FYI I am not a liberal and I can't stand MSNBC just so people don't think I am super liberal.

that is true, NPR and BBC have less biased news, but the non-news programs on NPR do tend to be left-leaning.

93EXCivic wrote: I may get torn apart for this but NPR is where I get all my news. I know it is slightly left leaning but they do a much better job objectively reporting the news and they will air both sides without any of the shouting of other networks. I am convinced that 90% of the reason people view NPR has so liberally biased is that Fox "news" says it is. FYI I am not a liberal and I can't stand MSNBC just so people don't think I am super liberal.

Yes, yes, and yes.

I need my news to tell me what has happened/happening, not what I need to be outraged about. Report news and I'll decide if I need to be upset about it or not.

Strizzo wrote:

93EXCivic wrote: I may get torn apart for this but NPR is where I get all my news. I know it is slightly left leaning but they do a much better job objectively reporting the news and they will air both sides without any of the shouting of other networks. I am convinced that 90% of the reason people view NPR has so liberally biased is that Fox "news" says it is. FYI I am not a liberal and I can't stand MSNBC just so people don't think I am super liberal.

that is true, NPR and BBC have less biased news, but the non-news programs on NPR do tend to be left-leaning.

Yeah. Wait wait don't tell me is super left leaning. I still think it is funny.

I took a journalistic writing course back in college and got into an debate with the prof in front of the class over it.

In basic, I pointed out that the lack of journalistic integrity amounted to a massive ethics problem in the journalism profession.

Amounted to the fact that people (by and large) would rather be given an opnion to have than to have to process presented facts and formulate their own. Being that (aside from network news and blogging) journalistic writing and print media is struggling for a piece of a shrinking market (move towards fewer, bigger outlets, plus death of newspapers), they have to be all about the ratings to survive.

Tradegity of commons.

Prof ended up really liking me for the way I thought things through, actually put me up for a campus leadership award for a number of reasons, but thats another story.

In reply to Apexcarver:

So wait, you had to apply logic and common sense against a (presumably "liberal") prof who then actually conceded to the obvious?

What was he pr/teaching that prompted you to challenge his ideas?

ESPN coverage of NASCAR is all a bunch of left leaning news.

In reply to Beer Baron:

You sir owe me a keyboard

wbjones wrote: NPR is much better than it used to be ... yrs ago it was left leaning enough to make MSNBC look centrist ... having lost much of their government money seems to have made a huge change in the way things get reported ( at least here locally )

I will admit that my favourite show on NPR is the Dianne Rheam show. She makes it a point to not only have liberal and conservative guests on.. but sometimes on the same show together

mad_machine wrote: I will admit that my favourite show on NPR is the Dianne Rheam show. She makes it a point to not only have liberal and conservative guests on.. but sometimes on the same show together

I will admit that I listen to the Dianne Rheam show just to see if she's going to croak off on the air. That woman sounds older than Abe Vigoda.

lulz at the people criticizing Journalism profs while having never taken a course, or been to college in decades.

We had some very good instructors in my school, it's just I didn't want to be poor when I got out.

I orginally wanted to go into radio, and during my last year did an internship on a commercial station and realized I'd also have to be my own ad sales person to make money etc etc etc. And still be poor.

Duke wrote:

mad_machine wrote: I will admit that my favourite show on NPR is the Dianne Rheam show. She makes it a point to not only have liberal and conservative guests on.. but sometimes on the same show together

I will admit that I listen to the Dianne Rheam show just to see if she's going to croak off on the air. That woman sounds older than Abe Vigoda.

I originally thought the same thing, but someone else pointed out to me that her voice is caused by the disease spasmodic dysphonia.

I much prefer the idea of returning (to the extent that it ever existed) to objective journalism.

In a somewhat devil's advocate vein -
I wonder whether the ethical struggle for would-be journalists today is whether to go into the field in order to advocate for the information they see as being suppressed (or ignored) by other nodes in the media world. I.e. if one were to accept that news will never be unbiased at any point in the future, is the struggle then to report that which the journalist sees as right, whichever way they lean?

It would really no longer be journalism as I think of the word, but to what extent is that already true? If journalists have historically gone into their profession to try to present the facts (the unvarnished, unsullied truth) to the masses, but can no longer get airtime for that, at what point does the analogue of trying to give all sides of the story become trying to give the sides that the reporter sees as underrepresented?

No, I don't think having separate news sources for each side of a story is good or even acceptable, but I wonder whether that's becoming the reality to some significant extent.

There is an issue with just presenting facts. Some facts are not obvious in their effect or significance, and the effect or significance can be different depending on what (assumingly) informed expert you ask.

This of course is completely ignored in many areas currently. Presenting a fact, then following that up with what the presenter is fully confident the significance is. Then of course berating anyone who might disagree being thrown in for the obligatory anger part of the "show". This seems to be the common formula.

Black and white makes things easy to understand (and much easier to be outraged about), but as with most things, the true answer lies somewhere in between.

One of the problems we have now is that many owners of news outlets now use them to push their real agendas rather than a source that has to live on it's own. Some of the ratings for some of these outlets is so poor, they could never survive on their advertising revenue. That's the exact opposite of how it used to be. The news shows used to carry some of the networks.

Personally, I think 24 hour news (and almost unlimited numbers of channels) is one of the worst things ever to happen to mankind. Others may disagree, but if you have that much time to fill, something is going there, even if it's crap. If there were less time, it would be more valuable, and you have to fight with actual real content to get viewership. Coming from a TV production background, I can tell you 24 hour news is a lot to fill.

I personally think if anyone ever started doing straight news, it would get a big audience. There's no one really out there right now that I think is doing this. I get a lot of info from places like the Daily Mail (if you can overlook Lindsey Lohan's numerous wardrob malfuntions and arrests ), as they do a pretty good job with US news. Many times they have stories you will never, ever see a US outlet cover.