Hacker News Reader

Comment by unlinker | Hacker News Reader

Do you think they'd recognise their own bias? That would be like saying "we can't do journalism properly", because proper journalism is unbiased.

View on HN

There is no such thing as unbiased journalism. Without bias, what you have is cacophony of competing interpretations of events. Even reporting "just the facts" consists of making judgement calls that introduce bias with respect to which facts you report, and what you accept as fact.

I'd rather have reports from sources that don't try to pretend to be unbiased.

cspan is probably the closest thing to unbiased journalism, it's great, but no, it isn't a money maker and is only entertaining to those truly seeking the raw content. I agree that for reporters, the least they can do is acknowledge their own bias. If anything, that acknowledgement goes far towards mitigating said bias.

> That would be like saying "we can't do journalism properly", because proper journalism is unbiased.

I'm not entirely sure about this. Trump's been eating the media's lunch in interviews; perhaps a more biased approach acknowledging his interview games would actually lead to better reporting.

Without bias how do you pick your stories? Without bias how do you pick your sources? Bias towards official sources is ubiquitous.

Bias is an integral part of journalism, it's up to the reader to understand this fact and collect information from multiple sources (if they're so inclined).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com