Michael Arrington: "We Need More Opinion In News, Not Less"
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.