Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

It's... an interesting idea.

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.

"I like my news to at least try to be non-biased"

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.

I wonder what the cost of fact checking each line and citing all sources for an average news article?

Fact checking isn't usually too bad in the bigger media organisations; I'm not suggesting anything on the level of detail, say, Wikipedia, demands. What we have now is fine.

Just an effort to report only the facts and then report the opinions as companion/complementary work.

I would be surprised if Wikipedia was, on average, more accurate than the NY Times. You'd have to account for what's knowable in some way, and the timing of what was published.

Fact checking is actually not as good in technical articles. Look at any article that you are knowledgable about, then think about all the stuff they missed in the other articles. I seem to remember a couple of "This Week in Media"s where this was discussed in-depth.

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