It's actually quite impressive that NPR will retract a story over what would be standard practice among the bottom half of the media.
As an aside, I'm an enthusiastic reader of the Economist: it seems as if subscriptions are better incentives than clicks for journalists by reducing pressure to generate clickable headlines appealing to baser instincts. Sadly, fewer and fewer publications will survive. BTW - the Washington Post's news content has gotten a lot better under Bezos. I scan it every day now.
> an inclination of temperament or outlook; especially : a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment : prejudice
And
> systematic error introduced into sampling or testing by selecting or encouraging one outcome or answer over others
The first one implies falsehood. In that the data itself is prejudiced.
The second one is manipulative of the truth. Which you could argue also makes it false, since you have a falsely representative sample, where you claim not too. Thus you are lying to the reader, because you know things you don't want to tell me, since they would change the outcome, and disprove your prejudice.
So I feel your statement is only true, in that you can claim all samples, even massive ones, are naturally biased, and only an omnipotent creature that would know 100% of all the variables could be unbiased.
But that seems counter productive to me. We're not looking for absolute truth, but statical truthyness.
If an editorial presents all the data the author is aware of. And the author did reasonable due diligence to find most of the data availaible on the matter. Then its a truthful and unbiased editorial. Which allows you to make your own conclusions.
Saying all editorial is biased is dismissive, and it enforces the notion that, you'll never know the truth, thus just keep believing in your prejudice, they're as good as anytjing else. Which is false, statically, your prejudice is less likely to be true.
Let me give you an example (hopefully avoiding a debate on the topic): are pit pulls more dangerous than other dogs? First to be clear, I have no dog in the race (ha-ha). Local newspapers write stories covering dog attacks, mentioning the dogs were pitbulls. My friend who does pit bull dog rescue points out that papers only cover pitbull attacks, and never attacks by other breeds. By only covering pitbull attacks, editors and writers have biased the general public. At this point, I don't know the truth: are pit bulls more dangerous? Do editors consider writing stories about attacks by other breeds at all?
Consider a few headlines:
> "Trump Embroiled in Battle with Mueller"
This gives the impression both parties are at odds. It gives the impression that the battle is fierce and ever-present on both parties' minds.
> "Trump Shrugs Off Partisan Attacks"
This gives the impression that the probe is no big deal to Trump and just standard political maneuvering from one side.
> "White House counsel, Mueller Meet on Russia Inquiry
States the facts of the story. Doesn't really imply anything.
All three headlines can be true simultaneously.
"Hannity: Mueller's investigators are partisan hacks" [0]
Sure, maybe Fox isn't "serious", and maybe Hannity isn't the most serious "journalist" on Fox. Still, this is a headline published by a news organization. You don't watch them and I don't watch them, but my grandmother watches them five hours a day, and she isn't the only one.
It is hilariously revealing that you object to the second headline rather than the first. Even if subconsciously, you know you've seen that first headline published by your favored media conglomerate.
[0] https://video.foxnews.com/v/5669316591001/#sp=show-clips
Ideally, in this four-quadrant space, most news would stick to the true/neutral space, the others to be avoided as hard as possible. We both know that doesn't happen.
Hyperbole and metaphor have no place in headlines.
How can you independently verify the attacks are partisan? How do we know Trump "shrugged off" the attacks or that Trump is "embroiled in a legal battle". You'd have to ask him and he has every incentive to hide his true feelings!
If you feel my headlines are not good enough then I would encourage you to think creatively and conceive of ways a headline could convey both truth and bias.
How can you independently verify the attacks are partisan?
No news organization would describe the thing in that way because it's not factual. So that's an easy one.
If you feel my headlines are not good enough then I would encourage you to think creatively
I'm not inclined to think creatively to make your bad argument better. It's your job to make your argument not bad.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/donald-trump-legal-b...
Can you extract the hyperbole from the fact? It's not terribly difficult to see what is evidently true and what is innuendo.
Even if there were no headlines that matched the ones I wrote, my argument would still be valid. I'm arguing that "truth" is insufficient. A plain presentation of evidence is the only way effective way to combat bias. Though, it is not a panacea.
The metaphor you're referring to is more accurately described as hyperbole.
I find it funny how far people will go to intentionally misunderstand one another. We could have a perfectly reasonable conversation on the merits of cold, impersonal, evidence-based discussion and on the roles of metaphor in speech. But instead we have to play this game where you insist on finding some fault in some argument that I never made. Or pretend when you do see faults that they're "mere uses" of colorful language.
So to put this terrible conversation to rest let me make three points:
1. I like NPR and I'm not in any way attacking them. If you're here just to defend your favorite publication -- you can stop.
2. It doesn't matter if the CNN article was a piece of analysis or reporting. It is disseminated to an audience with the intent to be read as news and because it is an official publication from a news source it is (by dictionary definition) news. Since you seem so obsessed by the designation.
3. My original point "'truth' is not sufficient to eliminate bias" has been left uncontested. It is the only thing worth discussing. You have chosen to focus entirely on fictional headlines meant to help you understand the core point. If the headlines confused you -- I'm sorry (in the most meaningless way possible) -- but you need to improve your reading comprehension before you waste someones time with idle criticisms.
I would encourage you to re-read this comment thread. I have tried now on three separate occasions to get you to understand the core point of the conversation.
Maybe you're at the end of this comment thinking to yourself "Well the news industry seems fine right now. I can't find any headlines to support his claims". I would encourage you to consider: blogs, youtube comments, HN threads, casual conversations, and internal dialogue. What I'm saying (truth is not sufficient to eliminate bias) applies to all aspects of human thinking.
I should have never linked that CNN article. I thought an example would help you understand but its clear to me that it only enables people to misunderstand.
But it isn't. It's a completely ordinary turn of phrase.
It doesn't matter if the CNN article was a piece of analysis or reporting.
That matters an awful lot.
My original point "'truth' is not sufficient to eliminate bias" has been left uncontested.
Sure. I'm contesting your ability to support that point.
Piling on to what others are saying, NPR may be truthful but they certainly tell their story from a pretty specific viewpoint. I find them to be very centrist and pro establishment. When Obama announced new internet surveillance laws under the guise of internet protection, NPR only really shared the views of the bill’s supporters. The EFF and others claimed the bill was harmful rather than helpful, while NPR on their story of the bill only said “critics claim the bill doesn’t go far enough”. If they only share the viewpoints of a bill’s supporters and misrepresent the views of critics, they’re not really representing the truth in my opinion. Similarly on a day after Bernie Sanders’s largest rally of his campaign at the time, when 10,000 people showed up to support him, NPR spent 8 minutes of the newshour on one of Trump’s tweets and various reactions (where they asked different people their opinions and read tweet responses of others), while only briefly mentioning Sanders by saying he had another couple of rallies (but not discussing or analyzing the scale or potential impacts of his campaign).
So before you congratulate yourself for how great your choice media is, consider the ways in which it falls short in serving the public good.
If I really need know something, I will read from a few left and right websites to make my own decisions. After a while I now feel Reuters are close to be unbiased, though I'm not 100% sure still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding
»During the 1970s and early 1980s, the majority of NPR funding came from the federal government. Steps were taken during the 1980s to completely wean NPR from government support, but the 1983 funding crisis forced the network to make immediate changes. According to CPB, in 2009 11.3% of the aggregate revenues of all public radio broadcasting stations were funded from federal sources, principally through CPB;[37] in 2012 10.9% of the revenues for Public Radio came from federal sources.«