Hacker News Reader

Comment by goatforce5 | Hacker News Reader

Watching Al Jazeera's live stream and they had one of their journalists on the phone from the square. She expressed excitement and delight that Mubarak was gone. The host guy back in the studio pointed out the journalist on the phone had been impartial up until now, and basically apologised for her expressing her opinion.

I thought that was pretty classy.

View on HN

He actually said something along the lines of "...do forgive her for her reaction. She was 1 week old when Mubarak came into office."

Very cool.

Now it happened another time, and he was even more harsh, sth like "we are sorry that some of our Egyptian correspondents express their private emotions and opinions instead of only doing their proffession". That's what shows class and a really PRO approach. In Poland, when the pope died or the plane crashed, journalists of our local news stations started a crying/mourning contest - it was disgusting and unbearable to watch, and nobody from tv even cared to think that there was something extremely not proffessional about it.

Everyone on TV crying sure seems like it would be super annoying. But I find the notion that journalist should, or even indeed ever could, be 100% objective and impartial - silly.

Silly and most prevalent in America. Curiously also in America we have Fox news which clearly does not abide by objectivity even as it advertises itself with it.

My point is simply that pure objectivity is an impossibility.

Attempting to reach pure objectivity can lead you down a wrong path, just look at how American journalists contort themselves in order to be nautral, facts and reality be damned.

In Europe it is much more prevalent that everyone has a bias, know what it is and keep it in mind as you read, watch, or listen to them.

I'm hoping that Al Jazeera, which is accused of having copied the style of fox news if not the substance, does not follow American journalism down the path of a bias free utopia.

I hope Egyptian journalists who show any kind of emotion at this news, are only jokingly reprimanded. As long as it doesn't turn into a soap opera, bias ought to be expected of mere humans, even if they are journalists.

An objective view is one where you focus on the facts of reality, without trying to superimpose opinions on them. Trying to equally present all opinions does not necessarily have anything at all to do with the facts, and is not objective reporting. And though our models of reality are necessarily imperfect, we can still try to get them to match reality as well as we can. One of the big hazards to avoid is being emotionally entangled with the news in a way that prevents you from reporting it neutrally.

Al Jazeera derives most of its fame from being the least biased news agency in the Middle East, with satellites that let it broadcast to places that would prefer for their citizens only to have access to the official state-run news.

A tv journalist's job is to give information, not express own emotions. People are only people, and mistakes in moments of strong emotion can happen, but that's why they were reprimended. I know pure objectivity is technically impossible to achieve, but I turn on to the news hoping I will get information on the subject, not some journalists' feelings, because I really don't care - they're the medium, not the subject.

When journalists want to show some emotional aspect of an event, they can interview citizens on the streets, that's their job; expressing it themselves is not pro and surely not trustworthy.

> Al Jazeera, which is accused of having copied the style of fox news if not the substance

Huh? Who said that? AJE is BBC's school, not Fox. I've heard their local channels are more expressive in their orientation, but AJE is another league.

Link to stream: http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

> The host guy back in the studio pointed out the journalist on the phone had been impartial up until now, and basically apologised for her expressing her opinion.

Really? I haven't been following the English Aljazeera, but the Arabic Al-Jazeera was not impartial at all throughout the revolution (which I don't mind).

It seems like the Arabic Al-Jazeera is more like the Fox News of the Arab world, while English Al-Jazeera is trying really hard to be more like BBC World.

It's not like Fox. It's pretty objective when it comes to different points of view. It's just not impartial when it comes to national issues.

Arab Al Jazeera is very much like Fox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samir_Kuntar#Reception_in_Leban...

Compare CNN to CNN international sometime :)

World news outlets (inter-regional) seem to be the best at objectivity.

or possibly a little condescending.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com