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Comment by bikitan | Hacker News Reader

"Deciding for yourself" doesn't mean jumping to conspiratorial conclusions based on an ambiguous, off-the-cuff remark from 1992, though. And just looking at the comments on that video you can see what sort of agenda these people are bringing to their judgments.

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Most journalism has an editorial line, which is usually aligned with the people that pay the bills. It is the case for newspapers, radio, TV... even websites.

Very rarely you have journalism with neutral editorial lines.

There's no such thing as neutrality. Usually when people talk about neutrality, they really mean status quo, or worse giving equal weight to "both sides" (implying the major US political parties are the only possible views on a subject), without even trying to assertain the truth of the matter.

Journalism isn't simply putting facts down on paper, but it's also interpreting how it affects the reader. Even if you pretend to simply write the who what when and where of a story, you still have to choose what to cover. That in and of itself has no right answer, you inevitably make an idological choice.

You can argue "there's no such thing as neutrality"... but consider the following:

News Station A:

1. Heavily edited clip of political candidate saying something.

2. News anchor provides a 10 min opinion of what happened.

3. An analyst is invited to give their opinion about what happened for 30 min..

News Station B:

1. Video of what happened.

2. News anchor describes when it happened and where. No accompanying opinion is provided.

What is more neutral? News Station B, for sure. The first format is the only one available in the US, in my country that format is considered yellow journalism and is unacceptable.

If this hypothetical political candidate is saying something that's not true (or is disputed), and news station B just runs a raw video of their speech, you could argue it's favoring that candidate by allowing their message to spread without providing the appropriate context.

It is the duty of each citizen to develop an informed opinion about each candidate.

Rights = Duties

Right to vote = Duty to make an informed opinion and vote wisely.

Freedom of the press = Duty to inform events with journalistic integrity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...

An important part of journalistic integrity is impartiality. Any news station taking sides is unethical and you should stop watching it.

But in this scenario, the news station is not providing enough information for the citizen to develop an informed opinion. I guess there's room for a service like that that just has raw video (as one element of a wider media ecosystem), but it's also valuable for the news to actually explain events in a larger context.

Raw video footage doesn’t have an agenda. You have clearly decided for yourself what the footage means to you. Good for you.

No leaked videos are even necessary. It should be obvious to any critical thinker that CNN is the Democrat version of FOX news with a small amount of viewing.

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