Neutral is at best a measurement of the middle of the Overton window.
What is neutrality in regards to Ukraine vs Russia? What is an example of high quality "neutral" reporting in regards to it? How neutral do you think Russians would estimate your example to be?
I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies" as it gets people's hackles up and immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic. "Non-Neutral" seems to have been the best way in recent years to indicate that their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun in order to present a view of the world that they prefer.
It's hard to notice it when they're talking about things you don't know about, perhaps wheat imports for example. But then they do a story about something you do know about that you recognize is absolutely a one-sided hatchet job. A Not technically "lying" perhaps, but certainly not anything close to "neutral".
What's the word for that? Low-quality news? Mis/dis-information?
Personally I like the neutral/non-neutral because it reminds us of what the goal should be: actual truth, without the agenda.
I think this is a reasonably good faith revision:
> NPR lies. Non-Neutral is the best way to indicate that their reporting presents their different/false world view.
"Non-neutral" is the word you are using to indicate that NPR is not reporting what you believe.
People who agree with you are neutral. People who disagree are non-neutral.
Non-neutral is just a fancy way to call someone a liar while avoiding having to support your accusation with reasoning because it is self evident that having any opinion at all makes an entity non-neutral.
An example of how sophistry allows one to preserve facts while conveying a narrative that does not entail from them: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/04/17/yes-virginia-the-n...
I am going to assume that is true and assume your judgement is correct.
Why do you think that is the case? What is your model for why there was a change in "neutrality"?
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
NPR is largely an activist organization and has been since the mid-2010s. They never lie, mind you, but they consistently present half the story.
It's sad too -- they used to be the best around.
> I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies"
> their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun
Just because you disavow the words that best describe your belief, doesn't mean that those words don't most accurately describe your position.
If those words aren't most representative of your beliefs, then I have failed to understand the nuance you were trying to communicate.
> immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic.
Don't you understand that you are basically saying "I don't want conflict with people who find NPR credible, but they're definitely wrong.”? "People who find NPR credible just aren't experienced/smart enough to see they are being lied to."
You recognize there is conflict, but fail to realize you are half of the conflict. You are putting responsibility for creating an "us vs them" situation on the people who disagree with you. "I'm not wrong, they're wrong. They're creating an us vs them dynamic, not me, I know the truth and they are denying it.”
“Other peoples hackles are up, not mine, I'm just unemotionally stating the truth.”
> is absolutely a one-sided hatchet job
You pre-suppose your own correctness. I don't see how your position is materially different than: "It is as simple as I am right and they are wrong, people who don't see it my way just haven't understood they are wrong yet."
Of course you will get an us vs them response, because you go into the conversation with the axiom that you are right rather than a desire to understand why someone disagrees so you can help them understand why they are wrong by asking questions that are hard to answer given the set of beliefs you assess that they have.
> actual truth, without the agenda.
Don't you understand that you have defined neutral to be "things that have the same agenda I have, and things that see the same truth I do?"
The truth is intrinsically not neutral. The truth picks a side every time. All conflicts involve two parties that think they know the truth.
Neutral is a measurement of distance from your beliefs. To Chinese people, “Taiwan is part of china“ is a neutral statement. To express something else is to not be neutral.
Your subjective truth is the stick you are using to measure neutrality. Your agenda is the origin of the measurement.
There is only one way to assess truth and that is to look at internal consistency.
So you edit BY NECESSITY. You decide which stories are more newsworthy. I could report on the consistency and color of my dogs' feces at the park, and it would be part of objective reality, but my BIAS excludes those nuggets from any list of headlines I'd publish.
"Objective truth exists" is a useless comment in the context of reporting the news. It can be 100% true and yet still 100% useless. It doesn't matter.
That said, it's useful to examine which stories are covered, from which perspectives, and including which facts. The evaluation of semantics is a worthwhile endeavor. It's always important to keep an eye out for conflicts of interest. NPR and PBS are both really excellent sources of news and consistent at calling out their own limitations in addition to prominently reporting when they've made mistakes.
You may not care for their (necessary) biases and look for news from a variety of sources other than them, but if more news orgs were like them in practices, we would be a lot better off as a country. Be honest: how often does Fox News, Newsmax, or OANN make clear, public corrections of their previous reporting on prime time air?
It's not just about bias; it's about integrity. NPR's integrity frankly is unimpeachable whether you like their bias or not.
While objective truth exists nobody can know the objective truth, they can only approach it. Further, you can't approach the truth in an affirmative way, you can only approach it in a negative way.
We can know that that two ideas that can't be true at the same time means that one of them is definitely wrong.
I think this was the point of Socrates. Truth only comes from internal consistency.
Neutrality could be made into a reasonably objective standard - on any controversy, report the viewpoints of the top 3-4 groups involved in their own voice and then throw in the opinion of any academics who've made a point of studying similar situations. That is close enough to be called 'neutral'.
Why do you think there are any situations at all where people (at large) don't want reporting that reinforces their world view?
How would you define neutrality, like a one sentence definition?
I think doing so will make you understand pretty quickly that in doing "report the viewpoints of the top 3-4 groups" even choosing "the top 3-4 groups" already defies neutrality because you are implicily equating those groups giving them equal status and giving authority to whoever determines the top 3-4 groups. If 1 group is fringe, you are letting them be main stream.
The people chosen will alter the Overton Window whether the intent was to do so or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Another part of the Ukraine conflict that is strangely absent is that Ukraine has been in a civil war since 2014 when a CIA backed coup toppled their government. It is always presented as if one day for no reason Putin invaded a peaceful Ukraine.
No, its a China/North Korea/Iran vs. Ukraine proxy war.
Same with Iran and North Korea. They might supply weapons because Russia is paying them for it, but they don't have much to gain if Russia were to win.
It's possible that Putin's decision to invade was made under duress, but if so I think it's more likely that it was some faction inside Russia that was twisting his arm rather than an outside faction. (Xi /may/ have set up Russia for failure by requesting that the invasion not happen until the Olympics were finished and the rainy season had begun, but I think that's just idle speculation. I don't know if there's any real evidence of that.)
This is one of the most annoying tankie talking points. Maidan? Duh, obviously it was a CIA coup. There's no need to prove it, everyone knows that only anti-western uprisings can be genuine.
OTOH, when Russia sent their soldiers to Crimea and Donbas, it clearly was a show of the local people's will. Also, it's better not to mention that the separatist movement didn't exist before 2014 and then they suddenly were organized enough to wage a full-scale war.
It isn't, however, a proof that the US somehow caused the protests to happen. How would that even work?
On the other hand, there's a mountain of evidence for Russian military involvement in 2014, including Putin himself admitting that.
Yes! American geopolitics like to gloss over that Russia has been saying for at least a decade that Ukraine acceptance to NATO would incite a military response.
No, American geopolitics actually cites those threats which disrespect Ukraine’s sovereignty as part of the pattern of Russian aggression, though less significant than its actually launching various aggressive wars.
Also, Ukraine was not, at any point, accepted into NATO, so even if such a threat was somehow not a threat to engage in unwarranted aggression and deserved respect…it really wouldn’t be relevant.
In fact, they did! He lost in a landslide which the loser himself acknowledged as fair.
Russia declaring that Ukraine is a vassal state doesn’t make it so.
It’s basically fact reporting - who is doing what. It reads like an academic paper. No filtering of what’s covered based on who’s the “good guy”. The conclusion are focused on geopolitical impact - good or bad.
For me it was just the sheer volume of stories about identity. Politics, social, slice of life etc. They seemed like they were all about issues of identity. While the U.S. Overton window has certainly shifted in this direction I just wasn't interested in an outlet that was "all identity, all the time". It just wasn't super relative to me in the proportions they were dosing it out in.
It didn't really have much to do with whether I agreed with it or not.
I liked NPR because it was pretty reliable (probably still is I just haven't listened in a couple years) and their world view was different than my own so I was exposed to things outside of my bubble. But, and this is just my perception, when it was 80% of their programming, I stopped participating.
Right now the first headline on NPR.org is “ What a House GOP messaging bill could spell for 2024 culture war campaign”
This is a headline that passes judgement and takes a side, out is also a call to fear and anger. Of course not in an extremely explicit way, but it’s still obvious whose side NPR is on.
It’s ok for news to pick sides sometimes when things are obvious but I want my news more facts biased with less editorializing, especially when it comes to politics.
Neutral in regards to Ukraine v Russia is not having an unquestioning lovefest for Ukrainian leadership.
Recently a major news outlet reported on the conditions Russian prisoners (in Ukrainian custody) were kept under.
It was very clear they did not have the ability to freely question prisoners, or freely move around the facility.
That’s normal. But it’s very important to point out. That’s responsible journalism.
Frankly fewer puff pieces of Zelenskyy, and a more critical look at his relationship with the tv production company that made him president would be nice.
There’s no need to maintain a false equivalence. But there are too many unquestioning puff pieces.
The war's purpose is to determine who is wrong and who is left.
I do not think there is any way to be neutral at all in regards to Russia and Ukraine because any stance taken at all will support one sides victory or the others. Puff pieces about Zelensky are not meant to profess truth, they are meant to increase morale so troops fight better/more tenaciously, so battles can be won, so the war can be won.
Neutrality is not desired nor is it good.
Neutrality almost always supports the oppressors and neutrality is almost always implicit support for both the ideology of might makes right and the outcome of might makes right.
Fewer puff pieces on zelensky has the opportunity cost of fewer peices tearing down putins legitimacy. There can truly be no neutrality.
There is no neutrality to be found because both parties are not good faith actors attempting to reach consensus. If any parties are bad faith, there can be no neutrality because they don't have a desire to reach consensus, they have a desire to dominate.
You seriously think uncritical puff pieces on Zelenskyy undermine Russias legitimacy?
I think time is finite and I think the act of spending time writing uncritical pieces on zelensky is a choice about how to spend the finite time. I think making that choice is an act of prioritization.
I think zelensky's puff pieces are propaganda, the same way I think putin as the head of a giant propaganda machine.
I think spending time un-puffing zelensky is a choice and I think that choice can be measured by its opportunity cost.
Zelensky puff pieces aren't even a tenth of the evil that putin's puff pieces are. Why is it a priority to spend time debunking Zelensky's puff?
There are a million stories that could be written. Choosing to write an anti-propaganda pieces is prioritizing the outcome of doing so over spending time writing about mistreatment of pows, and writing about the mistreatment of pows is at the cost of an infinite number of other potential stories. Each story has an outcome. Each story is a finger on the scale of public opinion.
So what does the way a news service prioritizes their stories say about the news service?