General discussion on journalism

I thought maybe this might make for a good, separate topic, would be glad if it could be opened up.

The discussion around ethics and bias in journalism is something that often pops up.

My question would be: How would you personally define good, responsible journalism? Some people say journalists should be completely neutral, not giving any opinions while reporting. While others think that speaking up against certain people should be a journalistic principle.

Opening

Well, it is my personal belief that if you are in a position to condemn something you think is wrong and people will listen, you should. At least if you don't believe it will put your safety at risk, but I respect those who do even when it does all the more. That said, I have no background with journalism.

I think that "neutral" is a trap. One of the constant issues in the UK with trans people is that the BBC will endlessly go on about being "neutral" but they'll do literally anything they can to avoid having a well-spoken trans person appear solo and instead will exclusively pair them up with a transphobe, while a transphobic person can appear on their own, nominally for some other reason that barely gets any attention.

The BBC is entirely complicit in the bigotry against trans people in the UK, in part due to these methods.

I believe that ethical journalism cannot coexist with blithely allowing for the denigration and othering of entire groups of people. Neutrality has its limits, and that's when you're refusing to condemn statements that actively endanger people.

Neutrality can also include calling out clear factual errors. It is neutral to react to a flat earther by calling out where they're wrong, because the flat earther is wrong.

There are really two forms of neutrality to separate:

1. Empirical Neutrality, where the journalist sides with empirical fact rather than one of the sides in a debate. So, against conspiracy theorists, election deniers, and generally anything that's speculatively nonsensical. This includes the billion times media has blithely repeated "Trump claims [insert nonsense here]". Stop repeating nosense.
2. Ethical Neutrality, where the journalist refuses to take a moral stance and in the process tacitly promotes that yes, entire groups of people should suffer or die, because this is a side balancing out "how about you don't do that".

Total neutrality is obviously impossible − a journalist’s background, upbringing, social class and political affiliation will always impact the way he analyses events, whether they want it or not. Which is a problem when most prominent journalists in the mainstream media share the same background, upbringing, social class and political affiliation (it’s particularly egregious in my country).

Still, ojectivity should be a goal to an extent. If you report that, say, the government wants to lower taxes for billionaires, you can quote analyses of people who think it’s a good or a bad idea, but you don’t need to write an angry rant or a passionate love letter to the government. There should always be a line between a journalist and a pundit.

Of course it can have insidious effects, like reports on the Israel/Palestine conflict which try so hard to be "neutral" that they end up pretending that a state with a superequiped military and financial and political support from the US is on an equal footing with a colonized nation that has no state and no army.

The issue of the financial model is also important. The fact that private media outlets, especially on TV and the ’net, depend so much on ad revenue means that profitablity will often be put before quality − thus you will have a lot of focus on clickbait and cheap controversy, i.e. the opposite of "dispationate". Not to mention of lot of cost-cutting and time constraints which impact the ability of journalists to do their job in the first place.

Also yes to both of those.

Edited by Lyendith on Jan 26th 2023 at 8:01:25 PM

What bothers me most is an apparent death of fact checking.

What I'm referring to here is something like where the media repeats a claim about fact without verifying it's facticity.

Trump is of course a famous example of objective reality being ignored in favour of a war of words about theories or wild conspiracies.

Remember that Vulture article about Joss Whedon last year where he made a huge ass of himself? The woman who wrote the article tried to keep the tone neutral and let Joss speak for himself, and judging by the most people's reactions she succeeded in giving him enough rope to hang himself. However, there were some who criticized her for not more explicitly condemning him, even accusing her of "condoning" him by doing so. I don't care for the attitude that we can't allow people to make up their own minds and must tell them what we're supposed to think.

There's a quote that's relevant to this problem that I'm just going to copy because of how significant an influence it had on how I understand journalism and media literacy.

I generally agree with Lyendith on this matter.

I agree that journalists should be objective and empirical, not neutral.

Can you elaborate ?

I presume because neutrality can be an enemy of objectivity and empirical evidence when you bring up people like Trump or Alex Jones, who have made their following in the US by openly lying or misconstructing facts and hiding behind the veil of "free speech" while at it.

In those cases, being objective and empirical requires speaking out against these grifters and scammers at every turn.

Also, you can advocate an extreme position for the purpose of leverage, so that a 'compromise' will be closer to your actual desire. Perhaps the media inadvertently helps people play this game sometimes by trying to find a neutral (middle ground) position.

Regardless, I believe that facticity is more important than neutrality, but it's often politicians who demand media should be 'neutral'.

Edited by editerguy on Jan 28th 2023 at 12:28:48 AM

I feel a need to say that deciding what is objective can be complicated. In the past, people ware so convinced of things like "god exists" or "women are inferior" that it effectively become "objective" to them. Hell, some people still believe this stuff.

Empirically valid might be a better metric than objective.

There’s been an interesting little episode lately in French journalism.

A few weeks ago, ten journalists met with Emmanuel Macron in an unrecorded (and thus "secret") meeting so that he could expose to them his vision for his retirement reform^note supposed to push back the retirement age from 62 to 64, among other things. In the following days, those journalists faithfully repeated his talking points in various media… but since officially they weren’t supposed to have met with him, they couldn’t say that he told those things to them specifically. Thus, either they repeated what Macron said without quoting him directly, or they quoted him but never speficified when, where or to whom he had said those things. When they didn’t outright pretend to read his mind.

Analysts have noted this allows Macron to spread his discourse without having to publicly answer for it, having the journalists voice it in his stead. This practice existed before Macron but apparently he has turned it into an artform.

The thing is, the talking points those journalists repeated… were more or less those they already repeat all year long anyway. Hence the whole debate on how the line between journalist and government spokesperson is getting increasingly blurred in this country…

Edited by Lyendith on Jan 28th 2023 at 6:45:13 PM

"I feel a need to say that deciding what is objective can be complicated."

This is true, in that there are no purely objective or empirical people. Objectivity and empiricism are ideals to strive toward, not absolutes that can never be deviated from.

Another thing I think is important is proper context, related to @Noaqiyeum 's point above (if I've properly understood it). Specific facts can be objectively true but uninformative and unhelpful or misleading to an audience without the proper background. What context is necessary will of course be subjective but it's IMO an important part of informing the public, and its lack is usually where you see the accusations of journalists being stenographers for public figures.

https://hongkongfp.com/2023/06/22/the-damage-has-already-been-done-hong-kong-journalist-bao-choy-on-winning-a-battle-but-not-the-war/

Since there's a journalism thread, HK journalist Bao Choy's charges of falsely declaring the reasons for accessing vehicle license info were tossed out of the court.

She said that journalism may be "Destroyed" thanks to the NSL.

Bao's known for the documentary 7.21 Who Owns the Truth?, which highlighted the triads being involved in targeting people in Yuen Long in 2019.

As of 2023, the HKPF/HK SAR government still insist that the people who got caught up in the attack were only in the wrong place at the wrong time in a supposed gang war.

Edited by Ominae on Jun 24th 2023 at 10:47:45 AM

BBC Chinese (audio in Cantonese for most of it) followed ex-Stand News editor Ronson Chan as he tried to get around HK in the aftermath of the NSL. It also explained that journalists working in HK are affected by NSL.

The news mentioned that he has a fellowship in Oxford University.

It also talked about how teachers in HK are demonized. More so if they teach Liberal Studies, but that's another ball game.

I think that journalists should strive to be truthful, thoughtful, informative, and not distort either side of an issue. That doesn’t mean being reflexively neutral, the truth is sometimes going to be clearly on one side or another; it does mean doing the legwork in order to understand the issue. If you think Side 1 is clearly in the right, you still need to understand what Side 2 is saying and represent it clearly, and you still need to report on whether what each side is saying is true. If two sides give you differing numbers, you shouldn’t just report them both, you should explain the calculations that both are making and the source of the difference, and identify any underlying assumptions that one or both sides are making and how valid/supported those assumptions are.

Edited by Galadriel on Jul 13th 2023 at 4:39:21 AM

https://theins.ru/en/politics/264280

Insider article talk about Russian journalists reporting on the lies the Kremlin's spreading were targeted by poison.

It also talked about how an anti-invasion journalist named Elena Kostyuchenko was targeted after she went to Mariupol to report on Russian movement.

Edited by Ominae on Aug 17th 2023 at 4:32:19 AM