Working Title: Self Satisfied Sentrism:
From YKTTW
Coolnut:
- In the American Political System, at least, there's the binary nature of the system, too-a third choice will often be seen as a spoiler, taking votes from the major candidate he more closely agrees with (Pat Robertson in 1996 and Ralph Nader in 2000 were accused of this).
Isn't that Ross Perot in 1996 (and 1992 as well), unless I'm missing something?
Apropos of nothing, I still wish "
bicurious fallacy" had become a meme. —
Document N
In the article there's a discussion of "is there true objectivity in media" with disagreeing views on the answer. Obviously the truth lies in the middle... Just Kidding. I move that the pro-objectivity comment be removed for not being objective. Apparently the toper has a clear pro-objective bias. More logically, they maintain that saying "Vampires attacked the school" is just a statement of fact, not pro-, nor anti- vampire. I disagree, it is distinctly anti-vampire. The word "attacked" gives it away. The reporter could have said "Vampires used a school to fulfill their natural and God-given hunger pains" or some such.
- Showing the actual opinions of both sides and leaving the reader to chose who's right is entirely objective.
- Only if both sides are telling the truth. If someone is lying to a journalist, objectivity requires them to find out and tell the public that they are being lied to, not to simply reprint the lies. Reprinting the lies of both sides isn't a solution; it's evenhanded but it isn't objective.
- Here it is important to make a distinction between "neutrality" and "objectivity", since the terms are not synonymous. Neutrality means hearing both sides of an issue without making judgements about them; objectivity consists in choosing the more "logical" side acording to an empirical standard.
- Furthermore, it is important not to interpret an objection to a standard or paradigm as a sign of "controversy". Such a technique is known as an "artificial controversy", of which denialism is a sub-type. Case in point:
creati "intelligent design".
- Related to the above, there's the issue of giving someone credibility. We usually have to rely on experts to tell us what to think, because people can't be qualified to judge everything themselves. Those who are credible experts and those who are not should not be put on the same line, not even so as to let the reader decide between them about things the reader doesn't understand. Of course, then the journalist should at least be able to judge who really is an expert - which requires a kind of expertise in itself. But, damn it, if you're going to report that stuff, you'd better make sure you're capable of doing so properly.
- It's damn well better than the journalists who think they have a moral duty to take sides! It's not pleasant finding that what you thought were reliable, objective journalists working for reputable news agencies think of themselves as (if This Troper may quote a British blog) "spies for whichever side the UN is on".
- There's no such thing as objectivity in the press, which is why this fallacy typically produces wire articles that actually manage to say nothing, because the alternative involves tacitly taking a side.
- Except that there is. In every story, there are the facts: the events that actually happened. The job of a newsperson is to report those facts, without taking a moral side. Reporting that "Vampires Attack High School" in Sunnydale doesn't have to be pro- or anti-vampire.
- Have to be? Maybe not. But it will be. The reporter has finite time and space: they can make one of the two following points succinctly and support it with research in time for publication tomorrow. Either the attack was unprovoked and resulted in many deaths, or the vampires were persecuted and driven to desperate measures. Trying to do both dilutes the story to unsellable pap.
Some idiot: This trope is ridiculous. The suggestion that every argument has a clearly defined "right" and "wrong" side is idiotic. Ask any economics,
politics or any number of other social sciences expert and they will all tell you that the extreme version of any position is likely to be the worst possible course of action. What the hell is going on?
Wit: That the actual solution is also just as unlikely to be perfectly in the middle? Not sure how this is hard to grasp.
Some idiot again: Thanks by the way for whoever edited my name there, very clever and mature. It's not hard to grasp, unless of course nobody actually makes it clear in the trope description that that is what is going on. The trope description never suggests that the flaw is in assuming that the exact middle ground must be correct. The trope description actually suggests that the "middle ground" approach is always wrong, and that in fact in any situation in which two views contradict each other, one must be right and one must be wrong. If the trope is actually about how writers assume that the
exact middle ground is right, and they are wrong in that assumption, then the description needs to be re-written, as that is not even close to what it says right now.
