Do we really want neutral news?

You commonly hear cries about how biased news media can be. However, I'm starting to think a lot of these cries of bias may be in fact simply be disagreement over a news organization or source's stance on issues.

Are people really inclined to actually try and seek neutral news, or just news that they will agree with? A choir looking for a preacher? Even I'm not sure I'm immune to this myself.

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Edited by fanty on Sep 28th 2019 at 2:12:56 PM

I think the word you're looking for is 'unbiased,' not 'neutral.' Kind of important difference there.

This.

And the problem is most people like news biased in favor of what they believe.

It's impossible to find any news that's neutral. That's generally because when you lay out the actual facts, the facts generally favor one side or another.

What I'd really like is stricter regulations on the information news networks show. FOX news has several times given out false information. I watch Current TV; seems like they're pretty good with the fact checking, but I think that's largely in self defense and they're the only truly liberal news network I've heard of. Certainly they're not as widely known as Fox is though. And the Current TV guys are hardly unbiased, they just have an interest in telling the truth about things. Also, they're not bought out by the Right or the Left.

Basically, I want factual news. If there's a bias at all, let it be because the facts point to it.

Even completely factual news can be biased. Say if your country is at war, the media can be biased by reporting only on war crimes commited by the other side and not by your own country. They haven't lied, except by omission.

FOX News is run by idiots who are obviously biased and knowingly spread lies to suit an agenda, but they're not the real problem - the worst kind of media bias is the kind you don't notice.

edited 19th Apr '12 1:01:46 PM by Talby

Asking this sort of question is like that famous Roman asking "What is truth."

Unbiased is hard to get. Even if, for example, The BBC is neutral, the reporters can 'load' language or images to suit their agendas. For example, during the miner's strikes in the 80s, news reports showed the workers being unruly, but the managers and bosses well-dressed, and sitting calmly at a desk.

Now, IMO, The BBC is possibly the closest one could get to unbiased - it has been accusing of favouring the opposition party, and the government party, and often both at the same time, in its news reports.

We must also differentiate between outwardly biased news (e.g. The Daily Mail, Fox News) and subtly biased news (e.g. The BBC).

News over here aren't really biased or unneutral At least not overly because they aren't fricking allowed to take sides officially and are supposed to be objective.

I mean seriously, I was shocked when I learned that its acceptable for news to be biased in USA

Somehow, we got it into our heads that "STRIAGHT TALK!'" is real news, and everything else is New York Times (i.e. a step down from Pravda)

edited 19th Apr '12 1:19:08 PM by johnnyfog

Yeah, this American-British attitude of "There can never be unbiased news anyway, so let's not even try" is just silly defeatism, IMO. One can keep news unbiased and neutral enough, I think.

edited 19th Apr '12 1:19:29 PM by Octo

Well, that comes with having freedom of the press. We should fight media bias by calling out news that's trying to push an agenda, and get our information from a broad range of sources.

I am not comfortable at all with government-enforced news neutrality, but what it means to be "neutral" is going to vary from government to government. There's a reason the ABC in Australia (our publicly owned TV station) is not actually managed by the sitting government. If it was, it would quickly become the Government Propaganda Station.

edited 19th Apr '12 1:23:31 PM by Talby

That's only for our idiotic press, and for Sky News. ITV News is unbiased because they're too dirt-poor to be biased, and The BBC is unbiased (at least, in terms of politics) because it's the law.

It's our goddamn idiotic press.

I had a right-wing history professor, and he was remarkably bitter about the Cold War. There was the requisite jab at Castro and Hanoi Jane and Mike Wallace (admittedly the Geraldo Rivera of his day), and then he got up in Walter Cronkite's grill for misreporting the war. "And that was the way it was", he quoted mockingly.

People are going to see bias even if there is none.

I do.

Fox news is evidence not everyone is and many like being indoctrinated.

I understand having a leaning, but there should be limits. The amount of errors and Bullshit they state as fact should get them fined.

How are we defining 'neutral' here? Because I've got a bit of a problem with the sort of reportage that goes "Some say Anders Brevik machine-gunning teenagers was a despicable crime, but others say that he was a holy crusader who struck a mighty blow against the darkies".

The problem with uncritically presenting every viewpoint on any given event is that you end up giving them all the same weight, even the totally indefensible ones. On the other hand, presenting the facts without any social context whatsoever gives you a rather stunted view of the situation - you don't really learn anything except 'man, those people who aren't me are craaazy.' This is why political commentary, not just regurgitation of data, is important.

Some would say that's still too much — the News should only report what happened, no more, no less. No speculation on anything*

Mind you, I'm not sure how bias can be removed from News; after all, people are people and all people are biased in some form or another. Bias can be reduced but not entirely removed.

CNN is probably the closest thing we'll get to unbiased news. 60 Minutes is up there, too. Really, I just want the news reported, and not stories of missing white woman syndrome every 20 minutes and how Kim Kardashian has a new boyfriend.

CNN unbiased? LOL, go home and hunker down more

In all honesty, the best way to obtain unbiased news is to skew through all the news. You'll notice that with each news channel, there are different news, like they're holding back on what they're relunctant to show. When conditions allow it, they will bias the news in favor of the news station's standing

All other news is 100% objective whenever they're sitting next to Fox.

edited 19th Apr '12 3:15:22 PM by RTaco

I didn't say CNN is unbiased, I said it was the closest thing we have to unbiased, at least in terms of news channels. Fox is clearly right-wing, and MSNBC is heavily left-wing. It still has biases, but its not as extreme as the other 2. Obviously when Time-Warner owns something its going to have something of a rightist bias, but its not anywhere near as noticeable as Fox.

edited 19th Apr '12 3:19:27 PM by LurkerMcNasty

The BBC? Neutral? Oh, was that ever even considered as being the case? Hmm.

@ Iaculus; At this point I'd settle for a factual representation of the events they cover. Hell, there was some worker's strike in the last year or so where they covered it, and showed like Wisconsin or something in winter instead of the actual fucking event where everyone was wearing shorts because of the heat. I'd like for news crews to get fined or even fired for that kind of bald faced lie.

The only news which is even possible to report objectively is (hard) science news - and even that would be horribly dull without some speculation about what this-and-this discovery might mean for the future.

On the whole, I have no problem with it if media "colour" their reporting, as long as they don't lie - and as long as they're open and honest about it. Trying to push an agenda while at the same time claiming that you're a neutral news source is just low.

Its surprisingly unbiased and neutral.