What would it mean for a news source to be neutral?

I think a similar question was asked last week. Consensus was that every news source has some bias or another, because every reporter/editor/publisher is human and his his/her own biases.

Some source are less obviously slanted than others, both on the macro (selection of stories) and the micro (text of the article) level. But nothing is immune.

The best a person can do is read/listen to a number of sources and figure that the truth – whatever that is – is somewhere in the middle.

Fox News?~

@elbanditoroso: “The best a person can do is read/listen to a number of sources and figure that the truth – whatever that is – is somewhere in the middle.”

fallacy

A source is neutral when it confirms our pre-conceived biases. ~

It would look like this

Over here, the BBC news has always prided itself on its strict impartiality, during election coverage they give all parties equal airtime & show no particular bias toward any.
Sky news remains fairly neutral too, just don’t bang the traditional drum as much as the stuffy old beeb.

@ucme – So you define neutrality as presenting the stories of the major parties?

@hominid You asked for an example of neutrality in reporting, I gave you one, that’s one.
All the major news outlets over here are typically neutral in all of their coverage, i’ve certainly not felt like I, as a viewer, have been influenced in any particular direction that I didn’t want to take myself on in the first instance.

I would have to say neutrality as not leaning one way or the other on anything Political,and that is hard, Fox leans so far to the right it’s sick.
And others lean so far left it’s the same thing.
You want a news cast that is the most unbiased they can be, so the audience can make up their own minds.
Report all the political parties in the same light, with the good and the bad.

I guess my standards for neutrality would include:

* presenting only factual information
* presenting information that is timely and relevant
* not hesitating to cover a story because of who is involved

There may be good reasons to make exceptions to the latter two points.

I don’t think it’s right to push too hard to represent both sides of an issue or to give equal time/coverage to opposing parties. This is not neutrality, it’s “fairness bias”, which can give a false impression of equivalence. So, for example, giving equal coverage to climate scientists and climate change deniers is not a “neutral” act, it is actively working to give credibility to people who have do not deserve it.

@hominid ”@elbanditoroso: “The best a person can do is read/listen to a number of sources and figure that the truth – whatever that is – is somewhere in the middle.”

“fallacy”

It may be a fallacy that “the truth lies in the middle”, but I agree that the best method is to read multiple sources and base one’s decision about the truth on one’s knowledge and experience.

And @elbanditoroso, the consensus on that other thread was that there were no unbiased news sources in America. That’s not the same as saying there are no unbiased news sources, or none with little bias.

They are not pro or con on any subject. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Presenting just the facts is also problematic. For instance, Obama has cut the deficit in half since he took office. That’s a fact. He has also doubled the deficit since he took office. That is a fact as well. You can present one of those or both but if you present both, some explanation is required to resolve these seemingly contradictory facts. The explanation will invariably contain some subjective material. Politics in general will be subjective and therefore biased.

@Adirondackwannabe

This would be it

It would mean that it would be run by robots and not humans. Of course, even then the robots would have to be programmed by humans and they’d probably incorporate their bias into them. So yeah…impossible. :)

IMO no one source could be 100% unbiased 100% of the time…they can get close but emotions, political affiliation and worse religion can color or influence the choice of reporting by either the reporter, news director, board of director and or donors. For these reasons I can hardly stand to watch the news. I get up early enough and will watch Joe Scarborough for the reasons he is a moderate conservative like me but the rest of his panel is littered with liberals and thankfully not of the screetching hand waving variety. His stories are always well discussed, thoroughly debated and Joe is unafraid to take his own party to task if need be. You always get both sides of the story presented by very intelligent guests. My fav news show of them all. I visit Drudge everyday to find the stories that main streamers are unwilling to report on and Drudge is best taken with a grain or handful of salt. I am scoping out a new site called The Real News self proclaimed one and only unbiased news source. I could not find disclosure on who their chief donors are so we shall see.

I don’t believe a neutral news source exists. A completely neutral source, in my mind, would only be feasible for very simple reports. These could be reported by headlines only, just the facts.

Anything more convoluted will need some kind of commentary. As soon as there is commentary, the most neutral way to provide this may be contradictory statements. Using climate change as an example, this could mean stating that fossil fuels are a danger to the environment, while also saying that fossil fuels power the economy. Simply the order of arguments would create bias.

However, I don’t believe entirely neutral reports are desirable. Combing through all the news stories to find my personal opinion on events happening all over the world? I don’t have the time, frankly. On issues which interest me, I know I need to dig deeper, find different arguments, and think about which of these suit me or are convincing even though I would like them not to be.

On all other issues, I am happy with my slightly left-leaning sources. I am likely to agree with their take anyway, and I trust myself not to be blindly agreeing with everything they say.

Well, by reporting facts, no matter what they are. If one day they report a story that puts X in a positive light, and the next day they report a story that puts X in a negative light, then that’s pretty close to neutral, I think.

I, personally, track down the validity of outrageous claims and I don’t care if they come from Democrats or Republicans. A couple of times a Democrat friend has posted something that just didn’t ring true. Something negative thing about Sarah Palin (who I dislike intensely) and I tracked it down, and it wasn’t true. I PM’d him with the link, and he took the post down.