by jaredwiener on 4/9/25, 12:46 AM with 81 comments
by karaterobot on 4/9/25, 2:57 AM
I'm not ceding this ground. We need news that strives for impartiality, and even if people don't want it, they need to get it anyway. The customer is not always right, and everything is not relative.
by beloch on 4/9/25, 4:03 AM
If you take people from opposite ends of the spectrum and put them in a well moderated environment, the discussion that results often helps you to appreciate the different angles that people approach political issues from. Aside from in the U.S. during recent years, political issues are usually a matter of perspective and shades of grey. i.e. If there is a black and white scientific consensus on a given topic, it rarely becomes a political topic (except recently in the U.S.). It's when people with different opinions explain their position and try to sway each other that you're most likely to see arguments that actually have some merit. Even if you are not swayed by an argument, at least you can get a sense of why somebody with a different perspective sees the issue that way.
Unfortunately, at lot of people, and I'll leave it up to others to speculate on who those predominantly are, are not curious about or interested in views that don't align with their own. They may perceive exposure to such views as aggression. i.e. If you express a view they don't agree with, they may see it as an attempt to force them to align with that view. This perception of persuasion as aggression may explain why some scientifically black and white issues have become political.
by somenameforme on 4/9/25, 3:37 AM
It just happens that of the relatively small percent of people that prefer partial or biased media, it's mostly made up of people with "no power." But even that is also dubious to plainly false since the article's definition of "no power" is very weird and includes anybody who is "ideologically or politically engaged", which is essentially every single person at the highest levels of power in the country.
by riknos314 on 4/9/25, 3:27 AM
I want as close to the truth as is possible, with as little influence of the publication as possible. I want to have the option to take the in raw facts and contextualize them myself before I engage with external contexts.
Due to this, I've been quite a fan of the forbes YouTube channel of late. They've been uploading unedited clips of events with zero spin, commentary, or contextualization.
by travisjungroth on 4/9/25, 4:03 AM
by baazaa on 4/9/25, 5:38 AM
As for why impartial news does so poorly in practice, it's often because it's utterly uninformative. 'Car bomb goes off in Kabul' is worthless info to 100% of the population, whereas the moment you try to contextualise it 'Car bomb goes off in Kabul, which is becoming more frequent, which suggests administration is lying about how well the occupation is going' then you're no longer impartial.
Journalists and editors have spent the better part of a century stripping all useful information out of their articles in an effort to be impartial. It would be much better if they instead aimed for a diversity of opinions than a mythical objectivity devoid of ideological bias.
by ryandv on 4/9/25, 3:58 AM
Not a new idea. Chomsky & Herman talked about the incident forces and special interests that act upon the government/media/advertising complex and the degree to which these forces influenced the content of mass media and television in the 80s in their book Manufacturing Consent. Similar considerations apply in the age of social media today.
by ragtagtag on 4/9/25, 4:14 AM
When I lived in Liberia, there were about 10-15 different newspapers in the capital, from websites to print to one guy with a massive chalk board on the main road. This diversity of sources served quite a small population, but there was a massive appetite for news.
In such a situation, you don't expect impartiality, but each news organisation's perspective sites is more obvious, and reading about events from multiple perspectives gives, in my view, a broader and clearer window into what happened.
I think it could make sense to value in news, not impartiality, but diversity of viewpoints.
Conveniently, the internet does make this much easier.
by neo1250 on 4/9/25, 4:09 AM
by taeric on 4/9/25, 3:03 AM
Would be like asking who wants news on the cutting edge of sports, versus who wants to know how their preferred team is doing.
Now, we like to think people used to be more aligned on the idea of the nation. Or general well being of the world. I am not too shocked to see that people have aligned with cohorts based on perceived identities. Even if I find it disheartening.
by Apreche on 4/9/25, 3:54 AM
If we’re talking about pure opinions, like movie reviews, I would argue that isn’t news.
Many people seem to think that impartial news is news that covers all sides. They share all purported and contradictory information from all sources without confirming which information is true, and which is not. This allows the audience to decide for themselves how to see the world rather than being forced to see the world as it is. The upside is not being forced to see only a false world as envisioned by others who may have unseemly motives. The downside is many are left confused and unsure what is true. This defeats the purpose of news entirely, as the audience is just as uninformed after reading as they were before.
The only truly impartial news source is one that will adhere to rigorous standards of evidence. Given all the available information they will take a firm stand in declaring what the facts are, and to what degree of certainty.
The problem is that in a world with vaccine deniers, climate denial, etc. a purely fact-based and impartial source of news would be branded as very extremist.
by paulpauper on 4/9/25, 3:37 AM
by AStonesThrow on 4/9/25, 2:46 PM
My father is profoundly addicted to consuming news media in every form possible. Never a day went by in my childhood without him hiding behind the daily newspaper (and then relating back all he read) and tuning in to every news on every TV channel. It was single-minded and exhausting, even compared to my own voracious and indiscriminate addiction.
I’ve never wanted to hear irrelevant shitty news stories. They are all 100% geopolitical gossip and only designed to control us, pacify us and/or engender F.U.D., and also to sell advertising.
News media has nearly nothing to do with what an urban human needs to get by in daily life.
The days that pass without me being lured in to some shitty RSS feed of clickbait, those are good days. I prefer to go to primary sources today so I simply keep open a tab on weather.gov, Google Maps for traffic or transit schedules, and YT channels from the Holy See & the People’s House for ceremonies and press briefings. Also the Wikipedia Main Page keeps me informed about the latest global obituaries and really big deals.
People are being led around by the nose by shitty 24/7 news cycles that consist 99% in stuff that’s bread & circuses. Living our lives should never depend on what’s on TV.
by IAmGraydon on 4/9/25, 4:43 AM
by mkoubaa on 4/9/25, 3:50 AM
As long as they explain what happened, they are not impartial.
I want information. I want it to look like this:
Reporter X has information from Individual Y in the newsroom that the organization Z says, "direct quote".
Then I want to mercilessly cull any entity in all chaina that has been shown to be misleading. I mean until the end of time.
And I want this to be done algorithmically.
by dsign on 4/9/25, 7:47 AM
If we are to live in democracy, we need consensus to be able to do important things. Without those important things, "bad things" happen. Say, you don't get medical care. Or a pandemic of a preventable disease kills a lot of people who don't have access to a vaccine or who don't want to be vaccinated. Here, you may say, "hey, my definition of bad thing is different than yours. Who are you to decide?". And now you are starting to see the problem.
So, we need consensus. And a good way to reach consensus is for people to have access to facts and to be able to make sense of those facts. But in an increasingly complicated world, both things are very difficult. Making sense of facts requires advanced mental tools: previous knowledge, reading skills, mathematics and logic. Those skills are under siege by forces that compete to engage people with dopamine-inducing content: social media, cable-news, video-games, politicians in campaign trails, etc. You as an individual may perhaps have enough reason, but at a group level, the critical mass for rational consensus is not there.
The endgame of that train is lack of social trust and anarchy. But "fortunately", before getting there, people turn to strong figures and/or to violent ideologies that suppress the "other".
The worst part is that I don't think there is a democracy-preserving solution to this problem, at least not for societies which are already incapable of reaching rational consensus. USA should prepare for its age of stabby emperors[^1].
[^1]: Please don't take this last statement seriously, I'm just goading you with dopamine-inducing content.
by randcraw on 4/9/25, 4:58 AM
I suspect most of us also want news that doesn't make us think too hard. Don't take me out of my comfort zone, or challenge my presumptions and preferences. No surprises, please. Allow me to remain confident that my beliefs need no revision and my 'bubble' can remain unpunctured.
Alternately, I would have thought that a better measure of impartiality would be personal curiosity -- the desire to learn what you don't know and correct your misunderstandings, and the quest for news that ensues.
by JadoJodo on 4/9/25, 12:35 PM
I will happily read a well written piece authored by someone with whom I may or may not disagree who is up front about their bend. But when you’re telling me that this policy is Donald Trump playing 4D chess or that Joe Biden is the sharpest he’s ever been, and follow it up with some variation of “I’m a[n unbiased] journalist”, I’m out.
by ConspiracyFact on 4/9/25, 4:27 AM
When can we stop with this?
by esbranson on 4/9/25, 4:23 PM
by lyu07282 on 4/9/25, 4:00 AM
I still vividly remember the media's disgusting mouth-foaming psychotic hysteria in support of the Iraq war and the ferociousness in which they barked at anyone who dares to speak the truth. Or the countless times they prevented leaks of the most disgusting crimes of the state to be published, or how they threw their own sources into the fire to protect the most vile warmongers.
I feel nothing but contempt for journalism.
by sfink on 4/9/25, 3:38 AM
But for most things, I don't want to avoid hearing whatever the "sides" have to say -- I want to hear from every perspective. Sure, I don't want to hear from the extremes, because they aren't going to contain much information. It's all "See?! This proves that [preconceived notion is true]!" bullshit.
I'm going to promote my preferred news source Tangle: https://www.readtangle.com/?ref=tangle-newsletter
It's US-centric and just talks about "left" vs "right". But then, that's all we really have left in this country anyway. It talks about a single topic each day, has quotes that tell you what each side is saying, and then some analysis and opinion that you may or may not agree with, but at least you'll have some sense of the space in which to think. I am certainly partisan and favor one side, but I will often find some sense in what the other side is saying, and likewise I will often find that many on "my" side are full of crap with respect to some particular issue.
It's a good way to add nuance to one's own perspective on things, and to consider deeper questions than you would by constantly trying to justify your side's take on anything and everything.
tl;dr: "all sides" news > "no sides" news