Stupid article.
Reiterates the usual conceit that there are two types of journalism – biased or advocacy journalism or straight news gathering such as is done by our large media outlets, which is supposedly impartial.
f you think of the names that have created the biggest buzz in the media world in the past few years – blogger/journalist Glenn Greenwald, data guru Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, Julian Assange of Wikileaks, and now the increasingly popular lo-fi documentary makers at Vice News – they have one thing in common. These are story-tellers for a digital age that come less from the tradition of straight, impartial news gathering and instead embrace a new style of journalism which favors transparency, strong analysis, opinion, a subjective standpoint, and at times, flat-out advocacy for one side of a debate.
Screw Vice. Vice is just the Voice of the CIA for the Hipster Generation. I never knew hipsters loved the CIA so much! I do not consider Vice any more biased than the New York Times or the Washington Post. In fact, it takes the exact same state propaganda line as both of those controlled media outlets.
Assange and Glenn Greenwald are direct threats to the Deep State and the media it controls or is in bed with. Hence, the controlled state propaganda media which dishes up nothing but propaganda day in and day out decides to call those brave souls blowing the whistle on their corrupt asses “biased and subjective.” Laughable!
These are story-tellers for a digital age that come less from the tradition of straight, impartial news gathering…
But here is the joke. Straight impartial news gathering is typically anything but.
“by moving outside the ideology of objectivity, alternative news sources may help to put the facts into a more complete context and perspective…
The MSM has never been inside the ideology of objectivity anyway.
Even former BBC News boss Richard Sambrook has asked “does a neutral voice hold the same value today as it did a century ago? Is the emphasis on impartiality in news actually an impediment to a free market in ideas?”
Sadly, the MSM media was vastly more dishonest and propagandistic 100 years ago (remember the yellow journalism of the Hearst papers?) than it is today. And there is no emphasis on impartiality. If anything, there is a bias against it.
Further, academics such as New York University’s Jay Rosen have criticized impartial journalism, saying it can lead to what he dubs “the view from nowhere”.
He is criticizing a ghost, something that doesn’t even exist.
He describes this as “a bid for trust that advertises the viewlessness of the news producer. Frequently it places the journalist between polarized extremes, and calls that neither-nor position impartial.”
Yes, this leads to “the truth is somewhere in the middle” nonsense, which most Americans sadly believe in. For instance, the Democratic Party is said to be the party of the radical Left, and the Republican Party is said to be the party of the radical Right, so many call themselves Centrists. But what if the Democratic Party isn’t even radical Left in the first place?
I agree with Hunter Thompson. Screw objectivity. “How can you be objective about Nixon?” he argued. Of course.
This differs slightly from the methods of the ABC and the BBC, who generally garner trust through an impartial and independent approach which examines the facts and draws conclusions based on the weight of evidence.
LOL! ABC and BBC unbiased? Haha.
The Australian Press Council has reflected this in their newly released standards, which ask newspapers to ensure “writers’ expressions of opinion are not based on significantly inaccurate factual material or omission of key facts”.
The problem is that this is a regulation passed too late that has never been followed anyway. Since when has the Murdoch-owned Australian media not been based on significantly inaccurate factual material or omission of key facts? That’s their modus operandi.
Transparency must still be coupled with the hallmarks of solid journalism: checking facts, attributing accurately, uncovering new information, and exposing falsehoods.
LMAO! Since when does the US MSM media check facts, attribute accurately or expose falsehoods? If they checked facts, they would not print blatant lies so often. If they attributed accurately, they would not deviously print selective quotes to warp the message of the quoted person. If they exposed falsehoods, then they would have to kill half the stories in the paper.
New media prefer transparency and plurality to achieve impartiality, old media achieve it with objective methods. Let’s acknowledge that both methods can lead to quality journalism, or for that matter, to poor journalism.
There is no such thing as quality journalism anymore in any large US media outlets. The only real journalists anymore write for small presses, low-volume news or opinion magazines, low traffic Internet sites or perennially broke radio stations like Pacifica.
But it’s also important to recognize what hasn’t changed. Audiences now have access to more information and a variety of different perspectives to form their own conclusions. Do audiences need a journalist to de-code the news or contextualize the facts anymore?
Honestly, you are better off just figuring stuff out on your own. Relying on an MSM journalist to figure things out for you is like bleeding a sick person. He’s only going to tell you a bunch of lies that leave you even more confused than before. Best solution is just unplug the box, turn off the radio, cancel your daily paper and tell Time Magazine to stick it.
News consumers are best served when the media provides them reliable information without spin and distills it into a digestible form.
Tell me the last time the MSM provided us with reliable information without spin about anything?
After all, there’s only 24 hours in a day. Presumably most people are too busy with work and the school run, to conduct their own robust investigations
Exactly. Not everyone is a trust fund kid like me who can sit around and track down all the Western MSM lies all day long. The fact that almost on one has the time to do this is how the Western Propaganda Model works.
And let’s keep the advocacy journalism and the Twitter rants to a minimum.
What a senseless comment. The media prints nothing but advocacy journalism. If they keep it to a minimum, they would have to shut down their business.
