Re:Michael Arrington: "We Need More Opinion In News, Not Less"
by jessriedel on Thursday July 08, 2010 @06:48PM
(#1499042)
These were exactly my thoughts when I read this piece. I don't understand how anyone could be confused. News organizations don't claim that it's better for society that they hide their biases; they claim it's better for the status of the news organization. I mean, it's right in the quote from the Washington Post:
> "..could be perceived as reflecting political racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.”
Likewise, in the conversation that Arrington mentions, the reporter never says that it his motivations for keeping his views secret are for the public good.
However, none of this suggests, as Arrington argues, that there should be more opinions in our news. Rather, reporters should (for the public good) strive to make their writing as opinion- and bias-free as possible while simultaneously being up front about their personal biases and political persuasions.
If reporters made their tribal outlook obvious, then people would take reporters opinions as seriously as they take the opinions of any other "tribe". This would dramatically reduce the influence and status of reporters, which is why the journalistic mainstream does not directly [1] reveal their views.
[1] They reveal their views indirectly, by their choices of what to cover and some implicit assumptions. For example, in this article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07...), the opinion of the reporter is revealed by the word "despite".