I'll take a stab:

1) News is an account (story) of an event. The degree with which it is "true" is the degree with which it holds the events to account, and the degree with which the news organization/publisher holds itself accountable for that account/story. Good news is accountable and provides accounts of events. "Truth" is the wrong focus; "fact" is far too malleable (hence the status-quo legitimacy of "alternative facts"); accountability is the goal.

2) A journalist is someone who writes accounts/stories for a news organization/publisher and, in turn, is held accountable (either professionally or legally) for their story. Anyone can be a journalist, but few are willing to hold themselves to the standards of accountability good journalism demands.

3) The division between news and op-ed is marked by the degree and nature of accountability. News organizations are accountable for the news. News organizations call for op-eds and those op-eds have a different standard of accountability. That's why we call them op-eds. If a news organization will not hold itself accountable for a story then it is an op-ed.

We are far too focused on "truth" "fact" and "objective vs subjective". Instead we should focus on what the use of journalism and the news is. The use is accountability. And the special nature of news and journalism, what differentiates it from fiction and bullshit, is that it is also held to standards of accountability.

1) Being an account of X isn't a high enough bar. 100% of what I see on "the news" is an account of something. The problem is, the line between TMZ and Fox or CNN is less defined.

2) " but few are willing to hold themselves to the standards of accountability good journalism demands."

Well yeah. But it's because the dentition of journalism has become "anything done by self-proclaimed journalists." It's entirely self-serving. There is no higher standard. Mainly because the pot is afraid of calling the kettle black.

3) We might call them op-eds but plenty of "news" orgs are all too comfortable presenting their op-eds as news and/or journalism.

You have wedded your opinion of US news organizations to your definition of the news. Those two can and should be kept seperate.

1) Being an account is all the news is. It's a story. The division between TMZ and Fox and CNN is defined. They are all news organizations. They differ in the nature of their accountability and the degree with which they hold themselves accountable for their stories. They show this in their willingness to retract, correct, or stand by stories. And they have a history that we can judge. You already show that in your opinion of them.

2) Anyone can be a journalist. Just as anyone can be a scientist or a programmer. But to do those things, to be considered a professional in those things, is to hold yourself to a certain set of standards, that is, to hold yourself accountable. I have read excellent and insightful journalism in a newspaper just as I have read it on a local blog. In both cases they have acted with professionalism. I have also seen the inverse, in which case I don't consider them credible journalists or their news to be credible.

3) That's a completely credible criticism of many news organizations. That however, does not target my definition of news, that targets the use of op-eds by news organizations to evade accountability. In which case, they are bad news organizations and you would be justified in considering them as such.

However to insist on 100% "truthfulness" or "objectivity" leads to a metaphysical paralysis where news or journalism is impossible. Show me an 100% true and objective news story? You can't (or you could show your fact from your parent comment, but, as you admit, that is not news). Because it has never been like that, nor need it. Instead we can be pragmatic and demand that the news be useful. what the news is is its use. That use is accountability. Because neither I nor you can be everywhere at once. To overcome that, we rely on news, on accounts of events. But, in turn, we can also, as you have, insist that we have good news and criticise those that are not useful (a Fox News, for instance, that insists on only holding one party accountable).

> A common and agreed upon standard definition of news.

This is inherently political.

> A common and agreed upon standard definition of journalism / journalist.

This is also political.

> Transparency and full disclosure about what is news (objective) and what is op-ed (subjective).

This is also political.

Ultimately, accepting that news is political and rejecting the idea of objective or unbiased reporting is the only way to go.

Agreeing that relevance and importance are important isn't political.

Nor is journalism.

Nor is transparency.

We can't make everything "political" simply because we lack the will and wherewithal to approach it otherwise. The willingness to give "political" that much importance is simply another symptom of the problem. We're lower expectations i instead of raising them. We're rasing to the bottom, for what? To look "political" in the face, eye to eye?

Can we agree that the Fourth Estate's most important role in society is to report on politics and the powerful?

Journalism may not be politics, but reporting on how politics affects people (and even other nations) is journalism's highest purpose. But it's impossible to completely "cover" all aspects of all politics and be 100% unbiased. Therefore, the most important part of journalism is inherently political.

Facing that reality, we can view journalism with a cautious eye. This is critically important for all journalism, actually, as stories are constantly published that mis-state problems, inaccurately describe complex issues, or just blatantly disregard an important detail of a story. These micro-occlusions of information add up to a twisted view of reality for the reader. I think politics is just one of the many ways we should seek to accept and understand the bias in the news.

> Can we agree that the Fourth Estate's most important role in society is to report on politics and the powerful?

I certainly don't agree. Their most important role is to inform the public on things that affect the public's well being. This might include politics and the powerful, but that's not everything. If a hurricane is coming, you need to know about it and you need to know where to go to get safety. Sometimes politics is important to cover. Sometimes powerful people are important to cover. Sometime they are not. It depends on the impact to society. I feel usually news outlets do a poor job of evaluating the importance of the news they report and rather rely on reporting things that will bring the highest notoriety.

Agreed. Or if the climate is changing you need to know about that far more than the antics of some former pornstar.

And this is where importance and relevance comes in. Getting the facts right is meaningless if the story is low / no priority.

> Agreeing that relevance and importance are important isn't political.

Sure, but that seems to be nearly a meaningless statement. I bet we would have disagreements about what is happening around the world that is important.

I think we have a good definition of news. It's been called "the first draft of history" which makes sense since like most first drafts, most of it is garbage and needs to be thrown out.

I claim that we don't. I mean, it's way too ambitious goal to set universal definitions like this, and this is not the point anyway.

> 2. definition of journalism / journalist

Whoever who likes to be called one. This is the silliest proposition, I don't care the slightest of what do you tell a girl when she asks what do you do for money, usually I don't even care who you are at all, I just care if reading stuff on your resource adds value to my life. It's not a honorary title, for goddamn sake, you are not (or rather, unfortunately, you should be not) entitled to anything because you "are a journalist". I care only for what I read, and you (a news portal/journal or a person working for such an entity) mostly care about if what you publish brings you money, and maybe for some artistic matters that make you believe it's your "purpose" or whatever.

So: maybe possible, but not useful.

> 3. full disclosure about what is news (objective) and what is op-ed

Useful, but absolutely impossible. I find a way to publish a story about unicorns fighting dragons in the Singapore and call it news, because I'm fucking Salvador Dali and you won't do a thing about it. And if the country we live in makes it possible to sue me for that, then it's the worst form of censorship possible and basically it's just a shitty country.

> 1.definition of news

Given the 2 and 3, and the fact that your wife or your local farmer might care that you ate eggs for breakfast: both impossible, not useful and yet already solved somehow. Readers eventually buy what they feel (maybe just because of marketing, but still) adds value to their lives (and part of it is news, defined as "facts being of interest to the specific person"). Writers (journalists, if you will) eventually are somewhat forced to write stuff that people will buy, and since some potential users are interested in "news" (i.e. basic facts w/o much of an interpretation being of interest for them), there is an incentive to make such content. So, basically it's THE job of a journalist (defined as "any content maker at all") to find out what is interesting to a specific audience (both facts and op-ed pieces and stories about unicorns) and make it.

So, defining what is the news for your audience is difficult and yet, honestly, I think "journalists" are pretty proficient in finding out what that is, because, well, market economy. The problem with making quality content is not that nobody knows what people want, there just is too little incentive to make quality content, because you only care about larger audience, and the way to sell to larger audience is basically just marketing. At some point, it doesn't even matter that much what you write as long as enough people recognize you as "the source of the news".

After all, I only want to be notified about stuff I actually care about, it may be something that happens once in a few months, plus maybe some very specific stats every day, plus some "op-ed" stuff that is mostly written by actual professionals in their actual industries (which obviously pretty much never can be "professional journalists", simply by definition). In short, what I (and most people) want is expensive to make, and after you make it, you will find hard time selling it to us.

TL;DR: "they" make shitty things, because "we" buy shitty things, and there's no way around it, no matter how hard you try to "define" anything.

P.S.: when I say "buy" I don't necessarily mean literally buying, it may be viewing ads or whatever form of monetization the resource makes up.