Go look at this link, which is a collection at Kent State University of articles written about the massacre at the school from the time of the shootings:
https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archive...
Tell me how all of these articles are simultaneously unbiased from the headlines.
Additionally, pointing out that Facebook lacks any fundamental principles and is just a reed in the wind is a great observation.
The media has always had to kowtow to some degree to local authority, and there is always the element of ‘the truth we choose to believe’ (or are being told to believe) being published over harder reality. The west tends to be more transparent than most, and more honest than most, but everyone is very far from, and has always been very far from, any sort of unbiased view.
>The media has always had to kowtow to some degree to local authority,
Yes, that's what I mean, to what degree? That degree is much greater now than it was in the past, except the one doing the manipulation isn't necessarily the government.
Do you have any links to facts that might support those assertions?
If not, I rest my case?
No, we are not.
Today's "biased" news is just regression to the American mean. When people got their news from newspapers, almost a century ago, you had similar levels of editorialization, bias, closed-mindedness, clickbait, misinformation, and so on. The "unbiased" era was largely a product of technical limitations that went away with cable, and later the Internet.
[0] Or, more specifically, what Noam Chomsky called the "five filters". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
The journalist asked her what evidence they had, she said she had some, but when pushed she said "Russians just don't [bomb cities]", and couldn't produce any evidence. other than kept repeating that "Russian Troops do not bomb Ukrainian cities". It's an astounding claim given that we see Ukrainian cities being bombed and we see Russian troops in Ukraine.
There is objective truth, and there is objective lying. Maria Butina was the latter.
Editors aren’t always evil and do this on purpose, however as humans we all have implicit biases. And our biases increase if we feel like we owe somebody a favor (this is why doctors are not allowed to accept gifts from pharmaceutical companies in many countries). If upper management tells a senior editor that company A is their biggest advertiser, and a journalist tells a story unfavorable to company A, then the senior editor might feel like company A doesn’t deserve this treatment and orders a counter story which exonerates the company to be presented on the same page.
I wouldn’t put anyone on a high horse here.
1. I believe that I am a rational human being
2. My rational way of thinking has lead me to certain set of beliefs about the world and how it operates
3. I don't think about these beliefs all the time, because they make sense to me, but I reserve the right to change them should my perception change
4. It may take a while for my beliefs to change since these are conclusions I have made after thinking about topics rationally for a period of time. A sunk cost of sorts, if you will.
I think that most people would see that list and say hey, there's a person who is probably rational and introspective.
Now add the following:
0. I am a journalist
5. I report facts objectively but my decision making process on what is important to the reader may be affected by my human brain and my idea of the situation garnered from my experience with the subject matter and my human beliefs
This still isn't the dreaded "media bias," although it's clearly a bias. We have more accurate journalism right now than in any other part of human history. We just have more editorialising too.
What I'm specifically arguing against is that there was ever a time when there WASN'T bias in journalism. That's nonsense.
Now this is not to say that good journalists employ this skill effortlessly and infallibly. No of course not, however a good journalist will do this better then a person who is not skilled in the craft of journalism. You might claim that I’m putting journalists on a high horse here, however I’m only doing so by recognizing that they practice a craft with increasing skill levels. If this puts journalists on a high horse, then same can be said about physicists or doctors, in that they get better at their craft with practice.
Simply not true. Read about the news industry from the founders to yellow journalism to the world wars to present day. There was never a time when news was objective. It wasn't created to be.
> I cannot accept the framing as only the last one: that we've magically discovered being unbiased is no longer a worthwhile goal
It was never an achievable goal. So what we should strive for is a diversity of opinions via a genuine set of diverse news organizations. Sadly, most of the media is owned by a few multinationals who themselves are owned by the same controlling interests.
No, they didn't, much more than they do now.
But the ideological bias among the major media was more consistent, and when you get the same bias everywhere you look, it seems a lot like objectivity.
I cannot accept the framing as only the last one: that we've magically discovered being unbiased is no longer a worthwhile goal, so throw up our hands and take a stand on every controversial topic, pick a side every time. No.