> to not undermine the neutrality of the journalism in the other sections.

There is no neutral publication. Of there is an editorial board there is by definition no neutrality.

> crucial in making those facts interpretable by readers who aren't expert in the subject matter.

That's pretty charitable. In my experience most opinion and "analysis" is typically heavily biased and in service of some agenda.

> Opinion and analysis has always been part of news publications

Reading articles from 30+ years ago were very neutral compared to today where it’s very heavily sided to the point that publications are effectively propaganda and nothing more.

If trump said 1+1=2 you can be sure the left would do anything it can to spin it negatively and publish a month of articles about how he’s wrong.

It is a neutral statement that Trump is objectively terrible. By contrast it is propaganda to defend him when he claims 2+2=5, which he does on a regularly basis.

And this doesn't have anything to do with "the left" a ton of conservative Republicans have admitted that Trump is objectively terrible.

https://www.wpr.org/news/conservative-commentator-charlie-sy...

> If trump said 1+1=2

He says things like "I wish I had general's like Hitler's" or his political opponents are the "enemy within" and he would harness the military against them if he gets in power, and that migrants are criminals.

I really don't know how you can equate something as uncontroversial as "1+1=2" with such controversial and divisive statements.

He lies about absolutely everything, so everything he says should be met with skepticism.

You are correct. But if Trump said 1+1=3, virtually the entire Republican party would believe him.

JD Vance tried to make a similar joke about it and saying liberals would be against Diet Mountain Dew because he likes it. Funny thing is, no one laughed because JD Vance doesn't have any kind of human connection.

Layers of interpretation = surfacing the bias of the editorial team so you can look for it in the non-oped sections of the paper

You can take that way if you want. But you aren't doing it justice if you just view it as purely cynical deliberate manipulation rather than a true effort at enhancing the reader's understanding.

Essentially they offer a framework of reasoning around the facts presented that the reader can use to make their own evaluation. Like if someone reports that 122,211 electric vehicles were sold last year. Is that a lot? Is that not a lot? You would need to start comparing to previous years, what external factors might be influencing sales. There is intrinsically no way to do that without introducing selective bias about what is considered or not. But the reader at least gets that context to enhance their own understanding.

It seems like the newspaper editorial section really ought to endorse somebody to make their biases clear, if nothing else. What are we to believe, that a bunch of people whose job it is to write opinion pieces don’t have an opinion about the election in their own country? Haha, yeah, sureeee…

The idea that editorial team has some kind of expertise, unavailable to general population, that allows them ecxlusive ability to properly understand current events, seems to have no factual support at all. They are professionals in giving their opinions, it doesn't make their opinions be better that anybody else's. Experience suggests they are usually worse.

> The idea that editorial team has some kind of expertise, unavailable to general population

That doesn't make sense to me - they literally spend all day every day absorbing, summarising and writing about context as their full time job. They are trained formally at assessing, evaluating and questioning facts. You can criticise the end result, but I can't see how it's reasonable to say they aren't far better positioned to have an informed opinion than the average reader who gets up in the morning with no training and tries to understand a slew of facts dumped on them without context.

> all day every day absorbing, summarising and writing about context as their full time job.

Something the people they are writing to and ostensibly on behalf of do not get to enjoy. Perhaps people with grounded perspectives would be more worthwhile. Guest opinions are logical, an actual editorial opinion department? That's just an early retirement plan for writers who don't have what it takes to produce news anymore.

> they literally spend all day every day absorbing, summarising and writing about context as their full time job.

I have no idea what "absorbing" means and how it's different from any random dude spending his day sitting on a couch glued to CNN/MSNBC screen. But the fact that they are professional writers doesn't give them any special quality in the insightfulness of their writings - you can be a professional writer and a complete doofus, to which we have an ample number of examples.

> They are trained formally at assessing, evaluating and questioning facts.

No they are not. Maybe they used to, somewhere in ancient times, but there's no slightest trace of any of it in most of the content produced by major press outlets. If they can do it - which I very much doubt - they certainly aren't bothering to.

> You can criticise the end result

By their fruits you will know them. The end result is the only criteria worth considering.

> I can't see how it's reasonable to say they aren't far better positioned to have an informed opinion

Some of them - with access to sources unavailable to regular people - may be better position to form an informed opinion, if they wanted to. But as soon as that information has been published, they do not have that better position anymore. And in addition to that, what is frequently happening is that they do not just publish the information available to them - instead they distort it and modify it to fit their pre-conceived opinion, and publish that, in hope that the public doesn't know any better (it usually does). If there is any truth to separation of news and opinion sections that we were told so much about it, then by that mere fact the opinion writers don't have any special informational insights - only the news people, working with confidential sources, might.

> the average reader who gets up in the morning with no training

What is that mythical "training"? I see no evidence of any relevant "training" in anything I read in the press. Most of them know how to handle basic grammar and write somewhat coherent text, but any person with basic education can. Beyond that, I don't see any special "training" there. And certainly there is an ample number of people who undergo much more rigorous training about how to handle facts, e.g. when studying hard sciences. Most press opinion writers do not undergo anything like that.

> tries to understand a slew of facts dumped on them without context.

What is that mythical "context" not available to regular people and where does it come from? Is there some secret "context sources" that are only opening if you work for WaPo? What is stored in those "context" treasuries?

I think their existence is a complete fiction. There's just a bunch of people who are getting paid for publishing their opinions because they have a degree saying "journalism" on it or just because they applied to the job and got hired, but they don't have any special insight or "context". I mean, some of them might be just good at thinking and making conclusions (they usually don't survive in the press long) but that would be just random luck. Given the selection pressure, I'd expect lower chance to find such people among professional press than just in a random selection of people with the same class and education level.

To anyone who made it to the bottom of this slop, please don't engage with this person seriously. Discrediting expertise and opinion based entirely on your personal feelings is a game for children that no one should participate in.

Since I can’t reply to the dead child, the concept that you need training to interpret opinions sounds like a way to force people to believe your opinion without actually convincing them. It’s an extension of the “people are stupid, they need to be told what to do” from some years back that a certain party tried to push.

Except in practice their editorial opinions boil down to value judgments that aren’t amenable to such analysis. They weren’t endorsing Harris because of the nuances of tax policy; it’s because they share her views on abortion, immigration, white liability for past racism, etc. These are the subject of moral and political philosophy, not expert analysis.

That’s why WaPo has consistently endorsed the same party—even when that party’s policies have changed dramatically over time. WaPo would endorse Harris regardless of her policies.

> They weren’t endorsing Harris because of the nuances of tax policy; it’s because they share her views on abortion, immigration, white liability for past racism, etc. These are the subject of moral and political philosophy, not expert analysis.

A candidate's social policies may be more important to some people than their fiscal policies. So an analysis of their social policies would be more useful to those readers than an analysis of their fiscal policies.

You can make an expert analysis of a candidate's previous stances and track record on those subjects. Politicians will routinely lie about their previous stances, so that seems like a useful analysis to me.

There’s little meaningful “analysis” to be done about such policies. Just pledging agreement or disagreement with those philosophical beliefs. And that’s why such endorsements by journalists tend to undermine trust.

This doesn't make any sense. Of course social stuff like abortion and immigration first of all matter to readers, and second can amount to actual, written policy with great detail and nuance, and the consequences of such policies are complicated and meaningful.

On abortion, there's now a national patchwork of policy. You could write a damned book analyzing their implementation and consequences.

We’re talking about endorsements. The nuances of those things don’t materially affect who the paper endorses, or readers’ views of those issues, which are rooted in morality and philosophy, not factual intricacies.

Could you point me to such analysis published in WaPo? I mean seriously, it would be nice to have a list of policies that Harris supported before she was VP, during the time she was VP, and now that she is a presidential candidate. Side by side - is the wall stupid or is it necessary? Do we need higher taxes or tax breaks? Do we need to jail marijuana users or leave them alone? Is Israel a genocidal war criminals or our most important ally? Is our immigration policy broken or are we doing the right thing? Is the free speech the foundation of the democracy or dangerous chaos which needs to be controlled? There are a lot of confusion that may be clarified with proper analysts of the candidate's position on such questions.

An article listing analysis like this, with appropriate quotations and explanations would be great. Does WaPo publish stuff like that, consistently, over the length of the campaign? Or would it rather do another "17 reasons why Trump is exactly like Hitler" level analysis?

That would seem to negate the entire point of any editorial column then, right? If we don't care about their opinion, what's the point of reading in the first place?

Well, somebody may care, and by random chance or a strike of luck they may just hire somebody whose opinion is worth hearing... I am just saying we shouldn't assume it upfront just because there's a bunch of guys that is paid for doing it. If there's a blog on the internet and it is interesting, I read it. If not, I ignore it. I don't stand in awe or cower in reverence just because some guy has a blog. Same should be done for opinion pages - it should be afforded reverence only after proving its worth, not upfront.

So - cancel the opinion section while we're at it I guess?

Well, US is still a somewhat free country, so anybody can publish any opinion they want to publish, anytime they want to. I have nothing against that, in fact, I must admit I am guilty of it myself - I have a blog where I publish my opinions. It would be very hypocritical to me to deny anybody else the vices I enjoy myself. I think just realizing those people aren't better or worse than anybody else and do not deserve any special consideration is enough.

If it were the editor's opinion, how is it any different from the opinion of anybody off the street? Why do the editors get the newspaper platform to publish their opinions?

>Why do the editors get the newspaper platform to publish their opinions?

Because they work for the newspaper and that's part of their job?

Then we're right back to the original question:

> How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?

Writing opinion and reporting on events are different things. Opinions are usually denoted at masthead, preamble and postscript.

Why do you think that readers don’t understand that?

Opinions aren't meant to be neutral and fair, and it isn't a violation of journalistic ethics to publish them as such.

If they had tried to disguise opinions as journalism by introducing intentional bias and distortion into a story, then that would be a problem. But newspapers have published opinions for ages.

It's rather naive to think that newspapers ought to be neutral (or fair) in everything they produce. What kinds of neutral is desirable? There's neutral tone or neutral political bias -- there are many different ways for a newspaper to be or not be neutral.

Assuming neutrality isn't something that we should expect newspapers to value, then I think transparency is an good alternative. A presidential endorsement can be a good thing in that the newspaper staff are being openly transparent about their political bias.

>the editorial section which is specifically separated from the rest of the newspaper

It hasn't felt like this to me for many years, for pretty much any outlet.

In practice there is little or no distinction. The list of top articles always includes opinion pieces, the choice of “neutral” fact articles to publish (and the headlines used) signals bias, and on a basic common sense level a newspaper isn’t going to publish an opinion piece that goes against the opinions of their workers/owners. Every time an opinion piece is published that goes against this, it’s a huge brouhaha.

Interestingly on another note, opinion writers are often actually less qualified than you’d expect, because the business model of a newspaper doesn’t really work for accumulating expertise vs. a specialized magazine/Substack / etc. The only way to have consistent opinion pieces is to have a generalist, not a specialist.