I'm wondering if there is any way for a "trusted to be mostly neutral" news organization to come about. Let's pretend we have a nascent neutral organization X:
Action: X publishes something properly critical of the right/left.
Reaction: The extreme right/left media throws all sorts of criticisms of X's reporting and sees what sticks.
Result: Some fraction of the right/left constituency starts to believe (and voice) that X is biased.
Action: X publishes something wrongly (or at least with more bias than expected) of the right/left
Reaction: All right/left media publishes articles lambasting X's coverage of the item in question.
Result: A fraction of the more moderate right/left constituency starts to think "maybe my extreme friend was right about X"
Cycle through the above a few times, and even though the majority of the country may trust X, most of that majority will be among the least politically engaged (because partisanship and political engagement are correlated), so you are left without much of an audience that cares about what you are reporting.
> a "trusted to be mostly neutral" news organization
Until there's a definition of 'neutral' that everyone agrees with, that won't work. It's impossible to avoid making important editorial judgements unless you're going to literally report all information being generated. News organizations are not a substitute for doing research on the things that matter to you.
That's a cop-out answer, especially in the current highly polarized state of affairs in the US. The more polarized the environment is, the easier it is to define neutral:
Start with a firehose stream of "all information being generated" (which, implicit in your comment is neutral) edit it down. The extent to which the edited-down stream pisses off one side more than the firehose stream did is the extent to which your stream is not neutral.
Note that this isn't a suggestion to both-siderism; I'm not suggesting that the resultant stream will treat both sides equally, just that it's precisely as biased as the "firehose."
So you incentivise people being as angry as possible about anything they even remotely disagree with, because then it shifts the "firehose" in their favour.
Suppose that I edit down the firehouse of all information generated to be just a monthly statement of the global average temperature. This information will piss off one side a whole lot, and the other side not at all. Is this information non-neutral? Could I make my editing neutral by also including the occasional statement that Trump won the election in a landslide?
> This information will piss off one side a whole lot, and the other side not at all. Is this information non-neutral?
Of course reporting just this information is non-neutral. You are specifically picking facts that back the policies of one side over the other. That's obviously non-neutral. If you are a weather-service, it might be apolitical, but as a general news organization it's hard not to read that as political.
> Could I make my editing neutral by also including the occasional statement that Trump won the election in a landslide?
I mean if your firehose of all facts includes "Trump won the election in a landslide" then sure, but I don't think you honestly believe that to be true. I suppose you could report on members of the house claiming this to be true? It might make more sense to e.g. report on perverse incentives setup by entitlement programs (to go with the climate-change theme, how about how tax-breaks for clean-fuel vehicles disproportionately benefit the rich?)
Of course reporting just this information is non-neutral.
Wouldn't not reporting that information also be non-neutral? As you are, from one perspective, hiding information that one side doesn't want to be shared, thus favoring their political stances.
Yes, not reporting that information would also be non-neutral.
You could have very bland neutral reporting by omitting information that offends both sides (as long as you do so in a ratio that is roughly equivalent to how it occurs in the firehose), and you could have extremely provocative neutral by similarly highlighting that information.
There will be times when one side's opinions are more in conflict with facts of current events than the other, so you probably won't be pissing off both sides equally (this is why my original comment was pondering that, in the current environment, a neutral source could not remain trusted), but if you truly act as a service to that strives to fairly convert the "firehose" to a "drinking fountain" then that's what people (or I at least) mean when saying "neutral source."
I dunno, if your definition of "non-neutral" news ropes in the national weather service saying what temperature it is outside, I think it might be too wide of a net...
1. The NWS does not post only global mean average temperatures
2. My comment specifically said it would be apolitical for a weather service to report this
3. If the New York times were to have an entire issue with just the global mean temperatures over time, that would clearly be both politically motivated and non-neutral.
There are 3 things that you seem to be confounding: apolitical, politically neutral, and factual. One can select which facts to report with the intention of motivating specific policies. That is neither apolitical nor politically neutral, but is factual.
The NWS was commissioned to observe the weather long before climate change was on anybody's radar, so it's clearly apolitical that it does so. The fact that some significant fraction of one of the two major political parties in the US wishes it to stop should be clear evidence that it is not politically neutral. That's fine! There is no demand in TFA, or any of my comments that any or all government agencies need be politically neutral.
Presumably "newsworthiness" but in terms of bias, we have a platonic ideal of what "unbiased" means that it is possible to aim for. I was specifically refuting the GP comment that there is no way to agree what "neutral" means, while also implying that reporting all information would be neutral.
That's kind of what I was getting at with my original comment. A reasonably neutral source could quickly become untrusted by all those who are politically engaged.
That's because your method for constructing a "reasonably neutral source" results in something which is only reasonably neutral from your point of view. This is why pretensions to neutrality are worthless.
It's also reasonably neutral from bachmeier's point of view (he implied that reporting all of the news would be neutral). If you don't think reality is neutral, then I don't think we can have a productive conversation.
If you do think reality is neutral, then the neutrality of a source can be measured in the degree to which it distorts the view of reality it presents. It is political in the degree to which it intentionally distorts reality towards or away from some policy goal.
Neutrality is not a realistic goal. In fact, the idea that neutrality is the goal has just resulted in more shrill commentary as each side claims their position is more neutral (i.e more truthful).
Humans aren't neutral. The way we interpret events isn't neutral. It is difficult to be brief or put this down to any one event/cause but, ultimately, media is just a reflection of what people want.
Weakening bonds between people in society, an education system that teach facts over nuance (this is interesting, lots of lawyers in politics in the US which generally builds a culture that permits resonable disagreement...hasn't happened), low levels of respect for other people, etc.
Neutrality is not realistic though, and isn't required. Res
I didn't ask for the source to be perfectly neutral, just "mostly neutral." I'm pretty sure I won't make the best choices all of the time, but I still strive to make good choices.
Furthermore the idea of a neutral source comes from TFA; I was merely trying to point out that, even if such a source were to emerge, there doesn't appear to be a stable equilibrium in which that source can persist to exist and be trusted.
Neutrality is implausible. What matters is honesty. Sometimes I will find a political article written by somebody whose views I disagree with but the author attempts to be thorough, doesn't reason backward from their conclusion and tries to account for their own biases and limitations. It's frankly heart warming what that happens.
Most of the news that seems to gain popularity on social networks is not that though. It's not really news, it's pandering and it's reinforced by the echo-chamber nature of said social networks.
I'm lucky enough to be able to read several languages and I found that the best way to find consistently decent news coverage is simply to look for it on the outside. See how the Russians or Brasilians report the Capitol riots. See what the Ukrainians have to say about the British elections. Of course these news outlets are not without their own biases, but at least they tend to be less emotionally involved and don't have a horse in the race, which in my experience leads to more factual reports.
For instance while most European news outlets will lean anti-Trump, they are unlikely to consciously or unconsciously silence or downplay pro-Trump or anti-Democratic news simply because they don't really have any direct influence on American politics. Meanwhile a journalist at CNN or Fox News is in a different position, because their reporting will be de-facto politicized and could have direct consequences one way or an other.
I think you underestimate the power of American politics and its influence over other countries.
Many politicians are publicly supporting Trump despite sharing none of his values and none of his political stances just because he is branded as a successful right-wing politician. Most people don't know how skewed the political window is in the US anyway.
Even moderate right-wing politician from a European perspective want to be associated with him because he represents the right.
Because of that, news reporters in Europe tend to be gentle with Trump and the Republican party, glossing over their most egregious acts, to not appear biased, despite the small number of people actually supporting the same policies locally. And they still need to report on the USA because of their importance in the world.
Also at play, the incomprehension in translating American problems to other countries'. In other events, the BLM movements was imported to other countries with little knowledge of the US systemic problems and used/criticized in different ways.
This is how American politics can drag the political discussion over the world and impact the political spectrum everywhere.
On the other hand, how many of the left-leaning politicians in the USA have criticized Twitter/Facebook banning Trump or Apple/Google/AWS banning Parler ?
Any European criticizing AWS for banning Parler is only paying lip service; Parler couldn’t exist as European company as Europe has far stricter hate speech laws.
In any case far left leaning activists have always expressed that the mega caps have too much power; but they were called communists until it started affected people on the right.
> "Freedom of speech isn't without limits", I know, but it falls to the people, the tribunals and the officials to decide those limits. Not private companies.
He's not saying these are good people, he's saying the arbitrary nature of these decisions, and the fact that they're being made by unaccountable corporations, is dangerous.
AFAIK he's not criticizing the issue with Parler, as you would have seen if you actually had read my link. I have just widened the net in the hope of catching some dissidents to the "party line".
I did read link, to ensure he was western European, rather than eastern. My assertion remains the same - under French or German laws Trump would have been booted, and with clear precedent.
Action: X publishes something properly critical of the right/left.
Reaction: The extreme right/left media throws all sorts of criticisms of X's reporting and sees what sticks.
Result: Some fraction of the right/left constituency starts to believe (and voice) that X is biased.
Action: X publishes something wrongly (or at least with more bias than expected) of the right/left
Reaction: All right/left media publishes articles lambasting X's coverage of the item in question.
Result: A fraction of the more moderate right/left constituency starts to think "maybe my extreme friend was right about X"
Cycle through the above a few times, and even though the majority of the country may trust X, most of that majority will be among the least politically engaged (because partisanship and political engagement are correlated), so you are left without much of an audience that cares about what you are reporting.