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When journalists endorse candidates
Dalboz
Resident Puppy EaterRight behind you...Registered User regular
Resident Puppy EaterRight behind you...Registered User regular
The Washington Post recently officially endorsed Obama.
This actually disappoints me. Not in that they endorsed Obama, but that they endorsed anyone. In my opinion, having a journalistic source, especially one that's as respected as the Post, endorse a particular political candidate is in direct conflict with the ideal of objective journalism. I felt the same way earlier this year when the NY Times endorsed Clinton and McCain in the primaries. It's inappropriate for a journalistic source, especially those that are highly respected, to be openly endorsing political candidates.
This actually disappoints me. Not in that they endorsed Obama, but that they endorsed anyone. In my opinion, having a journalistic source, especially one that's as respected as the Post, endorse a particular political candidate is in direct conflict with the ideal of objective journalism. I felt the same way earlier this year when the NY Times endorsed Clinton and McCain in the primaries. It's inappropriate for a journalistic source, especially those that are highly respected, to be openly endorsing political candidates.
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Those who cower from tyrants deserve their chains."
-unknown
And you know when you get down to it, the journalists have opinions, why not know about them so you can take that into account when you read? Everybody has a bias, isn't it better to know what that bias is?
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I think the guardian doesn't do it offically, it's just everyone knows that they'll be going for the leftyist of the left.
Certainly all the red-tops are pretty blatant about whom their owner supports.
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As a civilian in the 21st century it is your job to read various sources to create your own fair and balanced image of what is going on in the world and how you should interpret that.
If you really only want to know the dry facts you should check out Reuters, they do not give any more information other than what happened, where it happened and who was involved. And even they make decisions on what kind of pictures they use (ex: do we want to show the picture with the Pakistanis trying to stop the fire at the Marriott or not?) etcet.
I think that was more of a 'dear god, anyone but Boris!' statement. Which, I think most of its readers were also saying whenever the topic came up.
It's actually worse when a journal does not admit to endorsing a candidate but writes with a strong bias.
And yet Boris was voted in, incontrovertible proof that Londoners are insane.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Not that we really needed any more proof...it's be a well-known fact for a very long time.
Edit: Here's a delightful quote from Wikipedia on this very topic:
Or the owner.
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Did anyone actually read the whole article? It's actually extremely fair and a very well articulated view on both candidates, their policies on just about everything, and the campaigns ran by both of them. It doesn't cover everything, but what it does cover is in no way unjustifiably critical of McCain, and is not overly generous to Obama either.
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This.
If a paper can't maintain that division between editorial and objective reporting, then a mere endorsement hardly matters much in the grand scheme of things.
See, it's very difficult to be truly objective. Whatever you do to try and stay neutral, unless you're outstanding at it or take some fairly extreme measures, sooner or later some bias is going to creep in. (Anderson Cooper is the 'extreme measures' type, deliberately not voting because he's afraid it would color the quality of his reporting.) So unless you're that good at staying neutral, sometimes it's better to just say "Here's my bias, out there for all the world to see. Knowing that..."
Yes, you've admitted bias. But on the other hand, now you know the journalist's particular perspective, which you can then factor in to their reporting. If they favor one side or the other, hey, they warned you. If they manage to keep their reporting neutral regardless, that's worthy of some real respect as they're proving they're willing to call their own fouls.
However NZ until the Internet Age was just a collection of regional newspapers/radio stations and one or two national TV/radio channels - so it probably wasn't politic to openly endorse a party or candidate. Whereas in the UK there is a huge number of newspapers so you really can choose a paper that writes to your segment of the community. So if the Sun endorses New Labour just go read the Mail or Express, etc.
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It's maddening.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
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It turns out that Keith Olbermann, the man of endless tirades against the Bush administration, and the McCain/Palin campaign doesn't vote. WTF?
This has destroyed my respect for this guy. He was jumping the shark the last few weeks with his nightly tirades leading up to the election, but this is absolutely ridiculous.
I watched Olbermann in the lead up to the election. I was pretty surprised by this. He has a progressive stance that he takes into his show. No one is going to mistake him for someone centrist, or right leaning. If he feels so strongly about his convictions, as witnessed by his FREQUENT rantings, shouldn't he have the obligation to vote?
Does a person so clearly polemic gain ANYTHING by not voting? Is someone claiming his coverage of the issues is going to be fair because he didn't vote for Obama? It's clear that Obama was his preferred candidate from his coverage.
No one is going to see voting for him messing with his objectivity, even if the concept of objectivity even exists. Other more centrist journalist might be able to get away with this, but seriously, Keith Olbermann?
Slate.com discloses who they are voting for and don't see it as interfering with their journalism. Is this a better option than not voting?
Does anyone know of Bill O'Reilly votes? Ann Coulter? Rush Limbaugh? Any other polemic figure Keith Olbermann has on his "Worst Persons of the World" feature?
Wow, I hate that the View is still on the air.
(this is almost more a response to the blogger and his commenters than you, torgo.)
Anyway, while I do think he should have voted, I don't prescribe to the don't vote/don't complain idea. He's a taxpayer (I assume) and a citizen, he deals with the shit that comes from our various levels of government just the same.
This isn't something I believe either, but will throw it out for consideration: I'm wondering if I'm wrong in thinking that, logically, if one thinks someone who doesn't vote shouldn't have a voice, then should people who vote for someone or something that screws up have a right to complain?
The whole thing where he doesn't vote is bullshit because it's not like he's pretending to be some kind of neutral journalistic force.
If you can't be bothered to go out and vote then yeah, you can't complain. You decided to opt-out of having any say in who is governing you on all levels - from President to fucking Dog Catcher.
If you vote for someone and it screws up, then yeah, you can complain. But we get to say "told you so" if you voted for someone who we all knew had disastrous policies.
There's absolutely no reason for anyone to skip voting, much less the guy who pops a vein in his forehead every weeknight railing against Republicans.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
My wife & mother-in-law based their entire decision on who to vote for this year on things they saw on that show. Holding a political discussion with either of them was completely impossible.
El-oh-el @ Olbermann though.
I think the only real way to be truly objective is to not give a shit. I could probably be extremely objective about some heated controversy amongst biologists regarding protein strands, because I don't really care one way or the other. Politics? I care too much. Even if I try really hard to not cherry-pick stories to report, I'm going to fail to an extent because my bias necessarily colors what I perceive as important. Even with something like video games I probably have too much bias to present a perfectly objective comparison of, say, the PS3 vs 360, even though I own both systems and really don't care too much. I still care a little, and so bye-bye objectivity.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The editorial board members are not the same people as the journalists. There is a literal firewall between the two.
When the editorial page endorses a candidate, it has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the operation of the newsroom. To believe otherwise is crazy conspiracy talk. The two sections of the paper literally do not know what the other side is thinking or doing until it is actually published.
Objectivity is also dumb because our news media is supposed to be the fourth estate. They're supposed to keep the government in check.
Of course, they haven't done this in, well, ever, but if there's a way to stop them from being douchebags, it's to do away with the concept of objectivity. They should be suspicious as fuck about the government, not trying to be neutral with it.
I think this still ties into what I was saying. If you have a vested interest in one side, it's hard to necessarily determine if such an equivalency is false or not. Maybe they are equivalent, and they just don't seem to be because you're biased. Or maybe they aren't equivalent, but they seem like they aren't because you're biased. Who can say? Best to just show both stories to be absolutely sure.
I think a lot of it also boils down to the average journalist being genuinely ignorant on most matters they report on. To determine the validity of a story, you have to know what the hell you're talking about. If, for example, you let someone with no scientific background listen to a sane biologist and a creation scientist talk about evolution, they'll probably think each side has valid points. You have to already be fairly well versed in the science before you can realize that the latter is a fucking nutter. The same applies to almost every other field, and I bet it has a lot to do with the Equal Time doctrine in the MSM.
Sure, but what constitutes keeping them in check? What stories are outrageous and warrant mention, and what stories are no big deal and don't need to be reported? Objectivity helps determine what's news in the first place.