Sen. Delph has been hitting the Twittersphere again. This time he’s complaining of media bias and wondering if objective journalism permits a journalist to hold an opinion on something and still report about it.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion but you can’t report on it if you have taken a position. That’s the barrier that shouldn’t be crossed.
For example, if a journalist pays taxes and doesn’t like paying taxes, the journalist should not be reporting on legislation that affects tax policy. And, clearly, a journalist who does not want to be murdered and holds strong opinions on that subject has no business reporting on homicides.
But, instead of tax policy or crime, Sen. Delph seems to be focused on social issues, gay marriage in particular. Those journalists who favor it apparently should not report on the issue.
Personally, I think the pretense of “objective journalism” has harmed the profession to some degree. A person is always going to have biases of one sort or another. Recognizing them, mitigating them, and disclosing them are fair goals. Hiding them and pretending they don’t exist can be pernicious. There are degrees, obviously. A journalist who has been paid off by Monsanto and reporting on agriculture policy is worse than a journalist in an upper income bracket reporting on minimum wage policy. But both have biases. It’s part of the human condition. Ignoring that fact leads to a useless kind of “he said, she said” journalism. “Senator says moon is made of green cheese, climate change is a hoax, Scientists disagree.”
As a reader, where possible, it’s helpful to get to know the reputation of the journalist and the sources and get a sense of how reliable and candid they are. That’s one benefit of continuity of journalists at a paper.
In any event, media bias is where you look for it. From the perspective of a social conservative with litmus tests based on things like marriage equality and reproductive rights, media figures probably look like a cabal of left wing loonies. If you’re an economic liberal, looking at media figures through a lens of economic justice, the media probably looks like a bunch of sycophants to the monied elite. If you’re a pacifist, the media probably often looks like little more than a soapbox for congenital saber rattlers.
One thing I think we can all agree on though is that the only source of perfectly objective news and commentary is here at Masson’s Blog.
Senator Delph should be extremely careful as he’s starting to implode (or so it looks from the outside). Later on in the same twitter-rant (the fact that that’s now a phrase should warn him of continuing this behavior) he begins espousing on his belief in creationism and how christians are being persecuted in the “liberal media.” This, of course, comes after the last rant where he criticized several churches in his district for not being christian enough for his liking/ views.
Has he forgotten that they redrew his district decreasing the hard right-wing voters? While still red, it’s slightly more purple than it was before. Howey has a good write up of this change. A good campaign manager – at this point – would change the password on the good Senator’s twitter account and not give it to him until he calmed down. His own party leadership has effectively put him in elementary school time out on the Senate floor, they’re next move could be completely devastating.
I think he has a point. Now who’s going to tell Roger Ailes?
I find it funny that he posted somewhere that he gets most of his news from Twitter – and then blocks anyone from following or posting on his comments unless he agrees with them. And castigates all the print, tv, radio journalists in Indy – even Dave Bangert at the Lafayette Journal & Courier.
Reporters are merely supposed to convey facts, not opinions. The lack of news in newspapers is why they’re failing.
Just as market reporters who hold a position in a stock must disclose the holding when reporting on the stock, a homosexual reporter covering homosexual issues should file a similar disclosure. Narrow interests can benefit greatly from biased publicity.
What about heterosexual reporters? Surely they should have to disclose their sexuality, too?
No. A normal state may be presumed.
Oh, good. No more wondering about whether a reporter is black or not because he’ll have to report it. And I’ll know the reporter is a “he” because being in the minority of humans, men will need to disclose that as well.
Men are a minority? Awesome. We can now drop all those workplace affirmative action measures for women and redirect them toward the benefit of men.
Quoting “Lily Braden” in the 1977 Slapshot film, [your] normal is f**cked.”
It’s not “my normal.” It’s the normal. A very small minority is homosexual. When a member of a small minority reports to a general audience on an issue of great importance to the small minority, bias is a concern.
To a liberal, telling the truth is a hate crime.
What a bunch of outdated, modernist nonsense that freedom-hating reactionaries such as yourself like to spew to make yourselves feel superior, completely ignoring epistemological developments since the nineteenth century.
The mere fact of choosing what to report is itself a subjective value judgment. What you characterize it as is another one (and you have to characterize it as something, to justify its relevance and why it’s worth taking up limited space available for reporting).
There is no escaping the subjectivity of reporting–it’s not a flaw of human imperfection; it’s intrinsic in the very act of reporting.
In the interest of full disclosure……I REPORT on everything and HAVE AN OPINION on everything because I AM everything…….do you really wan to mess with ME, Freedom?
Actually, you’re a direct repudiation of Masson who explicitly rejects you and all of your first principles. He explicitly denies a priori right and wrong, and that’s kind of your bag. Of course, were you truly omniscient, you’d already have known that.
Mind the Second Commandment.
So violence is all you have. Who would have expected more?
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It’s only 8:30. Getting started early? Let me guess, you were responding to a post in another forum but typed that response into this forum and hit ‘Post’ while lifting the vodka. When you put the bottle down, you realized that you put the comment into the wrong forum.
I’m doing you a favor. If that’s not the reason, the reality is much more unflattering.
I pray you find jesus.
To whom did you pray?
Those should have no other Gods before me?
Or Jesus’ second commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I think that would be a good one for all of us to mind.
I think Freedom is Mike Delph. At least, Mike Delph believes he is freedom.
Please. Delph hates most of my positions.
Delph believes in a large government with lots of power.
So do you. Yours is just less monolithic, but no less oppressive for it (in fact, even more so).
Freedom means communism: no state, no social class, no private property, no money = no oppression.