

Michael Arrington: "We Need More Opinion In News, Not Less" - kloncks
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/08/we-need-more-opinions-in-news-not-less/

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yummyfajitas
Most reporters have a fairly similar world view, and it is reflected in their
reporting. This isn't unique to reporters, many professions share a certain
"tribal" (for lack of a better word) outlook. As it currently stands,
reporters are often viewed as neutral observers, which gives their views more
weight than others.

If reporters made their tribal outlook obvious, then people would take
reporters opinions as seriously as they take the opinions of any other
"tribe". This would dramatically reduce the influence and status of reporters,
which is why the journalistic mainstream does not directly [1] reveal their
views.

[1] They reveal their views indirectly, by their choices of what to cover and
some implicit assumptions. For example, in this article
([http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/07...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/07/06/AR2010070602133.html)), the opinion of the
reporter is revealed by the word "despite".

~~~
jessriedel
These were exactly my thoughts when I read this piece. I don't understand how
anyone could be confused. News organizations don't claim that it's better _for
society_ that they hide their biases; they claim it's better for the status of
the news organization. I mean, it's right in the quote from the Washington
Post:

> "..could be perceived as reflecting political racial, sexist, religious or
> other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic
> credibility.”

Likewise, in the conversation that Arrington mentions, the reporter never says
that it his motivations for keeping his views secret are for the public good.

However, _none_ of this suggests, as Arrington argues, that there should be
more opinions in our news. Rather, reporters should (for the public good)
strive to make their writing as opinion- and bias-free as possible _while_
simultaneously being up front about their personal biases and political
persuasions.

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anigbrowl
_Until I was actually creating news this wasn’t so obvious to me. Now I can
read any news piece and tell you the subtle or not so subtle bias of the
author in a heartbeat. All this bullshit about objectivity in journalism is
just a trick journalists use to try to gain credibility, and the public eats
it up._

Why yes, I _am_ a notorious con man; that's why you need my book, 'Secrets of
the Scam Artists.' Most people aren't smart enough to protect themselves from
shady dealers and fraud. But you're different; you understand the value of
insider knowledge...

------
CWuestefeld
I agree completely with this thesis.

It's absolutely impossible to write without bias. If nothing else, you must
choose an order in which to present the information, and that necessarily
forces you to give preference to some things over others. But of course it
runs much deeper than that, to assumptions the writer is making that he may
not even be aware of.

I think that a journalist would be doing his readers a good service by
allowing them to know his feelings, so that the reader could be better
prepared to identify any biases, accidental or otherwise.

~~~
uuilly
Yes. I actually stopped reading "news" and I only read people's opinions.
Opinions are much more concise and it's far more informative to read two
opposing opinions than to read one long meandering piece that tries to avoid
having an opinion. The recipe for "news" at the NYT is an exhausting example
of this:

"Some decision was made. Someone important said it was good b/c of A but
others say it is bad b/c of B. 10 years ago when a similar decision was made,
A was the result. But on the other hand it is very hard to measure B, and it's
effects can be mitigated by C. An expert acknowledged the risk of B but said
that the benefits of A made it worth it."

Usually the reporter's actual opinion was whatever side he gave the last word.
In this case A. I find it tedious to play this passive aggressive game. I
would rather read two articles saying:

This decision is good b/c of A.

and

This decision is bad b/c of B.

Like Arrington said, at least I know where they stand and why.

------
jsz0
There's plenty of room for opinion in news but the risk is you will end up
with a conversation that is totally abstracted from the substance of the
issue. You're not longer talking about facts but instead debating the merits
of other people's opinions. This tends to close the door on any chance the
reader/viewer could formulate their own unique opinion. At best they can walk
away with an opinion about competing opinions. The echo chamber effect of
modern news is probably one of the worst things that has ever happened to this
country. If you repeat an opinion often enough you can make it become fact.

------
protomyth
Yes, it is important to know the reporter's bias, but I think we need a lot
less opinion than we are currently getting. For example, we spent a huge
amount of time talking about the health care bill in the USA. Lots of people
shooting their mouths off on both sides, but no news agency actually going
through the bill and getting people to translate it from legalese to human.
That would have been useful, but opinion fills the pages and generates
revenue.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Unfortunately the opacity was a feature created and perpetuated by the
legislators (of both flavors). This, and other bills like USA PATRIOT, were
kept close to the chest. Even the legislators themselves weren't given enough
time to read the bill before being forced to vote on it.

Journalists need to help us with this problem, but since they can't see the
bills either, they need to be more vocal about the lack of transparency in
governmental processes.

~~~
protomyth
To a point, but the text of the bill was out there for a couple of days before
the vote and even afterwords they didn't bother to really talk about it.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The bill was 1017 pages, and reads like a legalese styled diff-output (i.e.,
"the word XXX in HR YYYY shall be changed to ZZZZ"). Besides, it's also
important what was left out of the bill (e.g., the Heller amendment).

I think you expect too much from reporters.

~~~
protomyth
It really isn't much different then any other bill in form. I still haven't
heard any follow-up on the rule making process that the bill set in motion.
Some of that stuff (according to the bill, and I am sure there are reporters
more qualified to read it then me) was on a 90 and 180 day time frame.

I expect them to spend the time and report on what actually affects the most
people's lives. I would bet more in-depth analysis has been done on the Lohan
sentence (90 days - too much?) then on the followup rules making on this bill.

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axod
BS. We need better reporters and _way_ less 'opinion'/preachers/etc in the US.
I have absolutely no interest in what a journalist thinks. Their job is to
communicate news and facts to me in ways that are useful.

Watch Newsnight on BBC for an example of real unbiased journalism (And some of
the best debates you'll find anywhere).

What the US needs is a Jeremy Paxman / Dimbleby etc.

~~~
apu
Newsnight is very far from unbiased journalism.

I agree that we need better reporters, but the way to do it is not to keep
pretending that they objectivity, but for their biases to be out in the open.

It's like bugs in software: rather than pretending your software is bug-free,
you should instead try to measure just how many bugs it has and their
severity.

------
ErrantX
It's... an interesting idea.

Firstly I don't think journalists are _generally_ sacked over putting their
opinions into their work - it is just those issues are contentious so the
media company plays it safe (this _is_ wrong - but possibly another, wider,
issue).

And he has a strong point about knowing bias's to help put media into context.

But putting opinion into stories? It has it's place (editorial, columns) and
we _should_ see more of that! It also has it's place in the general commentary
about a writer - so we can see their bias.

But directly in news? I think that is a bad idea - I like my news to at least
try to be non-biased. If I know the leanings of the reporter I am happy I can
pick out bias that has crept in and dig into those issues more. That becomes
difficult if opinion is liberally sprinkled into reportage.

My ideal News website would have the following; unbiased, factual news reports
with attached commentary/editorial from writers with complementary bias. That
would be cool.

~~~
protomyth
I wonder what the cost of fact checking each line and citing all sources for
an average news article?

~~~
ErrantX
Fact checking isn't usually too bad in the bigger media organisations; I'm not
suggesting anything on the level of detail, say, Wikipedia, demands. What we
have now is fine.

Just an effort to report only the facts and then report the opinions as
companion/complementary work.

~~~
protomyth
Fact checking is actually not as good in technical articles. Look at any
article that you are knowledgable about, then think about all the stuff they
missed in the other articles. I seem to remember a couple of "This Week in
Media"s where this was discussed in-depth.

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hugh3
The London newspapers provide a pretty good example of this. Each is more or
less open about its own political stance, and as a result you can often pretty
much determine the true story by reading both the Guardian and the Telegraph.

Also, political bias forms a sensible point of differentiation in the market,
which enables the London market to support more competing newspapers than any
other city that I know of.

Of the US news sources, Fox News is fairly open about their bias (there's an
implicit nod and wink in their _Fair And Balanced_ slogan), but the others
seem to be hanging on to the illusion that they're unbiased.

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dieterrams
The inability to escape bias does not mean attempts to minimize its impact are
useless. I frequently see people making the same argument Arrington is, and
I'm always astounded by the sloppiness of their reasoning.

~~~
chc
If I could upvote this more times I would. It's as if people would rather
throw their arms in the air and give up than work in an imperfect system —
rather than deal with occasional shoplifting, close up shop and live on the
street.

People say they want to know the reporter's opinion, but the thing is, it's
relatively unimportant information. The reporter's opinion is nowhere near as
important as the facts of the story in most cases. The reporter is just some
guy whose opinion is worth about as much as anyone else's. His value to me is
in the quality of his information-gathering and his explanation of that
information. In an opinion-based piece, these take the backseat to proving the
writer's thesis, which does me little good.

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c1sc0
Totally disagree, we need our media to talk more about the facts and less
about opinion. Debate the facts, not the debate. I would love to have a purely
data-based news feed, maybe something for a startup: have some kind of
microformat attached to news stories that contains the metadata about the
topic & the hard facts. Something like Freebase for news?

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jkmcf
s/Opinion/Informed Opinion

I'm tired of people lacking any historical clue spouting off their opinions.
Take a listen to <http://myhistorycanbeatupyourpolitics.blogspot.com/> or
<http://dancarlin.com/>.

Personally, news (spoken and written) should be providing facts and context,
then ending with opinion and reasoning, preferably from people with multiple
informed opinions and done in a civilized manner. Done right, it could be
entertaining, but then again I love history.

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skyjumper
It sounds like they're arguing for authenticity rather than opinion, pushing
back against phony centrism in reporting.

