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.
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."