Seattlest: Times Battles Stranger for Most Conflicted of Interest Media Outlet, We Cheer

Jason Reilly

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:55:59 -0800

This is why I'm waiting for objective, hard-hitting, robot reporters.

Daniel Genser

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:49:53 -0800

I meant to end that post to say this: All of these factors have conditioned people to accept the watered down news that we receive, instead of real news.

Daniel Genser

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:48:06 -0800

I think "objective" reporting is a myth. Even the most sincere reporter who wishes to present unbiased news to the public is often at the whims of politicians, corporations, lobbyists or others who withold and shape information for public consumption. And then there are the advertisers editors try not to piss off. And then there are the demographics of your target audience to consider. Plus, who decides what's worthy to be called news? Remember the earthquake in Pakistan last year? Not many do. Tens of thousands of people lost their lives and I didn't see hardly any reporting on it. Sure, there was the cursory story in the 'World' section at the back of the paper. So newspapers are inherently Anglo-American-centric, and this is accepted as 'objective'. All of these factors have conditioned people to accept marginalized real news.

Jack

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:34:29 -0800

Nobody gets the funny. Poor unfunny souls. Oh, except for Joe "W" Surfer's liberal bias idea... That is pretty funny -- kind of like people who believe in Bigfoot are funny.

BobH

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:25:32 -0800

Geez, is it that hard to differentiate between the editorial pages and the news pages? It's not a conflict of interest to take an editorial position of any kind. That's what you're supposed to do. That's exactly where your biases are *supposed* to be displayed. Now, if the Times put that endorsement on the front page you'd have a point.

COMTE

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:05:48 -0800

Except that the so-called "liberal bias" of the news reporters is counterbalanced by the "conservative bias" of their editors & publishers, so it comes out a wash. And this pretty much only applies to print media anyway. No reasonably intelligent person could possibly listen to 95% of AM talk radio, or watch CNN/MSNBC/FOX and accuse them of "liberal bias" without getting laughed out of the room.

Joe Web Surfer

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:50:04 -0800

Newspapers went "unbiased" in order to be sold to people from all political persuasions. It is a good idea especially for national newspapers. Unfortunately more than 90% of reporters at major US newspapers are registered Democrats, which produces a distorted version of "unbiased". I think many reporters honestly think they are being unbiased, but because they're almost all liberals themselves, a strong liberal bias creeps into their reporting. It's unfortunate, but what can you do?