Being "objective" in reducing journalism to "this is what some say, this is what others say" tends to support the status quo and is therefore ideological. Being "objective" in, say, calling a liar a "liar" has the benefit of not mattering whether it's ideological, because it's true and actually says something (takes a position -- truth is always positional). Journalism tended to be either pro-war or took the former "objective" position of simply reporting what was given, which had the same effect (as we saw, objectively).

Charles and I have different definitions of "objective."

For me, it means I go into an assignment with an open mind and I am willing to change whatever hypothesis that I develop along the way if that's justified by new evidence. I'm coming at stories as independently as I can.

For example, maybe I don't like a politician personally or agree with his views. But I don't hold that against him when I write about him. Or maybe a business deal involving public money looks suspicious. But on further investigation, it's legitimate, so I'm willing to drop the matter.

"Objective" does not -- to me, anyway -- mean refusing to draw conclusions. It does not require me to give equal weight to everyone at all times or make me scared to say that someone is wrong or even lying.

The stenographer effect that Charles refers to, where reporters just dutifully recite what they're told, is a legitimate problem in some quarters. I attribute it to laziness and to fear.

In the case of fear, beat reporters sometimes are scared of angering the people on their beats -- whether their source is the White House chief of staff or the local police chief -- so they quickly start to "write for their sources." You can tell a reporter is writing for his or her sources when you see a lot of dull, fluffy profiles (that's called the care and feeding of sources) and a lot of "exclusives" on shit that doesn't matter or that, in extreme cases like Judith Miller's, isn't true.

It's human to want your sources to like you. This is where a good reporter has to be inhuman, because you can't serve two masters, and the person you're supposing to be serving is the reader. Folks on your beat will get pissed at you if you do your job right; they will make life difficult; that's the job.

I've heard that argument before from liberals/leftists. TIME magazine had an article about how it was good that MSNBC was liberally biased, and the writer said you can't be unbiased in reporting the news. The guy, IIRC, that shows like Olbermann were good. I see where you're coming from, but it's not accurate in my opinion.


Objective means being uninfluenced by emotion or prejudice. What you're describing is being overly sensitive in an effort to not offend liberals and conservatives.

Really, that's what he does? With all the lies he makes up in public about me and my job, I guess that's... well, it explains a lot actually. No liberal bias there, nosiree.

Naturally they couldn't investigate Rielle Hunter, JournoList or any claims John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, the French, Russians, Chinese or anyone else made about Iraq's WMD programs, even prior to 9/11 or the year 2000. How's that oil-for-food investigation going? Anybody else trading favors with despots like CNN did with Saddam since 1990?

Failing that, did Sarah Palin's emails reveal anything worth calling for volunteers to... go after a private citizen who's committed no crime? Eric Holder seems more amazed every day at what he's getting away with, and nobody in the press dreams of challenging him or his boss on any of this stuff. Anything untoward going on with all the expansion of these evil wars and powers? Nope, nothing to see there. You can totally trust the media to let us know. How about Lara Logan and Nir Rosen?

Or how about Daniel Pearl? He thought there were connections between al Quaida and a guy named Richard Reid, is that paranoid or what? Real danger is blaming GWB for everything. Better for sales too.

The liberal bias isn't the problem. It's the laziness about hiding it and the insistence on denying it. That and making shit up about people, personally and professionally.

Eric Holder was reading Sarah Palin's emails?

The conservative bias isn't the problem. It's the false equivalency in also blaming liberals for our country's problems (credit downgrade, etc.) and the insistence on shoving it down everyone's throats. That and conservatives making shit up about themselves, personally and professionally, in order to try and whitewash their histories of corruption, lies and hypocrisy.

It's bias in general.

It's ridiculous, IMO, when conservatives blame Obama for all the countries problems. Maybe some of his decisions may or may not helped contribute to it (I don't know), but it seems like most of the current problems stemmed from the dot com bubble bursting, the Iraq War, and then the housing mortgage crisis. All stuff that happened during the Bush Administration.

Then we have liberals blaming the Republicans for not passing a single payer system, when we had congress controlled by the Democrats and a Democrat in the Whitehouse.

It's the Republicans that did all the bad shit during the Bush Admin but how many on both sides voted in support of the war? The tax cuts? You had Barney Frank, just prior to the housing crisis, saying there's nothing to worry about any bubble bursting.

Knock it off. Single payer was never even proposed. The public option was killed by Joe Lieberman and the Blue Dog Democrats.

Sorry, the public option.

There was a democrat congressman chastising the republicans for the stall in the healthcare reform passage when the democrats had the majority.

Even liberal people I know blame the healthcare bill not going far enough on republicans.

So I give Charles a haughty lecture about how professional journalists are willing to call bullshit, and blah blah blah.

Now the public editor of The New York Times runs a stupid, embarrassing column in which he publicly wonders if it's proper for journalists to call bullshit on lying politicians.

"I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about,' the editor writes.

*Sigh*

A retroactive apology to Charles.

Apparently, I can only speak for myself.