Why “Unbiased Journalism” is a HUGE Mistake
Recently one of my fellow lefty travelers posted an image on a lefty-friendly (phew!) social media platform.
Here it is, so you can see it, too.
And I’m telling you: when this came up on my feed, WOW.
It hit HARD.
It REALLY made me think.
And I believe it really marks a milestone in my journey to becoming a leftist. Because—confession here—I used to believe that journalists should be “unbiased.” I thought their job was to gather and report facts, and then let the people sort out what they should think about a story.
I was wrong, and here’s why: journalism is about exposing THE TRUTH.
And just considering plain, objective facts doesn’t even get CLOSE to exposing the truth.
There are a couple of obvious reasons for that.
First of all, facts are slippery things. You can’t deny it.
Haven’t you ever been into an argument with your significant other, and they claim they said or did something one way, and you KNOW they said or did something completely different?
I mean, sometimes they’s gaslighting you, so beware. But other times, they’s remembering things differently because they’s facts are completely different.
And we need to honor that. Personal advice here. Facts are like personal possessions. Like your favorite comfy chair or that latte you just paid for with your own or your parents’ hard-earned money or credit card. YOUR FACTS BELONG TO YOU and you alone. And your SO’s facts belong to they and they alone.
And how do you know what your facts are? Easy: they are what you say they are! That’s what makes them YOUR FACTS.
Another way to think of it: you’re like an artist. A painter. And you’re painting the world around you. Every time you speak, you’re adding to the painting. Every time you PERCEIVE something or react to something, like it makes you depressed: adding to the painting.
And by golly, you can make your painting ANY WAY YOU WANT.
For example. If you want the COVID outbreak to return and terrify you and everyone else half to death, then you get to paint your world that way and NOBODY CAN TELL YOU DIFFERENT.
And it gets even spookier. Like, if you really think about your painting and my painting and your SO’s painting, you know what you start to realize?
Objective facts don’t really exist. Not really. Not at all.
Like, say you have your painting and some other person has a different one. Like, in your painting, the COVID variant that is most terrifying is ERIS. Which makes perfect sense, because it’s named after the Greek goddess of strife and discord, and nobody would have named it that if it wasn’t pretty terrifying.
But then you text your friend to discuss your plans to start masking and vaxxing again, and uh oh. Your friend is mostly worried about BA.2.86, not ERIS! Because (your friend says) BA.2.86 has more than 30 variants!!!
So okay, BA.2.86 doesn’t SOUND as scary as a variant names after the Greed goddess of strife and discord.
But on the other hand, “more than 30 variants” sounds pretty dang scary, too! And Dr. Eric Topol, who knows these things, says it “doesn't look good right now.” OMG. That sounds VERY bad.
So now you have a problem.
Two paintings.
Different pictures.
Which is the right one?
Guess what. The answer is very, very easy.
BOTH.
You have your reality. Your friend has they’s reality.
AND YOU ARE BOTH RIGHT.
Your facts and they’s facts are equally valid and equally TRUTH.
Doesn’t that make everything so much simpler?
But back to journalism. Another reason it’s wrong for journalists to pretend to be “unbiased” is that even if objective facts DID exist (which they don’t) can you imagine how much trouble it would be for people to study them and figure out what the truth is?
It is SO MUCH WORK.
OMG. I get exhausted just thinking about it!
For example. Suppose you have two politicians who are both under investigation.
Well, I say “under investigation.”
It would be more accurate to say that the right-wing politician is under investigation by leftists for a long list of unspeakably heinous crimes, while the left-wing politician is being unfairly targeted by wingers for purely political reasons.
But I digress.
Imagine how awful it would be if journalists just reported dull old facts?
It would take screens and screens and SCREENS of text. “They said this” and “they said that” and “here’s this court filing” and “there’s that Congressional testimony.”
Who has time to wade through all of that?
Not me!
Take the Trump indictment in Georgia. Have you even looked at anything the right-wingers are saying about it? Spare yourself if you haven’t, it’s basically all lies. Garbage about how everyone has the right to contest elections (yeah, right!) and you can’t prosecute Trump even if he was lying about the election being stolen (some court case precedent about that? Puh-lease!) and how can anybody know if he was lying or believes what he said (when we all know that since he’s a BAD person of course he was lying).
Or, if you really want your head to explode, try figuring out what the wingers are talking about when they get into the history of RICO and how it is supposedly being mis-used by prosecutors who can turn “anything” into a conspiracy if they want to wage lawfare against political opponents.
Sure, they can.
Fortunately, we don’t need to worry about ANY of that garbage.
Why?
Because we know, without even trying, that the right-wing politician (Trump in this case) is BAD and the leftist politician is good.
It’s so simple. So elegant.
So why shouldn’t journalists just get right to the truth?
The right is “irredeemably awful.”
And just like that post says: if you pretend that’s NOT true, you’re NOT practicing “unbiased journalism.”
It’s FALSE NEUTRALITY and YOU ARE SPREADING PROPAGANDA.
So stop beating around the bush, journalists!!!!
Start your stories about right-wing politicians with the flat-out naked undeniable truth: THIS POLITICIAN (Trump, in this case) IS OBVIOUSLY GUILTY OF EVERYTHING BECAUSE THEY’S BAD BAD BAD.
(Or, if it’s a leftist: EVERYTHING THE RIGHT IS SAYING IS A LIE AND THEY’S COMPLETELY INNOCENT.)
That way there will NEVER be any crossed wires. Or, you know the kid’s game of rumor, right? One kid whispers something into the next kid’s ear and so on, and by the time the message has been passed between a bunch of kids, it’s completely garbled.
That’s what can happen with news stories, too, if journalists aren’t careful. They’ll try to publish a story about how BAD some right-wing politician is, and someone tells someone else about the story, and that person tells the next, and before you know it, everyone is all mixed up.
People start thinking the left-wing politician was involved with “influence peddling” whatever that is, and the right-wing politician did nothing wrong.
And wow, would that ever be a big huge mess! Can you imagine how much money it would cost the CIA and Homeland Security and the DOJ and the FBI to clean that up?
Phew.
So journalists? Do the right thing.
Don’t be shy, don’t hold back.
Tell us the correct truth, not the wrong truth.
Thank you!