The LATimes reports that a WSJ reporter has been placed on "vacation" after a piece of personal email got widely-dissseminated.
The email discussed her opinion that the situation in Iraq is catastrophic and details a bird's-eye view of the lack of reporting on huge numbers of civilian casualties, and a growing cooperative trend among insurgency factions. She speculates that Iraq will now be a long-term terrorism threat far greater than we are being told.
Information is now so free that we can more readily question the idea of "unbiased" journalism and we should. Reporters have opinions and they share them with their friends. Do they give up their rights to have opinions when they become jouralists? I think that no, they don't.
Traditional journalism outlets are struggling to hold onto the idea of presenting information that is "unbiased" even though we as people are universally bias-ridden by nature. Our news organizations are biased by nature because they are full of universally bias-ridden humans. Robots do not write the news.
Fox News calls themselves "fair and balanced" and the laugh is heard around the world. Those who choose them for an information source and those who stay away from them make those choices because they know the lens through which Fox News reports the world. I think it FAR more responsible for journalism to define that lens than to claim it doesn't exist.
Bloggers believe that it is better to put one's bias on the table and allow readers to view the product accordingly. That seems like FAR more responsible journalism to me than trying to pretend that your reporters, who have access to far much more raw information that we media consumers, have no views.
Posted by Stephanie at October 8, 2004 07:16 AM | TrackBack