Quote:
|
Originally Posted by irateplatypus
i think it's unfair to draw so many parallels from pop culture to news organizations. they aren't completely distinct enterprises, but they are certainly held to different standards of accuracy and content. of course a large following doesn't necessitate truthful reality in pop culture, but i think it does have a more strict adherence among news outlets.
|
I don't think it is unfair to draw parallels with pop culture. A more accurate description of cable news channels would be Infotainment. They are neither one nor the other but contain elements of both. The OJ trial and all the analysis of it is an excellent example - it is news, and it is entertainment.
As for a more strict adherence to truth - there are regulations concerning truth in advertising. I know of no such regulations concerning truth in news reporting. FoxNews may claim some connection to some type of journalistic integrity, but that certainly does not mean they actually have any journalistic integrity. I can claim I'm richer than Bill Gates ... but alas that does nothing to make it so.
Quote:
|
when talking about the merits of different news organizations, i think we lose sight of the fact that political neutrality doesn't guarantee truthful reporting. if we believe that one viewpoint has a more effective way of achieving a goal... then it stands to reason that one political party may have a majority of the most effective policies on its platform at a certain point in time. thus, editorial partiality could be given to one side of the debate while still remaing completely honest and effective in shedding light on current issues.
|
I agree. We're should not be looking for political neutrality within a news organization. We're looking for objectivity - that is, the distinction between what is real and what is not. That something is mainstream does absolutely nothing to increase objectivity. A good example of this political neutrality within news outlets is the Swift Boat Vets phenomenon. On one side you have a handful of Republicans making what turned out to be essentially baseless claims. On the other you have facts presented by people more familiar with the events and numerous official reports from the Navy. How did most cable news outlets handle it? They presented it as two equally valid viewpoints - political neutrality. It took over a week for the solid facts to come out that the SBVT opinions had nothing even close to the evidence of factual support. But at that point, hundreds of hours had already been spent giving atleast equal weight to the story, if not more in favor of the SBVT.
FoxNews was one of the primary purveyors of this non-fact as equal to fact blast of information.
That FoxNews has decided to market to Republicans is a disservice to the attempted objectivity of news outlets everywhere. Although the objectivity of the news theoretically may not suffer by purveying one side of the issues, the practicality is that it will. Republican policies are not always the "correct" policy - but FoxNews has placed themselves in a situation where regardless of what may or may not be the correct policy, they will present the Republican view as the correct policy. Pure objectivity is purely non-partisan. FoxNews cannot expect to be viewed as striving to obtain pure objectivity if it is unabashedly partisan.