Jay Rosen

This is something you should know about. From CJR. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/amanpour_sulzberger_licht_baron_lowery_objectivity.php

"In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential campaign, the bosses are speaking out. In interviews and op-eds, senior figures in the world of American journalism are pushing back against critics of traditional 'objectivity,' hoping to reset the tone as newsrooms enter a political season that will likely be more tainted by disinformation and more dangerous for reporters than any in recent memory."

#uspol #journalism

The view from the top

<p>In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential campaign, the bosses are speaking out. In interviews and op-eds, senior figures in the world of American journalism are pushing back against critics of traditional “objectivity,” hoping to reset the tone as newsrooms enter a political season that will likely be more tainted by disinformation and more dangerous […]</p>

Columbia Journalism Review
May 22, 2023 at 3:53pmWeb
Show threadAndrew DaviesMay 22, 2023

@jayrosen_nyu Nice quote, "Independence calls for plainly stating the facts, even if they appear to favor one side of a dispute."

I'm not convinced they'll back reporters who live up to it.

Show threadZhi Zhu 🕸️May 22, 2023

@andrew @jayrosen_nyu

“Be truthful, but not neutral,” Amanpour urged. “Bothsidesism is not always objectivity. It does not get you to the truth. Drawing false moral or factual equivalence is neither objective or truthful.

Objectivity is our golden rule and it is in weighing all the sides and hearing all the evidence, but not rushing to equate them when there is no equating.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/18/media/christiane-amanpour-trump-town-hall-reliable-sources/index.html

#FactualNotNeutral #Journalism #Journalists #News #Media #Politics #USPolitics #USA

Show threadAndrew DaviesMay 23, 2023
@ZhiZhu @jayrosen_nyu Great quote!
Show threadPensive™️May 22, 2023
@jayrosen_nyu
In a lot of today’s cases objectivity should be overridden by an overwhelming ponderance of right vs wrong.
Some purely evil concepts don’t have an ethical objective opposite.
Like tax cuts for the upper 10% at the cost of the 90% below.
Like voting not to pay for those tax cuts without blackmailing people with austerity.
Show threadDavid LaFontaineMay 22, 2023
@jayrosen_nyu not very encouraging
Show threadZhi Zhu 🕸️May 22, 2023

@jayrosen_nyu

Too many news orgs feel the need to present “both sides” equally, even when “both sides” are not at all equal.

Scales are meant to measure the weight of facts, not to be kept in an artificial state of perfect balance.

Using the concept of “balanced coverage” as an excuse to create FALSE equivalence is not good journalism.

Neutral is NOT the same as factual.

Journalism should NOT strive to be neutral, it should strive to be factual.

#Journalism #News #Media

Show threadBodhipaksaMay 22, 2023

@jayrosen_nyu How ironic that the author describes "a broader effort, on Licht’s part, to drag CNN to the middle of the road."

She implies she has insight into Licht's motivations (which she doesn't) and frames her imagined motivations in the best possible light — he's correcting CNN's previous bias. He himself has described what he's doing as "creating news" (i.e. staging events in order to create publicity), which would have been a more honest and objective way to describe his intent.

Show threadVoronMay 22, 2023
@jayrosen_nyu @donmelton file under “I’ll believe it when I see it”