The presence of bias in an individual jounalist as a human is expected. But being a professional means having some standards that boost trust in the profession overall.
Clearly you wouldn't say that judges and police and prosecutors should just follow their biases and go after whoever they want or protect whoever they want.
Journalists don't have any legal obligation to follow standards, but they do have a professional obligation.
Telling the truth for a living may be a drag, but playing on the readers' emotions and biases for ad traffic revenue seems far more soulless by comparison.
Most people I know don't mind reading a journalist that is open with their biases as long as that journalist is objective when it comes to facts. The problem in today's media is that biased journalists ignore facts or just outright lie when the facts don't jive with the narrative they are trying to push. Its one thing to report on a story and spin the facts in such a way that correlates with your perspective and entirely another thing to conceal facts or invent your own. Most legacy "journalism" has devolved into a toxic brew of woke hot takes and the uncritical, anonymous dissemination of intelligence agency assertions.
The Guardian was mentioned above, and is an excellent example of this. The Guardian never made much attempt to hide their social and political biases in the past, but it was still a widely respected and credible newspaper, even to those who didn't necessarily share the same perspectives. Unfortunately, The Guardian, like most other legacy news outlets, went off the rails at some point over the last 5 years. They stopped reporting the news, and starting inventing it. Anyone following their coverage of the Assange saga saw numerous examples of this such as the, "Manafort met Assange in the embassy" fairy tale (including details like what Manafort was wearing to make the lie extra convincing). The problem is, it never happened! Yet still, 4 years later, it sits on their website, no retraction, no correction. The credibility problem is real.
Personally what I find most frustrating is the two-facedness of it. State your bias. Maybe each reporter should have a visible profile above the article below the headline stating their “political compass results”. Why does CNN/Fox News continue to claim they are objective reporting when they have been caught so often failing to do so.
At the least, maybe explaining the other party’s perspective (as still flawed as this would be).
Ex: situation at the border
Republicans call it a crisis, they cite x, y, z. Their main argument is that illegal immigration causes X....
Democrats argue that the situation is at the root because of Y....
Be out about the biases. We all have biases, deceptively trying to hide them is worse: be completely out with them.
> Everyone has biases, attempting to hide them is just gutless.
I think this is situation-dependent.
A lot of product review journalism is nigh-worthless because giving robust reviews would cut off the freebies, previews and ad spending they depend on.
It's easy to imagine how that could be more objective: Just stop accepting freebies.
On the other hand, some situations are almost impossible to make objective: If you're a political journalist reporting on a politician doing foo today, and you know previously they promised not-foo, does reporting that context make your reporting more objective or less?
I mean...many of them do? At least in America, that's a thing. Now it might not be the ONLY factor (I don't believe most MDs are out here prescribing things that patients wouldn't find beneficial) but it plays into their equation. And occasionally we do hear stories about pill farms...
I have seen the opposite with doctors in my experience, going with what is the cheapest working option for the patient be it handing out several free sample packs to try a drug to checking for best covered option as a default. Like "XR is more expensive but we can subsitute three times a day for as cheap with your minimal plan vs okay you have good insurance, I can switch you to XR". I guess it is just good medical practice to help ensure dosage compliance if they aren't trying to ration the expense.
"Many" in my post was not meant to imply "most". I have no idea how many doctors are more focused on the money vs saving lives, but it's >0%. I will say my experience as a patient has reflected what you're describing, and that it would likely be that "doing what is best for my patient" often involves doing what's best for their bank account.
I just know I worked in pharma advertising, and we def identified who helped push product. There's a reason the industry is so heavily regulated, well actually many reasons, but one of them is def because drug companies exploit US insurance practices using copay and other programs which allow. And people doctors definitely have different attitudes when speaking with "Dude with platinum level insurance" and "Dude who has no insurance and works as a waiter".
So the fact that all information is biased is an excuse to force your own ideological bias into every communication?
This is as much of a fallacy as the common "everything is political" refrain. It's nothing but a dangerous rationalization of tribalism which breeds distrust of institutions and disenfranchises political minorities when the entire establishment leans in a particular direction and simultaneously determines the set of "acceptable" or "authoritative" sources. News media, "fact checkers", Wikipedia editors, etc. are implicitly colluding and the results are already manifesting with long term disastrous cultural and political consequences that we are yet to fully witness. There is no excuse for the hyper polarization of modern media, it is a disservice to everyone, and we need to un-normalize the kind of insidious activist journalism that has infested all of our major publications, though the system is self reinforcing at this point.
