Andrew Bolt is a shit journalist. He writes shit articles about important issues, making other people believe shit things.
But this pisses me off far less than what decent journalists write. You know, when they pretend to be unbiased & show both sides of an argument, even when one side makes no sense, & doesn't deserve to be taken seriously? That really pisses me off.
Here's what I like about Andrew Bolt: he writes what he believes. He doesn't bother trying to give equal weight to both sides of an argument. He simply shows the good of the side he agrees with, & the bad of the side he doesn't agree with. Simple.
I don't want journalists to be unbiased! I want them to use their brains & skills to work out what is worth reporting. I want them to decide what is a credible source & what is rubbish. Don't report both equally!
Example: Why do journalists keep being 'unbiased' when it comes to reporting climate change? Shouldn't a reporter report what is actually happening, not what some stupid politician with vested interests wants to be happening?
If a reporter wanted to do a story on pubs, they should go to some pubs, look around & experience it, use their own judgement, talk to some experts - like someone who runs a pub. They might even talk to some drunk guy at the bar who is trying to pick up some woman he has no chance with. But when he writes his story, should he include all points of view he comes across? NO. Of course not, because some of the points of view will be stupid, & easily discarded. He doesn't have to include these stupid points of view to keep his journalistic ethics intact. His job as a journalist is to work out what is true & report it. Simple.
30 years ago every decent scientist was telling us smoking was really bad for us, and a handful of 'scientists' on the take from tobacco companies saying, "no, they're good for you!" Journalists went all 'ethical' & told both sides of the story, even though it should have been obvious for the journalist to work out what was a credible source & what should have been used as fertilizer.
Scientists know what they're talking about. They spend their lives doing boring tests in stupid coats waiting for some tiny test tube to turn blue so they can discover something that might be useful for humanity. And after 50 years of work when the finally stumble across something, journalists betray them by reporting every vested interest group who have no bloody idea about science! And they report them equally!
And so it gets to the point where now even I can tell something is up with our planet. Not because of the news, but because of every supermarket I go to. I may never eat another banana in my life because of climate change!
Most of us ordinary folk go to work, come home buggered, & don't have the time or intellectual energy to work out which bits of a story are true & what are not. That's our fault, & we should acknowledge that many a time we are lazy in how we consume media. We take what we're given, & over time we work out which outlets tell the stories we like. That's on us.
But journalists have to take their major share of the blame too.
So journalists, stop pretending to be unbiased. Put down your 'ethics' & get on with reporting what is happening. Sort the rubbish from the recycling, & report it for the good of the world.
Not sure if I completely agree...
ReplyDeleteIt has always been the case that everyone and every journalist brings their own bias to any issue with what their angle is and what they choose to include and leave out. I reckon we need a clearer distinction between journalistic and editorial/opinion/blogging style reporting so that the public doesn't get hoodwinked into believing a biased rant is a good attempt at factual reporting.
I want to trust that a journalist will ethically tell all sides of the story, if that means that the climate deniers get 5% or less(an accurate reflection of truth) representation in the story then that is fine by me. A journalist should be stating facts as clearly as they can come to understand them (keeping as much as possible a rein on their own bias) which would leave climate denialists looking pretty darn stupid.
Do you really believe that Bolt writes from his beliefs? If so, fine, but isn't he and many in the commercial realm more likely to be on a par with the bought scientists from your story? That would mean that our own media is being partially held to ransom by vested interests and against the public interest and probably deserves an inquiry.
I'm not sure my reply was very clear after rereading your post and my reply. My major disagreement was that instead of decent journalists dropping their ethics and writing with bias so that we got a better representation of truth, that they should maintain their ethics and better represent the facts so that instead of climate science stories getting 50/50 representation the facts would lend themselves to a 95/5 percent weighting.
ReplyDeleteSo we agree that it is impossible for a journalist to be unbiased. So from there I would say there is little point in a journalist pretending to themselves & to an audience that they are. I think it just leads to confusion for the consumer, as most people aren't very good at sifting through what is rubbish & what isn't. Hitler said that, & he seemed to know a thing or two about how to manipulate the public mind.
ReplyDeleteI don't see why a journalist should have 5% crap in each of their stories. Why not cut out what they see as crap completely?
But this is a pretty grey subject, & I would not be surprised at all if I changed my mind at a later date. Rob Bell said of his writing that he doesn't see it as an end point, but rather as part of a larger ongoing discussion.