This isn't what a journalist does at all though and I think they're pretty honest about this if asked.

At best they take the facts and induce bias to provide them in a way that is most palatable to their audience and mirrors the belief of their audience to get more views and therefore more ad impressions. At worst they see themselves as a class above normal people and their job is to ensure the people below them think the right way.

Essentially in a world where the actual events is transmitted via video over social media moments after they occur, seems pretty redundant that we need it filtered through biased individuals who's business only existed because newspapers used to be the most efficient way of doing that.

What are you talking about? Careful language regarding certainty of a statement has got nothing to do with choice of interviewee or subject matter.

Of course journalists make judgement calls about what subjects to cover and of course this shapes news coverage.

You present this as some super-secret conspiracy, ‘broken wide open’ by the Internet. Did you really not know before then? Did you not read differing newspapers and spot that the choice of story and spin differed.

Historically , what is pejoratively described as the ‘Main Stream Media’ has hosted journalists who care deeply about quality of reporting and getting the story straight, fact-checking and making sure that quotes are obtained from opposing points of view.

It’s the internet and rolling news which has put a strain on the consensus.

We rely on journalists to sift through information and give us the truth, period. I don't want a balanced story, and such 'balance' tends to be struck between reality and what appears to be lunacy.

I've said this exact thing in the past about NYT. This seems to be their MO these days and is especially apparent in their international reporting.

I don't think so. Most journalists these days start with a agenda and cherry pick facts to make their stories. It's so obvious it's laughable.

Factual news looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events. People don't want to read that, and journalists must to some degree write what people want to read. It's quite the dilemma.

Strong disagree. You're saying that the more someone tries to be unbiased, the more they end being biased? This seems like an excuse to embrace bias and push a narrative. I've never agreed with that regarding news.

This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the basics of journalism. The primary job of journalists is to filter through the events and facts of the day and tell you what is important. Judgement of information is inherent to the job. The top story on the front page of the newspaper is chosen by editors not by random draw. They put it there because they think it is the most important bit of news in the entire paper. There is no way to make that kind of qualitative judgements on the relative importance of different pieces of news without inserting potential bias.

I can certainly see why you might think that with how MSM reports today.

An unbiased human works about as well as an untrained neural network. But journalistic integrity requires objectivity despite any bias you might approach a story with.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity

The reputation is where the bias lies. Consider the new york times: you probably respect it if you agree with it. If you don’t, it’s crappy narrative journalism. This certainly aligns with the parent comment’s claim that “facts” have never been the forte of any media; they simply need to agree with their readers. There’s simply little need to get 100% accuracy when 70% suffices to continue subscriptions.

Also, note that you can only see the issues in reporting if you’re closer to the story than the reporter is.

When a journalist writes, I only look for the narrative.

I've seen arguments that there are too many facts to be told, so it is the very job of a journalist to take those facts and tell a story by selectively highlighting ones that matter in that story.

I disagree with the premise. I think we (the audience) could handle all the facts if they were given to us straight. The narrative journalists are creating is not helpful, is actively harmful - because it's always someone's agenda and because they twist the facts too much (i.e. they lie through their teeth) to tell that story.

INB4 I get accused of generalizing, I'm invoking Sturgeon's law twice - once on journalists and once on critical thinking of general population, all that while giving a friendly reminder that this "general population" is the majority of the electorate. Sometimes all that crap tends to reinforce instead of cancelling out.

Another thing is the choice of facts you decide to state. All media have a bias in what type of news they decide to cover. Usually they pick stories based on what their audience wants to hear. I don't think there's a solution, besides trying to be more critical about medias in general.

That's not how journalism works, at least until fairly recently

Exactly, I'm totally with you. That is the essence of journalism I would even say. But that is where the job of the journalist ends, no sprinkling in of their own presuppositions.

And actually is a lazy way to even hoodwink people. The correct way is to show a bias and then use the proverbial 'to be sure' statements but bury those later on where they are less likely to be noticed.

That’s a very big assumption and a rather naïve view of modern journalism. Impartially reporting the truth is what we like to think journalists do, but it isn’t safe to suggest that’s what they actually do.

Isn't that what about 100% of existing news media is doing? They key here is to read more than one source, but having a source that would alone represent more than one narrative by now is pretty close to hopeless.

Nothing. I certainly wasn't suggesting that these large newspapers are infallible or immune from bias. That doesn't alter the fact that the reporting they do is important, though.