Bias and God
As a windshield expert skillfully removed the spiderwebbed pane of glass off of our car and put a clean and pristine new pane back onto the car we talked about the news, and what kind of journalist I would be.
"Are you a liberal journalist or a conservative journalist?" he asked.
I'm not sure how much time passed after this question, but I sputtered and stuttered trying to figure out how to carefully answer that question. But since then, my answer to his question aside, I realized that the complaint of liberal bias in the news does not even begin to touch the depth and complexity of the problem.
People assume that in the newsroom it's a problem of liberal versus conservative, and that we lean too far one way, and never realize that the problem is so much more difficult than that, and I've found that religion coverage shows just how hard that is.
My current internship requires that my editor and I set aside time each week to discuss ethical issues, and we stumbled all over the issue of religion last week. Should the person reporting on religion be themselves religious, or should they be unattached?
My editor wisely pointed out that it's difficult to find a beat reporter to write about their subject if he or she does not care about it. Do we want someone who's interests and involvements revolve around the arts reporting on politics? The Daily Astorian has an environmental reporter, and as my editor mentioned, he doesn't want someone who doesn't care about the environment in that position. How can they do the subject real justice if they just don't care?
In religious issues, I realized there's a real difficulty in this. I'd love to cover the religion beat of a newspaper, because I'm very interested in the subject and I've got some life experience there. But if we are to cover people properly, is my very liberal and unorthodox viewpoint appropriate for the page?
I put myself in the editors position and came to a different conclusion. Let's pretend I'm hiring a religion reporter... I've come to the conclusion, biased and prejudiced as it may be, that I would have reservations with hiring a very conservative christian to be my religion reporter, in the imaginary Aaron News Tribune.
How liberally biased of me right? But can I hire someone to report on a topic when they have strong enough opinions to have judgements as to who will go to heaven and who will go to hell? Can I allow a reporter who thinks Muslims are evil to report on religion appropriately?
The pool of reporters becomes smaller, but I would want to hire someone who's outlook is generally pluralistic, because they must properly represent various people, and respect their beliefs.
This, however, is where my stomach starts to churn and the issue of bias becomes more complex, because my assessment is making a real judgement about people with more conservative beliefs. I'm saying they can't look at things objectively, and also saying that their viewpoint doesn't deserve a position in the world of media.
I have no solution to this, but it illustrates why liberal vs. conservative is not so simple in the newsroom.
"Are you a liberal journalist or a conservative journalist?" he asked.
I'm not sure how much time passed after this question, but I sputtered and stuttered trying to figure out how to carefully answer that question. But since then, my answer to his question aside, I realized that the complaint of liberal bias in the news does not even begin to touch the depth and complexity of the problem.
People assume that in the newsroom it's a problem of liberal versus conservative, and that we lean too far one way, and never realize that the problem is so much more difficult than that, and I've found that religion coverage shows just how hard that is.
My current internship requires that my editor and I set aside time each week to discuss ethical issues, and we stumbled all over the issue of religion last week. Should the person reporting on religion be themselves religious, or should they be unattached?
My editor wisely pointed out that it's difficult to find a beat reporter to write about their subject if he or she does not care about it. Do we want someone who's interests and involvements revolve around the arts reporting on politics? The Daily Astorian has an environmental reporter, and as my editor mentioned, he doesn't want someone who doesn't care about the environment in that position. How can they do the subject real justice if they just don't care?
In religious issues, I realized there's a real difficulty in this. I'd love to cover the religion beat of a newspaper, because I'm very interested in the subject and I've got some life experience there. But if we are to cover people properly, is my very liberal and unorthodox viewpoint appropriate for the page?
I put myself in the editors position and came to a different conclusion. Let's pretend I'm hiring a religion reporter... I've come to the conclusion, biased and prejudiced as it may be, that I would have reservations with hiring a very conservative christian to be my religion reporter, in the imaginary Aaron News Tribune.
How liberally biased of me right? But can I hire someone to report on a topic when they have strong enough opinions to have judgements as to who will go to heaven and who will go to hell? Can I allow a reporter who thinks Muslims are evil to report on religion appropriately?
The pool of reporters becomes smaller, but I would want to hire someone who's outlook is generally pluralistic, because they must properly represent various people, and respect their beliefs.
This, however, is where my stomach starts to churn and the issue of bias becomes more complex, because my assessment is making a real judgement about people with more conservative beliefs. I'm saying they can't look at things objectively, and also saying that their viewpoint doesn't deserve a position in the world of media.
I have no solution to this, but it illustrates why liberal vs. conservative is not so simple in the newsroom.
posted by Aaron Burkhalter at
12:27 PM
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