Just the Facts, Ma’am

Many people lament the state of newsgathering and news dissemination in a fractious world. Mis- and disinformation, bothsidesism, spin, outrage, biased presentation, whatever: “Just gimme the facts” people may say. “Let me decide what is, or is not, relevant.” Turns out, that’s much easier said than done. Here’s a good little Quora Q&A that addresses some of the issues.

First, start with something really basic: there is no grand conspiracy among legitimate journalists to point you or anyone else in a certain ideological direction. That doesn’t mean ‘legacy media’ doesn’t have a slant, as in the table left.

 From Quora, a British Perspective Question:

It’s difficult to find a news outlet that presents the information without spin. I just want to know what happened so I can decide whether I like it or not. Why is that so hard to find? Quit telling me what to think.

 Response (from a knowledgeable Brit):  

This sounds crazy but even facts can be biased. You can tell two different stories with the same set of facts- and the selection of facts is another bias.

Problem is, many people are unwilling to fact check and educate themselves on what’s actually happening. They like to hear things that they think fit their narrative and their person biases and opinions. It’s so frustrating to see people make wild accusations and stereotype and take things out of context and they won’t listen when corrected

Many people think they want an unbiased news source, but when push comes to shove they'd rather stick with one that tells them what they want to hear

This does not work and never will. What should a purely factual reporting look like? After all, the information must always be placed in a larger context (political, historical, legal) in order to be more than mere fragments of reality.

And even facts have to be classified:

Further: News does not exist in a vacuum, but describes the actions of people who are certainly not neutral. Their behaviour must be integrated into a broader picture. 

Of course, everyone could just listen to the pure events happened and then "see for themselves", but honestly, nobody can tell me that anyone really has time for that (after all, the world is too complex) and someone has to filter the news which are "worthy" to be reported. Otherwise the pure amount of news would be too much. This classification & filter can be as neutral as possible and the different positions can be shown but without any classification or filter at all, it will not work. 

So yea, nice idea in theory, does not work in reality. 

There will always be people who attack the news, no matter how neutral they try to be. Because 100% neutral news do not exist. Better than what what you have in the USA(e.g. Fox News) for sure.

What I like about NPR is that they get true experts, people who have completed studies and written books as opposed to the "usual suspects" of pundits you see on most on media outlets. 

Reuters and Associated Press tend to be the closest to just the facts reporting. If you look at what sources other news agencies are citing often times they are just re-reporting AP or Reuters stories with their added partisan spin on it.

AP sells stories to orgs like CNN, Fox and MSNBC (or MS Now, I guess). They have the manpower and boots on the ground all over the world. Great source of news

 The thing is, even with a dry recitation of facts some news outlets only select certain truths to tell you. While technically it may not seem like lying, omission of facts is still lying. The same facts can be presented in different ways, depending on the narrative. Statistics are easy to manipulate. For example, imagine 1 person died yearly from an obscure illness, if then one year 3 people die from that illness it can’t be presented as a 300% increase in deaths related to that cause. The public response would be completely different given the same fact but presented in different ways. This is just one of many examples in which news outlets can be dishonest even when presenting the facts.