Polarized vs. Neutral vs. Objective Reporting

Courtesy of © 2017 Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, Inc.

Disregarding outright lies, news will arrive at your doorstep in 1 of 3 colorful packages: Polarized, Neutral, or Objective. Humans are flawed, especially when handling information. This leads to framed, distorted, unbalanced, biased, or uniforming news stories. But when the news does finally reach your doorstep, it still falls into 1 of the 3 boxes. The TSA loudspeaker would urge you to pay close attention to whose hands were involved in packaging your news. Perhaps you’re aware of how news is being mishandled, but to smell bullshit is not the same as being able to quickly and consistently identify the type of bullshit in-front of you. Before selecting what news to welcome through your door, you must first understand the subtle differences in the packaging…

Polarized News

Polarization in politics refers to the separation of political attitudes and beliefs to their extremes. In the United States, it describes the “us vs. them” mentality, which news outlets have a financial incentive to maintain. They are tempted to take an opposing position to ensure the boxing match, which drives ratings, doesn’t end. This only reinforces an ideological restraining order between the Democratic and Republican parties.

“The mass media’s current, fragmented, high-choice environment has induced a movement of the audience from more even-toned political programming to more antagonistic and one-sided broadcasts and articles. These programs tend to appeal to partisan viewers who watch the polarized programming as a self-confirming source for their ideologies.”

Party-line news gathering allows the DNC and GOP to persuade voters that we live in a two-party system. By dividing liberals and conservatives, they ensure that we never join forces to elect a third party candidate. The donkeys and elephants behind polarized media have convinced Americans that one of them will always be the fastest animal in every race. This is not to say that all information from polarized sources shouldn’t be trusted, but it is important for the audience to be aware of.

Neutral news sources on the other hand hope to appear unbiased, so as to pull in viewers from both major parties. Although neutrality may at first seem like the solution, it is actually part of the problem.

Neutral News

Oxford Dictionaries defines neutrality as “The state of not supporting or helping either side in a conflict, disagreement, etc.; impartiality.”

Neutrality in news reporting means never claiming the winner of an argument or dispute. This form of reporting may sound fair and balanced, but it is in-fact deeply problematic. Neutral reporting prays to the temple of flawed logic, more precisely the fallacy of false equivalency. The entire concept rests on the assumption that no party in an argument is ever factually correct. For example, CNN aims to be a neutral network, so they resist making conclusions for their audience. They believe their journalistic duty is to set the stage for a rigorous debate on the issues, always leaving the viewers responsible for their own conclusion. However this often leads to very harmful and misleading news coverage.

CNN has hosted debates between climate change scientists and knuckle-dragging naysayers. Hosting a debate is never a problem in its own right, but CNN never informs the audience afterwards that only one of the arguments is factually confirmed by an overwhelming majority of scientists and researchers worldwide. So, their audience leaves with the impression that the topic is still up for debate. Viewers leave thinking the issue is 50/50 when in reality climate change is 100% real. That means CNN is knowingly or unknowingly giving a 50% bias in favor of arguments that are factually wrong. By actively trying to avoid a partisan bias, CNN is in fact creating a hidden bias. When the public cannot reach a consensus on something as well-documented and potentially catastrophic as climate change, it becomes clear that neutral reporting is part of the problem.

So what form of news isn’t part of the problem?

Objective News

Oxford Dictionaries defines objective as “Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.”

This definition can be confusing because it makes the term “objective opinion” seem like an oxymoron. But objectivity is about how the information is presented. After all the evidence is presented, the journalist may then use the evidence to reach a deductively valid conclusion. If the objective journalist is unable to reach a conclusion, the information provided allows the viewer to attempt their own valid conclusions. And if the facts do not offer a clear and valid conclusion, then no conclusion is to be made.

This process accomplishes two important goals. First, a viewer has all the necessary data to form their own valid conclusions. Second, it removes all of the mistakes made from speculation. When speculation is removed from reporting, the appeal to authority fallacy disappears.

An “objective opinion” is an opinion that is reached using objective methods. This is not to be confused with “subjective opinions” which should always be subjected to criticism.

In today’s media, facts, science, logic, and reason are under attack by pundits’ addiction to speculation. It’s more crucial than ever for the public to recognize journalistic objectivity as the only safe and responsible news practice. Journalists themselves will never be truly objective, but the process they use to report the news certainly can be. If the public ever decides to only accept objectivity in the news, from that day forward we will know truth.

Please comment below with any questions, constructive criticism, thoughts, or topic requests in news media for us to cover in our next piece.