About Neutrality

We all know about media outlets as well as about random people on the Internet and what they do. They broadcast a certain piece of information out into the world, be it current events or that your grandma accidently won a gold medal in Olympic force feeding.

Whenever someone presents you a piece of information they will always have a certain agenda, be it to simply inform about whatever so trivial event took place or to try and influence your opinion or actions. But once you are informed about a certain event you are presented with a particular viewpoint of said event.

This results in pushing forward a certain narrative, but what about the other side of the story?

The other side of the coin?

Isn’t it possible to present a story from a neutral viewpoint?

Now that can’t be too difficult can it? Reporting something from a neutral viewpoint requires only one small sacrifice from you…

Being unbiased.

So how can you be unbiased? Oh, it is really damn simple. Just abandon all ideals you ever had, become impervious to any outside influence and presto, now you too can be unbiased. Easy ain’t it?

Okay enough fooling around. I think everyone understands that these demands are well… essentially impossible. A human being can’t truly abandon all its ideals, values and moralities for the sake of being able to view two different sides of the same story without judgment. The only thing one can do to try and edge towards neutrality is pooling information from all possible sources and trying to gain insight into all of these different viewpoints.

But will media outlets undertake such efforts? Can media outlets afford to undertake such efforts?

From my experience they don’t and I doubt that’s in the best interest of most outlets to even do it. They have a certain viewer/reader base as well as someone who finances them. As such it is in the best interest of media outlets to please both whoever finances them as well as their consumer base.

This ultimately results in most of the narratives to be created to only feature one side of the coin so that the necessary quota and appeasement is met. After all the media outlets are being run by people that need to make a living too.

A sad conclusion (or is it just my cynicism talking?)