Impartial Reporting Acknowledges Round Earth Despite Crazed Ranting

Michael Hedges October 15, 2018 - Follow on Twitter

Impartiality is a jaded concept, particularly when applied to journalism. In recent years public opinion polls have reported various news outlets low on impartiality, correlating this to sinking trustworthiness and on to bad, defective and flawed. Much of this stems from public figures dismissing, often in base terms, inconvenient or critical news coverage as lacking it, as if impartiality is some sort of yardstick.

News viewers, readers and listeners are certainly captivated by coverage of their favorite topics. Public issues, particularly the contentious, excite partisans. Audience estimates and circulation figures show significant advantage to outlets offering clear points of view, typically reflecting a reasonably well-defined audience. Editors know this; so do marketing managers.

The United Kingdom’s referendum on leaving the European Union (EU), the political campaign preceding it and all the debate thereafter - commonly referred to as Brexit - has provided UK news media with sufficient content to cover an exoplanet. It has been, for more than two years, inescapable. Points of view on Brexit have only exploded and so, too, has criticism of news outlets flying into the fury. Some rail about the coverage of Brexit supporting newspapers; the Sun, the Times, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. On the other side are those infuriated by public broadcaster BBCs even-handed, sometimes painfully, tackling of the task.

“The problem with the BBC during the campaign,” offered ITV political editor Robert Peston Cheltenham Literature Festival, quoted by the Guardian (October 6), “it put people on with diametrically opposed views and didn’t give their viewers and listeners any help in assessing which one was the loony and which one was the genius. Impartial journalism is not giving equal airtime to two people one of whom says the world is flat and the other one says the world is round. That is not balanced, impartial journalism.” Mr. Peston, once the BBCs economics editor, published a book on the subject late last year, aptly titled: WTF.

Impartiality is, for some, also related to balance. “Fair and balanced” was long ago appropriated as the tag-line for right-wing US TV channel Fox News, owned by News Corporation, to insinuate it was providing a point of view not offered by others. Balance, then, disappears into very thin air.

Offering both sides - or more, if appropriate - is great for debates. But, as many luminaries of journalism have noted, facts are facts. “I don’t believe you enlighten people by allotting equal airtime to well-evidenced argument on the one hand, and to unsubstantiated assertion on the other,” said BBC General Director Tony Hall to the Society of Editors, quoted by the Press Gazette (October 9). “There are objective facts, and then there are theories, some but not all of which may turn out to have credibility. An astronaut who has gazed down on the curvature of our Earth from outer space needs to be taken more seriously than some guy with a blog who still maintains that it’s flat.” Good analogies travel well.

Public broadcasters, those residing in the top one-third of the Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) Press Freedom Index at least, hold dear the tenets of news impartiality, often ensured by statute. Earlier this year formal complaints reached the European Parliament regarding news impartiality of Spain’s national broadcaster TVE and regional Catalan public broadcasters TV3 and Catalunya Radio. Both complaints, filed separately, cite “manipulation and censorship” on the part of the respective governments, reported El Pais (April 25), related to news coverage of the Catalan independence movement and its aftermath.

Newspapers - and the websites they support - are less beholden to the same license of journalistic formality. Most, clearly, publish with an editorial point of view. Readers, it is assumed, understand this; hence, they read (agree with) certain ones and complain about others. Big German mainstream newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeien Zeitung (FAZ) caught heat recently for publishing an op-ed written by a far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politician.

See also...

• Hot Topics - The BBC