Newspapers should strive for open bias

Last week, I noticed a letter in the Lobo criticizing the editor-in-chief of this paper for expressing his opinions. I would like to respond. Not to the letter, but to a general trend I see in criticizing newspapers for expressing opinions. As I do nothing for this paper except express my opinions, I thought I should inform you of my opinion on this.

In this country we have this noble, if not foolish, idea that newspapers should strive to be as unbiased as possible, that reporters and editors should not have opinions, and that an unbiased opinion is as close to the truth as it is possible to get.

These are all lies.

Newspapers have never been unbiased and most other countries have newspapers that are very proud of their biased nature. Being unbiased, that is, not swinging either left or right in politics, is seen as something desirable, and maybe it is, but it is not possible and most papers don’t even try to be unbiased.

Everybody, everybody, has an agenda. Sometimes it is as simple as getting laid, other times it is a desire to get you to vote for that person’s preferred politician. Approaching any publication expecting a non-slanted, unbiased view is extremely silly and foolish. Yet, anytime a paper expresses an opinion somebody complains about it. They act shocked, they gasp, and they say, “The standards of this paper have fallen! You should act more professional!” So, what is professional, I ask?

Is it presenting a biased view in such a way as to appear unbiased? Is it to present only the facts that support your view without ever actually articulating your viewpoint? Is it, in other words, dishonest, disingenuous but subtle slanting?

I think a newspaper with a clearly expressed viewpoint is far more trustworthy than a paper that doesn’t tell you what its viewpoint is. At least you know how to approach the information it is giving you. And what about the idea that unbiased opinion is as close to the truth as you can get?

I can tell you, for instance, that meat-packing plants in 1906 were terrible places to work, but you can’t grasp the truth about being in a packing plant without some human soul injected into the content. A biased opinion like that found in Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is worth a thousand truths more than facts presented in bullet-point format.

Too often I find that what people object to from newspapers is not unprofessionalism but rather the different viewpoint. I look at the comments for the editor’s opinions and I instantly see the word “Leftist.” I know the moment I see it that I’m not going to read anything useful or informative. It is going to be high-pitched nonsense. It tells me nothing about the article I have just read, but it does tell me a lot about the commenter and their “appreciation” of the text.

Folks on the left complain about right-wing publications, folks on the right complain about left-wing publications and both sound the same while doing it.