While I don't entirely disagree, I think perhaps we need a new word.
I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies" as it gets people's hackles up and immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic. "Non-Neutral" seems to have been the best way in recent years to indicate that their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun in order to present a view of the world that they prefer.
It's hard to notice it when they're talking about things you don't know about, perhaps wheat imports for example. But then they do a story about something you do know about that you recognize is absolutely a one-sided hatchet job. A Not technically "lying" perhaps, but certainly not anything close to "neutral".
What's the word for that? Low-quality news? Mis/dis-information?
Personally I like the neutral/non-neutral because it reminds us of what the goal should be: actual truth, without the agenda.
> I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies" as it gets people's hackles up and immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic. "Non-Neutral" seems to have been the best way in recent years to indicate that their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun in order to present a view of the world that they prefer.
I think this is a reasonably good faith revision:
> NPR lies. Non-Neutral is the best way to indicate that their reporting presents their different/false world view.
"Non-neutral" is the word you are using to indicate that NPR is not reporting what you believe.
People who agree with you are neutral. People who disagree are non-neutral.
Non-neutral is just a fancy way to call someone a liar while avoiding having to support your accusation with reasoning because it is self evident that having any opinion at all makes an entity non-neutral.
As someone outside of the anglosphere who has been consuming news from left-leaning sources, there is a sudden shift in the type of language used and the kind of topics that would make it to the headlines. This is an observable phenomena, and when news is conveyed to make facts appear to imply only a specific set of outcomes (i.e. stretching your case), calling it non-neutral seems justified. As such, I think it's odd to characterize anyone who recognizes this as a solipsist.
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
> I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies"
> their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun
Do you see the cognitive dissonance/double speak? You are asserting NPR is "manipulating the truth" (read: lying directly or by omission) for ideological (read: bad faith/dominance hierarchy manipulation) purposes.
Just because you disavow the words that best describe your belief, doesn't mean that those words don't most accurately describe your position.
If those words aren't most representative of your beliefs, then I have failed to understand the nuance you were trying to communicate.
> immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic.
Do you see that you are disavowing responsibility for being half of the "us vs them" problem despite invoking the idea of "them" yourself? You created us vs them the instant you asserted NPR's bad faith instead of trying to figure out why we can't seem to reach consensus about what "the truth" is.
Don't you understand that you are basically saying "I don't want conflict with people who find NPR credible, but they're definitely wrong.”? "People who find NPR credible just aren't experienced/smart enough to see they are being lied to."
You recognize there is conflict, but fail to realize you are half of the conflict. You are putting responsibility for creating an "us vs them" situation on the people who disagree with you. "I'm not wrong, they're wrong. They're creating an us vs them dynamic, not me, I know the truth and they are denying it.”
“Other peoples hackles are up, not mine, I'm just unemotionally stating the truth.”
> is absolutely a one-sided hatchet job
You pre-suppose your own correctness. I don't see how your position is materially different than: "It is as simple as I am right and they are wrong, people who don't see it my way just haven't understood they are wrong yet."
Of course you will get an us vs them response, because you go into the conversation with the axiom that you are right rather than a desire to understand why someone disagrees so you can help them understand why they are wrong by asking questions that are hard to answer given the set of beliefs you assess that they have.
> actual truth, without the agenda.
Don't you understand that you have defined neutral to be "things that have the same agenda I have, and things that see the same truth I do?"
The truth is intrinsically not neutral. The truth picks a side every time. All conflicts involve two parties that think they know the truth.
Neutral is a measurement of distance from your beliefs. To Chinese people, “Taiwan is part of china“ is a neutral statement. To express something else is to not be neutral.
Your subjective truth is the stick you are using to measure neutrality. Your agenda is the origin of the measurement.
There is only one way to assess truth and that is to look at internal consistency.
Yes, but requires more than a day to describe a single day's events. As there are multiple parties at play and multiple perspectives on everything, even if folks wanted to watch news 24 hours a day, it's simply not tenable.
So you edit BY NECESSITY. You decide which stories are more newsworthy. I could report on the consistency and color of my dogs' feces at the park, and it would be part of objective reality, but my BIAS excludes those nuggets from any list of headlines I'd publish.
"Objective truth exists" is a useless comment in the context of reporting the news. It can be 100% true and yet still 100% useless. It doesn't matter.
That said, it's useful to examine which stories are covered, from which perspectives, and including which facts. The evaluation of semantics is a worthwhile endeavor. It's always important to keep an eye out for conflicts of interest. NPR and PBS are both really excellent sources of news and consistent at calling out their own limitations in addition to prominently reporting when they've made mistakes.
You may not care for their (necessary) biases and look for news from a variety of sources other than them, but if more news orgs were like them in practices, we would be a lot better off as a country. Be honest: how often does Fox News, Newsmax, or OANN make clear, public corrections of their previous reporting on prime time air?
It's not just about bias; it's about integrity. NPR's integrity frankly is unimpeachable whether you like their bias or not.
While objective truth exists nobody can know the objective truth, they can only approach it. Further, you can't approach the truth in an affirmative way, you can only approach it in a negative way.
We can know that that two ideas that can't be true at the same time means that one of them is definitely wrong.
I think this was the point of Socrates. Truth only comes from internal consistency.
I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies" as it gets people's hackles up and immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic. "Non-Neutral" seems to have been the best way in recent years to indicate that their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun in order to present a view of the world that they prefer.
It's hard to notice it when they're talking about things you don't know about, perhaps wheat imports for example. But then they do a story about something you do know about that you recognize is absolutely a one-sided hatchet job. A Not technically "lying" perhaps, but certainly not anything close to "neutral".
What's the word for that? Low-quality news? Mis/dis-information?
Personally I like the neutral/non-neutral because it reminds us of what the goal should be: actual truth, without the agenda.