McFreedom

In this article, Glenn Reynolds comments, "Bloggers have biases -- but they're usually right out in the open. And bloggers don't pretend to be objective professionals."

To me, this is one of the big strengths of bloggers. You'll see the best of them (including Mr. Reynolds) say things like, "This is the way I think it is, but reasonable people could think otherwise." When do you see that sort of thought about objectivity in the mainstream press?

But the real issue I have with the mainstream press is the hidden biases of the individual reporters. I'm sure a lot of the time it isn't even conscious. Let's think of a hypothetical reporter, John. John is a liberal, who is in favor of gun control. John covers politics. As a person whose job it is to follow politics day-in and day-out, John has probably read a lot on the subject of gun control in his personal and professional life. Like most of us, he doesn't spend a lot of time reading polemics he doesn't agree with - much as someone who thinks the 2nd Ammendment is a good thing is going to read a lot of John Lott and not much in the way of press releases from HCI, someone who thinks gun control is important to improve the quality of life in America is going to be spending his time over those press releases, not with More Guns, Less Crime.

The reason this is important is that the modern journalistic concept of "objectivity" involves, essentially, speaking to the PR representive of the two groups who espouse the most mainstream views on any topic. In a gun-control story, for example, you might try to get quotes from Sarah Brady and a spokesperson for the NRA. I think this is a pretty weak form of objectivity, myself (as opposed to actually trying to get to the bottom of things and discover some, you know, truth or something), but so far it's not harmful. The issue is that the the reporter controls the interview, and very rarely do we get to see his questions. Since John already knows Sarah's best-sounding arguments, his questions to her are going to be softballs - "So, how many criminals have the Brady laws kept from getting guns since they were passed?" Since he's unfamiliar with the NRA's arguments (even if he is honestly trying to be "objective" and not paint one side as the correct one), his questions to the NRA are going to be more along the lines of "Sarah Brady says the Brady law kept guns out of the hands of criminals 700,000 times last year, do you dispute that?" The NRA spokesperson is then going to reply, "Well, that figure includes people who were incorrectly denied initially but were allowed through on appeal." The resulting line in the story? "Sarah Brady of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence claims that the Brady Law has kept 700,000 criminals from getting guns since it was enacted, a number which the NRA disputes."

It's "objective," because he asked both sides. But what has asked both sides has a lot to do with how truly objective the story ends up being. He never asks the NRA, "Is it true that states which have enacted easy concealed-carry laws have reduced violent crime?" because he's never really read that, and if he did, he didn't trust it, anyway - it's just NRA propaganda.

Bloggers, of course, generally wear their biases on their sleeves. I've long been of the opinion that I'd rather know what your bias is than have you be "objective" - since even a superman can't truly be objective with the deadline and commercial pressures facing the media. Of course, conventional news outlets want to appear to be objective, since overt lack of objectivity will annoy some number of customers, who will flee to other outlets which don't rub them the wrong way. Bloggers don't much care who they annoy, since for many (most?) of them, publishing is a cost.