United States of America - More than an Acronym to Chant at Sport Events

[_EAllusion]

I don't think open primaries do much to stop them from becoming low participation events where people with more extreme views, but high election investment have an outsized influence. Independents also aren't necessarily less extreme than people with clear partisan identification and I wouldn't equate greater independent affiliation or "centrism" to a reduction in radicalism. Some people consider themselves independent or "centrist" because they borrow radical ideas typically associated with either end of the political spectrum. Wisconsin has an open primary system, and it did not stop anything I referred to above. The Republican party radicalized in the state and then proceeded to pass a whole range of laws designed to lock themselves into permanent legislative power even when they lose statewide popular votes in a landslide.

At the Presidential level, we're sadly probably better off just not having primaries and defaulting to the party machine convention system. Beneath that, ranked choice voting might be better, but it does lead to coalition splitting shenanigans in how to game elections that we haven't seen much of yet, but is just there waiting to be exploited.

[_Res Ipsa]

I personally don’t like open primaries. I think it reduces the incentive to get involved in politics. I’m agnostic on top two, although it requires voters to understand the importance of voting in the primary. I do think it would be healthy to give third parties a realistic chance to develop, which I think means ranked choice voting. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s an improvement over what we have now.

[_EAllusion]

As always, I think the biggest problem here is the development of propagandistic right-wing media and its audience, and the corresponding ethical issue of false balance and fairness rather than striving for real objectivity in mainstream journalism. That's the primary source of radicalism, the bad kind, and its enabling.

[_Res Ipsa]

As always, I think the biggest problem here is the development of propagandistic right-wing media and its audience, and the corresponding ethical issue of false balance and fairness rather than striving for real objectivity in mainstream journalism. That's the primary source of radicalism, the bad kind, and its enabling.

See, the problem I have is the term "real objectivity." Everything from start to finish in a news story consists of subjective decisions. A news story is still a story - one that is constructed by reporters and editors and subject to the constraints of owners, advertisers, and flak. I am also concerned that "false balance" will end up being used like "fake news" -- a way to superficially brush off facts without ever considering them.

[_Some Schmo]

See, the problem I have is the term "real objectivity." Everything from start to finish in a news story consists of subjective decisions. A news story is still a story - one that is constructed by reporters and editors and subject to the constraints of owners, advertisers, and flak.

Well, I would interpret "real objectivity" as hewing as closely to the objective facts of the story as possible. That would mean reducing subjective decisions on how to report it to the bare minimum: in what order should we report all the facts?

Tell just the facts of the story; it's not a novel. You don't need adverbs. People think good journalists are entertaining, good "story tellers," and nothing could be further from the truth. If a journalist is good, I know absolutely nothing about their politics.

News should be boring, but boring doesn't help advertisers. News media is another of those businesses where the profit motive f-ucks the end product. Watching the news these days can be like cracking a code: a lot of pictures and symbols saying very little of substance, hiding a tiny message. What's the actual news coming out of all this hoopla? It's buried in there somewhere.

[_EAllusion]

As always, I think the biggest problem here is the development of propagandistic right-wing media and its audience, and the corresponding ethical issue of false balance and fairness rather than striving for real objectivity in mainstream journalism. That's the primary source of radicalism, the bad kind, and its enabling.

See, the problem I have is the term "real objectivity." Everything from start to finish in a news story consists of subjective decisions. A news story is still a story - one that is constructed by reporters and editors and subject to the constraints of owners, advertisers, and flak. I am also concerned that "false balance" will end up being used like "fake news" -- a way to superficially brush off facts without ever considering them.

What I think has happened is that people who go to school to become journalists get a shallow familiarity with philosophy that teaches them that "real objectivity" isn't possible, which then leads to writing tropes that eschew standards of objectivity in preference for he-said, she-said narratives that make news more like choose your own adventure at times and and can be wildly misleading when editorial control is exercised over who is included or excluded in those narratives. The on top of this, especially in political reporting, in order to make things seem more fair, positions and statements can get tortured to make them fit this framing. It's why Donald Trump's routine barely coherent rambling is frequently edited or falsely paraphrased into sounding more like a normal politician. Because while that might not be the most truthful account of what he said, it is the most "fair" as it would be unfair to suggest one "side" is saying alarming gibberish. Since direct quotes in context plainly say that, some creative euphemisms, tortured phrasing, and edits are needed.

This is all sophomoric as what's ordinarily meant by "real objectivity" is not transcendence of subjective frames of reference, but rather using tools and standards that are most likely to present the most accurate depiction of truth, where your theory of truth is largely irrelevant.

[_Res Ipsa]

See, the problem I have is the term "real objectivity." Everything from start to finish in a news story consists of subjective decisions. A news story is still a story - one that is constructed by reporters and editors and subject to the constraints of owners, advertisers, and flak.

Well, I would interpret "real objectivity" as hewing as closely to the objective facts of the story as possible. That would mean reducing subjective decisions on how to report it to the bare minimum: in what order should we report all the facts?

Tell just the facts of the story; it's not a novel. You don't need adverbs. People think good journalists are entertaining, good "story tellers," and nothing could be further from the truth. If a journalist is good, I know absolutely nothing about their politics.

News should be boring, but boring doesn't help advertisers. News media is another of those businesses where the profit motive f-ucks the end product. Watching the news these days can be like cracking a code: a lot of pictures and symbols saying very little of substance, hiding a tiny message. What's the actual news coming out of all this hoopla? It's buried in there somewhere.

So, if we were reporting on this morning's press conference, the objective facts would be a transcript of the press conference?

[_EAllusion]

My very first job was as a student-journalist for a local newspaper. I had a weekly column and occasional other stories. I was paid by the word, which came out to about 35 dollars a week.

I got the job because it always went to the two top students in a journalism class from the year prior and one of them was me. That class taught basic ideas about reporting: who, what, where, when, how; sourcing; factual sentence writing, etc. that you'd associate with basic journalism you'd learn in secondary school.

I think what happens is people up to learn that those ideas are naïve, but I think that's incorrect. I think they are simplistic, but essentially good once nuance and context is added to refine and deepen them. So I think a political journalist's job is to tell the truth using tools meant to foster objectivity, and some journalists think objectivity is a lie and their job is to tell us about, say, neo-Nazis from their perspective like they're dabbling in anthropology, only lacking the methodological tools or rigor of the field they're pretending to participate in.

[_Res Ipsa]

What I think has happened is that people who go to school to become journalists get a shallow familiarity with philosophy that teaches them that "real objectivity" isn't possible, which then leads to writing tropes that eschew standards of objectivity in preference for he-said, she-said narratives that make news more like choose your own adventure at times and and can be wildly misleading when editorial control is exercised over who is included or excluded in those narratives. The on top of this, especially in political reporting, in order to make things seem more fair, positions and statements can get tortured to make them fit this framing. It's why Donald Trump's routine barely coherent rambling is frequently edited or falsely paraphrased into sounding more like a normal politician. Because while that might not be the most truthful account of what he said, it is the most "fair" as it would be unfair to suggest one "side" is saying alarming gibberish. Since direct quotes in context plainly say that, some creative euphemisms, tortured phrasing, and edits are needed.

This is all sophomoric as what's ordinarily meant by "real objectivity" is not transcendence of subjective frames of reference, but rather using tools and standards that are most likely to present the most accurate depiction of truth, where your theory of truth is largely irrelevant.

I've never been to journalism school, so I have no idea what they teach. I think it's foolish to hold out "real objectivity" as the standard for a news story, because each individual decision about which fact goes in and which fact doesn't, which person is allowed to comment and which isn't, the portions or each interview that are printed or not, whether to rely on unidentified sources or not, are all subjective decisions. I agree that reverting to "he said" "she said" as an attempt to appear fair can result in an overall misleading picture of reality. So, having an aspiration of giving an accurate view may be better. But exactly what rules and standards will give us that. You listed one -- when quoting, do it like a transcript. Does that include, say, Biden's stuttering? Or a guy with a lisp? What about where the intent of the sentence is crystal clear and the speaker had a brain fart and messed up a word? What more clearly represents the truth -- the sentence with or without the stumble?

[_EAllusion]

I am not suggesting there aren't difficult decisions to make about accurate portrayal and points of emphasis that shade interpretations of a piece. I am saying there are writing standards that foster more or less objective reporting that more or less give people accurate understanding. I am also saying that superficial understanding of issues in epistemology coupled with some critical theory and edge cases causes people to abandon any pretense of reporting what's correct in preference for storytelling of perspectives.

I would say, "do you represent the stutter in words" is one of those edge cases. That there's pros and cons to it allows someone to think that means there's no difference between that and just paraphrasing to give a flat out misleading impression. After all, aren't both forms of editorializing? Well, no, the differences in degree make for differences in type.