It’s wild that we live in such polarized times that every single comment in this thread is talking about how this is wrong because of some variant of “she’s being fired for calling it like it is.”
That’s not what happened. She was fired (forced to resign, same difference) because she went on record with a political viewpoint and made value judgements. YOU DONT GET TO DO THAT AS A JOURNALIST. It doesn’t matter if she’s right (she is, in my opinion, before someone accused me of supporting apartheid and misses the point). What matters is she has taken away any appearance of being unbiased, both for her and by association for the paper. It’s crazy damaging and the Times should have fired her instead of letting her resign. This is like journalistic ethics 101. My parents were both journalists and wouldn’t even talk to me about who they voted for - and they weren’t even in hard news.
I know these days there are so many biased news agencies and lots of opinions masquerading as news, but for hard news agencies this kind of thing does not, and should not fly. The woman was dumb and I hope she was ready for a career writing op-eds and being a partisan talking head, because she’ll never write hard news at a reputable source again.
@drphungky actually, I journalists ARE supposed to disclose their personal biases. It feels much worse to me when media personalities pretend to be objective. They aren’t. I think the idea that we should discourage the disclosure if personal opinion is actually really bad for media literacy
Totally hear where you’re coming from, and I think in a perfect world, a journalist could recuse themselves of reporting on things where they are hopelessly biased (see Cuomo incident before the later revealed stuff), but I still argue the goal should be to examine and eliminate biases as much possible, and avoid the appearance of minor ones unless they are somehow damning. The introspection necessary to examine your own biases rather than just avoid them helps make you more capable of being more impartial overall, in my opinion.
I think there’s real debate on if through such a concerted effort to not give into to one’s own biases, you swing too far and start favoring the opposition, but that happens with anyone trying to avoid appearances of impropriety. Not giving your kid the starting pitching slot even if he deserves it because you’re the coach, a judge not accepting a free ride to a conference everyone else gets, etc etc.
What matters is she has taken away any appearance of being unbiased, both for her and by association for the paper.
Nothing is unbiased, anything written by a human is tinted by their perspective, by what they know and by the lack of what they don’t know, by their sense of morality, their ideology, etc… At most, you can approach what looks like the neutral position from your perspective, but true neutrality is fundamentally unreachable. Personally, I prefer a journalist that knows what their bias are and state them clearly to their audience over one that pretend like they have the laterally superhuman ability to forme truly unbiased and neutral opinion.
It’s wild that we live in such polarized times that every single comment in this thread is talking about how this is wrong because of some variant of “she’s being fired for calling it like it is.”
That’s not what happened. She was fired (forced to resign, same difference) because she went on record with a political viewpoint and made value judgements. YOU DONT GET TO DO THAT AS A JOURNALIST. It doesn’t matter if she’s right (she is, in my opinion, before someone accused me of supporting apartheid and misses the point). What matters is she has taken away any appearance of being unbiased, both for her and by association for the paper. It’s crazy damaging and the Times should have fired her instead of letting her resign. This is like journalistic ethics 101. My parents were both journalists and wouldn’t even talk to me about who they voted for - and they weren’t even in hard news.
I know these days there are so many biased news agencies and lots of opinions masquerading as news, but for hard news agencies this kind of thing does not, and should not fly. The woman was dumb and I hope she was ready for a career writing op-eds and being a partisan talking head, because she’ll never write hard news at a reputable source again.
@drphungky actually, I journalists ARE supposed to disclose their personal biases. It feels much worse to me when media personalities pretend to be objective. They aren’t. I think the idea that we should discourage the disclosure if personal opinion is actually really bad for media literacy
Totally hear where you’re coming from, and I think in a perfect world, a journalist could recuse themselves of reporting on things where they are hopelessly biased (see Cuomo incident before the later revealed stuff), but I still argue the goal should be to examine and eliminate biases as much possible, and avoid the appearance of minor ones unless they are somehow damning. The introspection necessary to examine your own biases rather than just avoid them helps make you more capable of being more impartial overall, in my opinion.
I think there’s real debate on if through such a concerted effort to not give into to one’s own biases, you swing too far and start favoring the opposition, but that happens with anyone trying to avoid appearances of impropriety. Not giving your kid the starting pitching slot even if he deserves it because you’re the coach, a judge not accepting a free ride to a conference everyone else gets, etc etc.
Nothing is unbiased, anything written by a human is tinted by their perspective, by what they know and by the lack of what they don’t know, by their sense of morality, their ideology, etc… At most, you can approach what looks like the neutral position from your perspective, but true neutrality is fundamentally unreachable. Personally, I prefer a journalist that knows what their bias are and state them clearly to their audience over one that pretend like they have the laterally superhuman ability to forme truly unbiased and neutral opinion.
Ok I get where you’re coming from but what if your value judgements are the right ones and everyone who disagrees with you is a bad person?
Then you get a spot writing op-eds so you can dunk on strawmen who don’t have the reach or voice to argue with you!