It seems like it would be less polarizing if it was the default state for news and information outlets to not endorse any candidate ever and just remain as neutral as possible.
News can’t be unbiased and being unbiased was never a goal. News is meant to inform, which includes facts as well as analysis. That seemingly the average American doesn’t understand that is a failure of the education system.
WaPo has been giving out endorsements since the 70s. The era you’re pining for never existed.
By no means. Word choice on its own __is__ a bias. Even if you reported straight facts, the word choice used presents a bias or not. Is it a military action or a terrorist attack? Is it a protest? An occupation? Are they Freedom Fighters?
Choosing __to__ or __not to__ use an organization's given name or a description of them, is having a bias.
Choosing to report on something at all is a presentation of bias.
There is bias in everything and to imagine there isn't is to be even more susceptible to it.
Getting some notion of what USA politics are like on HN, I can understand why you'd have this viewpoint, but I don't think it's true
The news I am used to, I couldn't tell you what political color it has. The selection they make seems based on the perceived severity, which certainly means there is a selection process that must be introducing some sort of bias, but as near as I can tell, this bias is towards a shared humanity and not a party
Perhaps I am just naïve, so I opened the local Wikipedia and it has no mention of them being accused of having a bias, political coloring or selection, notable omissions, or any such thing
I disagree strongly with the party for hate and egocentricity having come out as the biggest one in the most recent election, and to a lesser extent with the rich people be rich party from the previous ~decade, so it's not like all noses are pointed in the same direction where I'm from; but I couldn't tell you how this organization (the default thing if you turn on your TV at prime time) feels about any particular party beyond that I expect they would condemn hate and violence in general -- shared humanity, basically.
Sure, but just because you can't be perfectly unbiased doesn't mean the only alternative is to become a mouthpiece for a political party.
NYT is particularly guilty of that behavior.
How one contextualizes a story and presents the attention grabbing headline puts a massive thumb on the scale of how the topic is perceived.
Because of what the article mentions or doesn’t mention, provides context for or no context for, the exact same core story centerpiece is biased and leading. Any impression the author wants to convey is easy to bring out in the “neutral” writing. This is simply a fact of writing.
And yet some reporters and news orgs, like the NYT, profess they are neutral observers as if from the planet zorg recording a miraculous unbiased story.
No, that is impossible and everyone knows it. Claiming to be neutral is gas lighting.
[1] Which, let's be honest, is pervasive and popular. You aren't simultaneously arguing to kick Hannity off the air, right?
That's why I see aiming for unbiased reporting to miss the point of journalism. We want opinions, but not random uneducated opinions, we want well argumented, relevant and proof backed opinions.
"Candidate X is a liar" is valid journalism if there's the facts to back the claim and the analysis to make it a thought provoking piece that brought something to the readers. We have whole Pullitzer winning books going into minute details about how some public figures are crooks.
To note, not reporting, not expressing opinions is also a bias so I don't see a middle ground. For instance if a major national journalism would not publish the news of a candidate getting arrested, that in itself is a biased decision. If they'd publish a dry piece just quoting the official police declaration, that would also be tremendous bias and everyone would see it as a refusal to comment on it.
The very act of filtering what to report to the audience is political in itself. Say, floods or other natural disasters caused or (like wildfires) made worse by climate change. Most of them tend to be ignored outside of the nation they happen, but not reporting on it also means that people don't grasp just how bad climate change already is, and thus the people may not vote for parties or individuals campaigning on climate change.
The job of the journalist is to try to present a version of the story which is as close to the truth as possible, and without leaving out any relevant information. But, also the story is in context of the values which most of us hold dear, because we are human beings.
We might have thought that an unbiased news story would have to be written by a robot, but as we know now, LLMs are biased too.
Second: this is what happens in Brazil. Everybody gets angry because each news outlet defends its own conservative candidate.