> It's so hard to get unbiased information anymore.
I'm not so sure that "unbiased information" is a thing that really exists.
For example, you would like to know the outside temperature, so you check online. That information comes from a sensor somewhere near where you happen to be. But who placed the sensor there, and why was that ___location chosen? Was the sensor calibrated? How was it originally designed? What choices were made in the design process, and how did the engineer's biases shape the final product. You could keep going.
Obviously, that's a bit absurd, but it's relevant to news. Even a simple reporting of facts about a car crash can be view through numerous lenses. Initial fact gathering by police and emergency workers all add their own perspectives and inputs to the "raw data", and then that has to go through a reporter who is also a person with their own world view, opinions, and experiences. Do they use the word "crash", or "accident"? Both words heavily bias the reporting of a car coming into contact with a guardrail at a particular speed. It would be hard to strip all bias from something so simple.
For murkier issues, like the actions of nation states, it is even harder to"stick to the facts". The facts may not even be clear. The data you include in a report has to be curated somehow, and that can't be free from bias. You have to select sources, and again those are decisions made by people.
Unbiased information is in my opinion a myth invented largely to discredit the idea that reporting is useful even with bias and that there can exist objective facts. Perhaps there is a problem of propaganda masquerading as news, or heavily biased reporting pretending to be wholly objective, but that's a different thing. Ultimately it's our responsibility as consumers of information to look at the information presented to us with a critical eye.
I'm not so sure that "unbiased information" is a thing that really exists. For example, you would like to know the outside temperature, so you check online. That information comes from a sensor somewhere near where you happen to be. But who placed the sensor there, and why was that ___location chosen? Was the sensor calibrated? How was it originally designed? What choices were made in the design process, and how did the engineer's biases shape the final product. You could keep going.
Obviously, that's a bit absurd, but it's relevant to news. Even a simple reporting of facts about a car crash can be view through numerous lenses. Initial fact gathering by police and emergency workers all add their own perspectives and inputs to the "raw data", and then that has to go through a reporter who is also a person with their own world view, opinions, and experiences. Do they use the word "crash", or "accident"? Both words heavily bias the reporting of a car coming into contact with a guardrail at a particular speed. It would be hard to strip all bias from something so simple.
For murkier issues, like the actions of nation states, it is even harder to"stick to the facts". The facts may not even be clear. The data you include in a report has to be curated somehow, and that can't be free from bias. You have to select sources, and again those are decisions made by people.
Unbiased information is in my opinion a myth invented largely to discredit the idea that reporting is useful even with bias and that there can exist objective facts. Perhaps there is a problem of propaganda masquerading as news, or heavily biased reporting pretending to be wholly objective, but that's a different thing. Ultimately it's our responsibility as consumers of information to look at the information presented to us with a critical eye.