[ordu]

In general case it is impossible to report news objectively. I personally do not mind propaganda per se anymore. I mean it is ok with me, if the source has a political agenda. I praise media who state their agenda clearly. But what I do not tolerate is the outright lying. I do not like hidden agenda, though it can be revealed by watching a source for some time.

Moreover propaganda-phobia is bad by itself. It can be a tool of a propaganda.

[raxxorraxor]

I disagree profoundly. I can do good work which will still never be perfect. Doesn't mean I don't try to do a good job. Without objectivity, what does a news story have left? Amounts of clicks? Granted, that is the current economic reality of news writers.

To teach and inform someone means to broaden their perspective. Without a goal like objectivity, a news story has no value. Why even listen to propaganda, it would not be to your benefit?

I still do like opinion pieces where authors describe their experience because sometimes an objective recapitulation does indeed not tell the whole story. But many modern news articles could use a dosage of detachment. It would improve the craft drastically.

[ordu]

It is sounds good, but I know not a single media that manage to maintain unbiased objective style. They are all present a biased sample of data, reporting what they think is important and rejecting everything else. A biased sample is the best you can get. For this sample to be useful, a reader needs to know what biases the source have. If readers believe that the sample is objective and do not keep their own subjective opinion on how this sample is biased (or which other deficiencies the source has), they just make it easier to others to manipulate their opinions.

I do not believe that anyone can be objective, because the process of selecting data to publication is a subjective process.

> many modern news articles could use a dosage of detachment. It would improve the craft drastically.

Maybe it would. But I'm reading news not to improve craft, but to keep myself informed. So I read what there is, not what it would be nice to have.

Moreover I believe that if you deem your sources are flawed, it make you better at critical thinking. Or rather it could make you better, if you didn't just turn to "post-truth", but tried to measure flaws and to undo them.

So maybe to impove craft of reporting and make it perfect, is not a good thing. It would mean that you no longer can author your own opinion, you can not practice the art, and you are extremely vulnerable to a manipulation. Though maybe if craft was perfected then it wouldn't be an issue?

[smeagull]

Nothing is objective.

[raxxorraxor]

Nothing is absolute. There are observations that are more objective than others and those that are plain objective. We can discuss the definition of it, but it wouldn't be that fruitful, objectively.

Your statement would ultimately be an oxymoron too.

[ordu]

> Your statement would ultimately be an oxymoron too.

It demonstrates that the very notion of objectivity is flawed. Objectivity is a hyper-simplified model of external validity[1]. It cannot be measured as a boolean variable or by a real number. Neither black-and-white nor shades of gray could help with measuring objectivity. It is much more tricky. It is as tricky as the reality itself.

If someone wants to deal with the data from reality, they need to track all the way from reality to the data they got. Where did it come from and how it was processed. It is the only way, and it has no place for objectivity. I mean all your thoughts will have no references to objectivity, they would deal with ways how data might become biased or falsified on the way from a reality to you.

> There are observations that are more objective than others and those that are plain objective.

Can you give an example of a plain objective statement? I can think of no such statements. 2+2=4? It is a math statement, it is not about reality, it is just a part of definition of an addition.

Or maybe "apple hit Newton on the head"? Is it an objective statement? Did apple bounced and hit him on the shoulder also? Was someone sitting on the tree dropped apple on Newton's head? Was Newton leaning on a trunk of the tree? Did he tried to dodge? How many details were omitted? Who decided that these details are not important enough to report? Was he objective while deciding? How can anyone measure his objectivity?

The only way to explain why this is an objective reporting needs resorting to a beauty of a narrative of a sudden insight induced by a seemingly irrelevant and mundane event. And this narrative "decides" what is important and what is not. Was the choice of this narrative "objective"?

What if we choose a narrative of a God's blessing? Like Descartes did when he invented a coordinate system. If we did then the choice of details to report would be different. And it would be an "objective" reporting also.

Pure data (like numbers in a table) have no narrative, so maybe it is objective? But when we do not know the narrative behind the data, we cannot make inference from the data. So pure objective data is useless.

Everything is subjective. Though there are cases when it doesn't matter. Cases when we do not need to keep an eye on a narrative, on a process of data gathering and processing... But even despite the majority of cases are of this kind, a critical thinker needs to keep an eye on a narrative and on a process of data gathering, because it is his second nature: you never know when this skills will become needed, so the only safe way is to use them constantly. Make them automatic, so you need not to think about it.

[1] https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/external-validity/

[6t6t6t6]

The problem is when you are using propaganda as the source of information that the life of your family depends on.