I had an argument with someone at work earlier today about the role of reporters and if there is a difference between analysis and commentary. I don’t mean to discredit my side of this argument, but I know that I’m an extremist in this argument. I know that I’m not representing the majority. Throughout most of my dealings at work, I put on my filter because I know how extreme my point of views are.
When New York was full of newspapers, no one was worrying about reporting the news without bias of any kind. The way a reporter attracted an audience was their opinion. The newspaper industry consolidated, and without as many voices reporting, there was less need to differentiate yourself. You could pretend to be someone without bias when you reported your stories, but that was a facade. There’s no such thing as reporting without opinion. Every time you make a decision about how to structure an article, you’re taking a side. The last person speaking always makes the biggest impression. Ask Mark Anthony and Caesar about that.
The internet is full of assholes (like myself) spouting at the mouth about whatever they feel like. I’m not bound by the same rules as a newspaper reporter, because I’m my own editor. I haven’t been running a newspaper with a bullshit idea of how information disseminated from my newspaper should be fair or balanced. I’m not entrenched in the idea that I do things a certain way. I’m 100% biased. I’m a libertarian, but a bad one so I vote democrat. I think that the content industries as a whole are slowly committing suicide without knowing it. But if you’re familiar with my writings, you don’t need me to tell you that. There’s no hiding my feelings. All these excellent assholes online have flooded the market of information, making the standard (boring) news coverage seem old and boring. If you are making an attempt to be “balanced” your coverage doesn’t stand out in a sea of people giving their honest opinions and soon enough you’ll get ignored.
Did you ever wonder why Bill O’Reilly is so popular? While I think that he’s wrong on most if not all issues, I respect the fact that he and his team made the decision to buck the trend of the emotionless talking head and he reports the news how he sees it. No one tunes in to the O’Reilly Factor to get unbiased reporting. People tune in to the Factor to hear an opinion they expect to hear. People read Rolling Stone’s political coverage understanding that they hate the Bush administration. People watch Lou Dobbs knowing that he’s xenophobic and believes that the middle class is under attack. I go to specific news sources to get news that I know is colored from the people who report it. This is why Fox News kicked CNN’s ass for so long. CNN was phony, Fox News was a breath of fresh air. No matter how much I disagree with Rupert Murdoch’s political opinions, I absolutely respect that Fox News and the New York Post don’t pretend they don’t have opinions. CNN? The New York Times? They still pretend that they report things right down the middle, even though they don’t.
I worked as an editor of the UMass Lowell Connector for a few years and I can honestly say that we never once reported the news without bias. The Connector is a student publication, and everyone who picks up an edition should know that the student newspaper will never side with the administration in a disagreement between the students and the administration. We reported the news from the perspective of the students of the school. There was no other way that we could have possibly reported any other way.
Pretending that you are reporting the news or anything without an opinion means that you are lying to your audience. If you’re from New York, the moment you report and pretend that you aren’t, you are lying to your audience and I think that it’s wrong to lie like that to your audience.
The second argument was about commentary vs. analysis. We did not see eye to eye about what those two words mean. I suspect I touched a nerve because she is first and foremost a newspaper reporter while I am not. Analysis is commentary. There’s no such thing as analysis that isn’t commentary. The moment you try to decode what someone else said, you’re making commentary about what they said and you are injecting your opinion (based on your education and personality) into what the person said.
As an example, every single news organization had analysis of Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech. No matter what, the moment you try to tell your audience what someone else was saying, you’re creating commentary based on your analysis. You also can’t comment on something without analyzing it. By commenting, it means you’ve done analysis (no matter how little) about whatever you’re commenting on. It’s simple, you can’t create commentary without analysis and you can’t have analysis without commentary.
My bottom line here is this: It’s important to know your sources, because it allows you to make your own decisions.