Against “Objective” Journalism
… In other words, bloggers are the new newspapers. For the most part they don’t do the leg work of reporting themselves, or generate the raw material. But they aggregate and interpret it in ways that traditional newspapers should be doing–but aren’t. The human infrastructure of traditional reporting is a magnificent army. But as Lincoln said to McClellan, “if you’re not planning to do anything with that army, may I borrow it?”
Far better than the twentieth century model of fake neutrality, with its pose of credulity toward official claims, is the nineteenth century party press. That model of journalism was based, as Lasch said above of Godkin and Greeley, on the understanding that truth emerges from dialectic—from the adversarial process. The way to arrive at truth is to apply logic to the facts and make the best case for reality, as you see it, that you can. Any bias in your case will be ruthlessly cross-examined by others using logic and evidence to make their own case.
When a blogger presents a one-sided version of reality, guess what happens? They’re hyperlinked by an opposing blogger, who then puts their one-sided account into perspective by linking to the information they left out.
It’s only through such an adversarial process, with all the entry barriers removed from the marketplace of ideas, that the whole truth can emerge. This way is certainly better than a deliberate pose of obtuseness, pretending not to see what’s staring you right in the face, for fear the facts might show that reality itself is biased.
