New experiment: "Newsfix Reporters"

Okay, so I just wanted to gauge whether there's any interest in this.

We would create a new rank for users, called "reporter." But it would come with some guidelines that you would have to adhere to in order to maintain that rank.

1. When posting hard news, you have to cite (at minimum) three sources for your post.

2. You have to play it straight -- no bias whatsoever.

3. You have to write the post in your own words, excluding direct quotes.

4. You have to write a headline that makes people want to click/tap on it to learn more. (We in journalism call it the "curiosity gap" -- think headlines that read something like, "She thought she was buying her dream home. Now, she says, it's a nightmare")

5. You have to accept that your post could be edited.

For now, the only reward you'd get for doing this would be the "reporter" rank, and I know that's not much. But I thought some people might find it fun.

And who knows? A future incarnation of this site might be able to offer compensation to people who agree to be reporters.

Please let me know what you think.

I'm gonna be honest

2 & 3 makes it a no from me

It sounds tough and fair as a fun challenge. Except, who gets to decide on what is edited?

How are then they able to be fair themselves?

So on point 5, it would have to be only on damning evidence provided right?
To then edit?

You have seen how some here, no matter the evidence, refuse to believe it?

Interesting idea and willinging to give a go

But we all know that a good number of our 'unbiased' rw posters rely on 'unbiased'news sites such as Fox news, Breitbart, the Daily's Mail and Express and the Sun.

What hope is there actually uncovering the truth?

Condition #2 will exclude a lot of the more opinionated and polarising members on here, straight away !!!

Sounds more like creating a 'them' and 'us' scenario. Some people on here have enough superiority complexes going on without elevating their ego to 'Reporter'.

It’s an idea that Ben’s been thinking of for a while and it’s a pretty good way to increase members (we could get some serious writers who want to join) and a great way to be more creative within the forum.

I prefer reading unbiased news.

I think it’s worth a try and to answer the question of who edits it, it will most probably be Ben (at first) seeing as that was his job for years.

Angry Andy wrote:But we all know that a good number of our 'unbiased' rw posters rely on 'unbiased'news sites such as Fox news, Breitbart, the Daily's Mail and Express and the Sun.

What hope is there actually uncovering the truth?

I’m pretty sure you didn’t grasp the actual concept within the OP.
Try again.

Dont patronise me Eddie.
I understand perfectly well the op.
Truth is, there is almost no such thing as unbiased reoorting, whether on tv, the papers or the radio.
All have shareholders to pay, owners to obey and readers/listeners/viewers to placate or irritate.

Angry Andy wrote:But we all know that a good number of our 'unbiased' rw posters rely on 'unbiased'news sites such as Fox news, Breitbart, the Daily's Mail and Express and the Sun.

What hope is there actually uncovering the truth?

Just as our "unbiased" LW posters rely on such "unbiased" news sites as The Guardian, the Daily Mirror, Socialist Worker, Morning Star and even the BBC.

And would that "truth" be your version of the truth - or that of someone else?

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Condition #2 will exclude a lot of the more opinionated and polarising members on here, straight away  !!!

Yourself included.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

Angry Andy wrote:But we all know that a good number of our 'unbiased' rw posters rely on 'unbiased'news sites such as Fox news, Breitbart, the Daily's Mail and Express and the Sun.

What hope is there actually uncovering the truth?

Just as our "unbiased" LW posters rely on such "unbiased" news sites as The Guardian, the Daily Mirror, Socialist Worker, Morning Star and even the BBC.

And would that "truth" be your version of the truth - or that of someone else?

You must be getting forgetful in your dotage if you consider the BBC as left wing.. QT hosted by a tory Bullingdon boy, with rw guests outnumbeting left wing.
The Daily Politics, hosted by former Murdoch and Sun editor Andrew Neil.

Once upon a time it was possible to have the news reported without an obvious bias either way, surely facts as known should be reported and allow readers/listeners to make of it what they will, to the best of their knowledge at least.
Anyway there are at least two sides to any story, then there's the absolute truth, which is usually somewhere in between. People now of all political shades seem to accept what they are told by their particular source, instead of questioning everything.

Ben Mothafuckin' Reilly wrote:Okay, so I just wanted to gauge whether there's any interest in this.

We would create a new rank for users, called "reporter." But it would come with some guidelines that you would have to adhere to in order to maintain that rank.

1. When posting hard news, you have to cite (at minimum) three sources for your post.

2. You have to play it straight -- no bias whatsoever.

3. You have to write the post in your own words, excluding direct quotes.

4. You have to write a headline that makes people want to click/tap on it to learn more. (We in journalism call it the "curiosity gap" -- think headlines that read something like, "She thought she was buying her dream home. Now, she says, it's a nightmare")

5. You have to accept that your post could be edited.

For now, the only reward you'd get for doing this would be the "reporter" rank, and I know that's not much. But I thought some people might find it fun.

And who knows? A future incarnation of this site might be able to offer compensation to people who agree to be reporters.

Please let me know what you think.

It's an interesting idea, Ben, but I do seriously question whether it could possibly work successfully in a forum such as this.

How, for example, could a discussion on a classic national newspaper scoop (exclusive) story be instituted without breaching condition 1? Would it have to be held back until at least two other media outlets had followed it up? And what about some of the important and interesting stories that appear in our local and regional Press that never go on to be carried by other titles?

As soon as anyone designated "reporter" decides to choose and cite a current news item for discussion they will actually be breaching condition 2: They will be expressing an opinion - which by definition must be based on at least an element of bias - on what is and what is not worthy of being included for general discussion. For example, our "reporter" might offer a story on geraniums (horticultural, of course!) but only because he/she is interested in geraniums.

So far as condition 3 is concerned, the majority of items presented for discussion will centre on what someone, somewhere has said or done, either individually or collectively, and it will, I suggest, prove almost impossible for the "reporter" to present a thread "in his/her own words" that does not reflect a personal view - if only as to the degree of general interest.

Condition 4 makes good editorial sense...it should be nice for you and I to be able to sit back and watch others do the job of the splash sub!

Condition 5: For myself; not in a million years. Others may be more accommodating, but I doubt it.

In my many years in newspaper and radio journalism I did every job from cub reporter to editor of a provincial daily paper, so I think that so far as being a practitioner of the Fourth Estate is concerned I've more than done my bit. Ergo....I won't be applying!

Angry Andy wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:


Just as our "unbiased" LW posters rely on such "unbiased" news sites as The Guardian, the Daily Mirror, Socialist Worker, Morning Star and even the BBC.

And would that "truth" be your version of the truth - or that of someone else?

You must be getting forgetful in you dotageif uou consider the BBC as left wing.. QT hosted by a tory Bullingdon boy, with rw guests outnumbeting left wing.
The Daily Politics, hosted by former Murdoch and Sun editor Andrew Neil.

   The BBC is “a publicly-funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared with the population at large”.

   All this, he said, “creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC”.

–Andrew Marr

   “It’s a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society. As they discuss great issues of the day, they discuss them from the point of view that the earth is flat.

   “If someone says, ‘No, no, no, the earth is round!’, they think this person is an extremist. That’s what it’s like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.”

– Jeff Randall, former BBC business editor

   By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The Guardian and The Independent. ­Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on ­running stories, and for inspiration on which items to cover. In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’.

–  Peter Sissons, Former BBC News and Current Affairs presenter

    “In the BBC I joined 30 years ago [as a production trainee, in 1979], there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left. The organisation did struggle then with impartiality. And journalistically, staff were quite mystified by the early years of Thatcher.

   “Now it is a completely different generation. There is much less overt tribalism among the young journalists who work for the BBC. It is like the New Statesman, which used to be various shades of soft and hard left and is now more technocratic. We’re like that, too.”

– Mark Thomspon, former BBC Director General

   “I do remember… the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles. I’ll always remember that”

– Jane Garvey, Radio 4 presenter, recalling Tony Blair’s election victory in 1997

   I absorbed and expressed all the accepted BBC attitudes: hostility to, or at least suspicion of, America, monarchy, government, capitalism, empire, banking and the defence establishment, and in favour of the Health Service, state welfare, the social sciences, the environment and state education. But perhaps our most powerful antagonism was directed at advertising. This is not surprising; commercial television was the biggest threat the BBC had ever had to face.

– Sir Antony Jay, former BBC producer and creator, inter alia, of “Yes, (Prime) Minister”

   “Liberal sceptical humanists tend to dominate television”.

   The “default position in broadcasting” – when covering issues such as gay marriage and the Roman Catholic position on IVF – revolved around human rights, and that opponents should not be treated as “lunatics”.

   “All I’m saying is, if you have at the centre of News an editor, he could explain why people in particular areas…are motivated, why they behave as they do and I think that would just increase understanding.”

– Roger Bolton, Radio 4 presenter and former head of Panorama and Nationwide

   “And, in the tone of what we say about America, we have a tendency to scorn and deride. We don’t give America any kind of moral weight in our broadcasts.”

– Justin Webb (pg. 66), Today presenter and former BBC North America editor

   “We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.”

– Ben Stephenson, BBC controller of drama commissioning


You know better than the people who work for the BBC, do you?

Have you ever been in a Question Time audience? I have, and it was about as balanced as the committee of Barnsley Labour Club.

Have you ever been in any local, regional and national BBC newsrooms? I have, on very many occasions, and even I was amazed at the amount of overtly Left wing stuff on the notice boards and the prevalence of Left wing thinking among news and current affairs staff.

Andrew Neil presents his show because he is a highly skilled journalist and presenter, not because he once worked for Rupert Murdoch.

My gripe about the BBC's political bias is that it is in direct contravention of its Reithian principles and its own Royal Charter which requires it to be strictly politically impartial, particularly where the parties are concerned. It is, after all, a publicly funded institution and the internationally recognised "voice of the United Kingdom" which has the power to prosecute and even jail those who illegally evade paying what is, in effect, a compulsory tax imposed to ensure its existence.

Angry Andy wrote:Dont patronise me Eddie.
I understand perfectly well the op.
Truth is, there is almost no such thing as unbiased reoorting, whether on tv, the papers or the radio.
All have shareholders to pay, owners to obey and readers/listeners/viewers to placate or irritate.

Wow I was beginning to wonder if you were seeing my posts considering the last few were ignored.

And I could easily report in an Unbiased fashion. Easily.

Bias occurs when the story is selected. You could probably write a story with little bias, but your topic selection would be based on bias.

Would the American flag be flown right side up and the "cheeto faced whatever" comment be removed?

Lastly, I have to write unbiased narratives for work. I'm here for fun, not work or some sort of homework assignment where other people judge my work.

I think its a good idea to try things out on a forum, make it more interesting to current members and attract new ones.
I'm not ambitious  enough to rise above what I already do now. ie find something interesting and talk about it, so the job as reporter wouldn't be for me.

I also agree with some of the previous points people have made.

Will it cause diversion? in order of superiority...
Owner
Admin
Mod
Reporter
poster.

There are not always three reports of any story, some papers, especially local ones, cover an interesting  story the wider media haven't covered.

I like the idea of being inventive with titles.

I see no problem with a report being edited....isn't that's the norm when reporters report.

I also hate when someone posts a news topic just providing the news links and they dont go back to give their own viewpoint, so would your idea eliminate that?

That my two pence worth.

Okay, so much to answer, so I'm just going to throw out a few thoughts/answers/opinions/insults as they occur to me:

* You have to keep in mind that there could be compensation for reporters, at some point. So the challenge could be worth it to some.

* It is entirely possible for a biased person to write an unbiased article.

* I can't imagine a reporter refusing to be edited; that simply is not done.

* You would indeed have to wait for three sources before you could do one of these stories. We could always have another section for one- or two-source stories, though, much like what we currently have on this site, but we'd have to treat them more like blog entries -- you'd have to only cite a few paragraphs from the source, then throw in some thoughts or analysis.

* I should have pointed out that if it's not news -- i.e., just throwing up a topic to debate -- it would be just like it is now.

* Insofar as the news industry is about learning things you didn't know about, finding out about people you've never heard of, possibly changing the way you thought about some things and ESPECIALLY about the idea that a better-informed public will make better decisions, of course the news media is liberal.

Authoritarian regimes don't have a free press or much of an education system. Economically right-wing societies don't put public money into news that doesn't sell or gather page views. The news media as we all know it is part and parcel of liberal democracy.

* The only place you'd have to keep out your bias would be the OP; you could always come back and comment with your opinion.

* Is that everything? Oh, probably not. I did forget the insults. You're all a bunch of booger-heads.

Ben Mothafuckin' Reilly wrote:Okay, so much to answer, so I'm just going to throw out a few thoughts/answers/opinions/insults as they occur to me:

* You have to keep in mind that there could be compensation for reporters, at some point. So the challenge could be worth it to some.

* It is entirely possible for a biased person to write an unbiased article.

* I can't imagine a reporter refusing to be edited; that simply is not done.

* You would indeed have to wait for three sources before you could do one of these stories. We could always have another section for one- or two-source stories, though, much like what we currently have on this site, but we'd have to treat them more like blog entries -- you'd have to only cite a few paragraphs from the source, then throw in some thoughts or analysis.

* I should have pointed out that if it's not news -- i.e., just throwing up a topic to debate -- it would be just like it is now.

* Insofar as the news industry is about learning things you didn't know about, finding out about people you've never heard of, possibly changing the way you thought about some things and ESPECIALLY about the idea that a better-informed public will make better decisions, of course the news media is liberal.

Authoritarian regimes don't have a free press or much of an education system. Economically right-wing societies don't put public money into news that doesn't sell or gather page views. The news media as we all know it is part and parcel of liberal democracy.

* The only place you'd have to keep out your bias would be the OP; you could always come back and comment with your opinion.

* Is that everything? Oh, probably not. I did forget the insults. You're all a bunch of booger-heads.

I'm opposed simply because there is a chance Quill will type even more bullshit than he already does.

eddie wrote:It’s an idea that Ben’s been thinking of for a while and it’s a pretty good way to increase members (we could get some serious writers who want to join) and a great way to be more creative within the forum.

I prefer reading unbiased news.  

I think it’s worth a try and to answer the question of who edits it, it will most probably be Ben (at first) seeing as that was his job for years.

What's the point of unbiased news if it's going to be edited?

HoratioTarr wrote:

eddie wrote:It’s an idea that Ben’s been thinking of for a while and it’s a pretty good way to increase members (we could get some serious writers who want to join) and a great way to be more creative within the forum.

I prefer reading unbiased news.  

I think it’s worth a try and to answer the question of who edits it, it will most probably be Ben (at first) seeing as that was his job for years.

What's the point of unbiased news if it's going to be edited?  

Well, the idea is that the reporter tries their best to be unbiased, but they have to turn it into an editor (like me) who double-checks for bias and, if necessary, cuts the biased part.

given that I am an extreme LW/RW moderate
I excuse myself on the grounds of No 2

Vintage wrote:Once upon a time it was possible to have the news reported without an obvious bias either way, surely facts as known should be reported and allow readers/listeners to make of it what they will, to the best of their knowledge at least.
Anyway there are at least two sides to any story, then there's the absolute truth, which is usually somewhere in between. People now of all political shades seem to accept what they are told by their particular source, instead of questioning everything.

Not quite... the absolute truth is very often something outside of the storys presented, and not in the middle/somewhere inbetween, at all...!


But that is the tactic used, to try to keep everyone thinking the same sort of way...