View From Nowhere

True Objective Reporting Versus False Neutrality Bias

A reporter who confuses "neutrality" with "objectivity" is naively joining the dishonest, irrational, or simply incorrect party's position in news reports where the facts would lead a reasonable thinker to another specific viewpoint instead of a "neutral" one.

A journalist who has done this has taken the View From Nowhere. This harms the audience by allowing them to draw conclusions from a story that includes untrue possibilities. It perpetuates confusion or generates bad conclusions where none would otherwise exist. Taking the View From Nowhere is a passive act. It is a consequence of what the journalist does not do. It can occur with lazy or sloppy reporting just as easily as the active self-censorship of legitimate criticism. By broadcasting a View From Nowhere to many people, the truth possibility set (with erroneous inclusions) is actively (re-)confirmed over and over again to the audience. Due to the 1-to-many nature of broadcasting, this leads large groups of normally reasonable people to make bad decisions.

. . . the view from nowhere not only leads to sloppy thinking but actually leaves the reader less informed than she would be had she simply read an unapologetically ideological source or even, in some cases, nothing at all.

The noble goal of objective and unbiased reporting ("just the facts"), often leaves subjective decisions about the meaning and value of facts in a news report up to the audience. But sometimes the facts of a particular story can have only one particular set of meanings. In such a case, a journalist must clearly define what facts are members of this set, and what beliefs are not a member of this set.

Common Patterns Of Illogic Characterize View From Nowhere Reports

A journalist who excludes relevant pieces of information from the set of true facts is telling a lie of omission. If the audience had all the missing data, it would reach a different conclusion.

A journalist who strives for neutrality may also fail to exclude popular and/or widespread untrue claims from the audiences' "possibilities set" about the story, thus failing in their duty to be objective. A reporter may fail to confront their audience's biases and wrong conventional thinking because they forget the existence of the people on the other side of camera or printing press, and thus don't analyze their audience or address their preconceptions.

Some journalists of weak character who don't want to anger any party in any way because they lack the necessary personal courage to confront wrong beliefs will adopt View From Nowhere reporting.

Innumeracy

Journalists suffering from innumeracy may also be a source of View From Nowhere reports.

Self-censorship Generates View From Nowhere

A journalist who knows his bosses, station, or network are biased may self-censor, thus producing the "View From Nowhere" in an otherwise honest journalist who wants to protect his employment.

Sleazy Politician Grants Special Access To Bad View From Nowhere Journalist

Politicians who benefit from bad "View From Nowhere" journalism grant more access to the bad journalists responsible, thus crowding out legitimate journalists, leading to a disinformed public, and bad public policy that harms everyone. This feedback loop creates a self-reinforcing cycle of bad journalism in politics and bad politicians in office.

He Said, She Said Pattern

The hallmark pattern of "View From Nowhere" journalism takes the form of "A said X. B said Y." and then the story ends without comment, where X and Y are mutually exclusive claims and Y is absurd. The reporter fails to reject Y or conduct further investigations to illuminate what reasonable observers in the audience would conclude if they were able to do the reporting themselves.

Thus "View From Nowhere" journalists are often accused of acting like stenographers instead of journalists, merely repeating whatever garbage statements are told to them, including big, fat obvious lies from well-known liars with obvious conflicts of interests. The lies & liars are presented to the audience as though they possess equal credibility as all other honest claims made by other people.

Anger From All Sides Is Not An Indicator Of Balance, Fairness Or Truth

View From Nowhere journalism sources often try defend themselves by claiming "Both sides are angry at us, therefore our reporting fair, balanced, and correct". This is illogical, as equiposition of angered parties has no bearing upon truth or falseness of a report, "fairness" or objective "balance", especially when the balance of truth is 100 percent lopsided to only 1 party.

A Good Reporter Avoids View From Nowhere, Then Suffers Slanderous Claims Of "Bias"

The aggrieved parties whose claims are wrong often accuse "bias" against the reporter who stakes out the truthful position. Naïve audience members will confuse "perspective" with "bias", especially when the truth is unwelcome to them. Every human must have a perspective. A good journalist will be aware of their own perspective and disclose it to the audience if it is relevant, and take steps to accommodate their own known blind spots. But an accusation of bias implies that the reporter has blindly or deliberately altered the story to change the conclusion an audience should draw from a report. The fake "biased reporter" claim usually amounts to another lie, a slander against an honest journalist.

Mitigation Of View From Nowhere

Admitting that all reporters must have some biases does not make neutrality for all stories into the objective, honest framing for all stories. Neutrality is only reasonable for situations where the facts support that middle-of-the-road position. A good journalist will address their own preconceived bias at the beginning of the story. Not every journalist's bias is so great or relevant to every story that it alters the reporting in a meaningful way that would lead the audience to wrong conceptions of the topic.

Audience awareness of View From Nowhere

Educating the public to be vigilant for this condition in news stories protects some of them from its negative effects.

Editorial awareness

News sources can protect their entire audience from this effect if all reporters stories are reviewed by editors who use a quality checklist for all stories which includes an assessment of the false neutrality bias of View From Nowhere reporting.

Transparency

A good journalist takes steps to ensure their perspective doesn't become bias, altering the facts or analysis of the meaning of the story, and shares this information about their bias-fighting behavior on the story with the audience. The audience can then decide for themselves if enough was done to mitigate bias, if it was relevant at all.

Origin Of Term

Nathan Jurgenson reports that August Comte coined the phrase in Positive Philosophy (1830-1842).