Online services like Spinspotter.com and Newstrust.net bring the topic of ethical journalism back into discussion.
Sites like these, regardless of one's own opinion of them, empower the reader to detect 'bias' - whatever that may be - in any news form. Simply put, these sites claim to uncover inaccuracies and unfair slants in online news stories. And according to Spinspotter's website, anyone can do such a task in just 3 easy steps. If objectivity were that simple, however, why would anybody bother to dedicate themselves to a profession that requires just that?!
Spinspotter enables users to rate the spin, share it, as well as edit the spin out of a news article. Newstrust.net even allows users to review news pieces and subjectively rate them on their objectivity.
NewsTrust.net brags itself as a user's "guide to good journalism." But I ask, why stop there? Why not go that extra hurdle to pursue...GREAT journalism, whatever these adjectives might mean? My point is readers should decide for themsevles what is objective and what isn't, and not let a news site like these act like a moral arbiter to ethical journalism.
Alexandre Gamela, who appears to be a representative from NewsTrust.net, wrote in a blog that the online site provides "quality news feeds, news literacy tools and a trust network to help citizens make informed decisions about democracy."
Well, isn't that what the press is for? Has the field of journalsim changed so much that no one can be trusted anymore? I guess we are all to assume that journalism and ethics in the same sentence is an oxymoron.
Are we so idle nowadays that we need a site to tell us what is bias and what isn't in news?
You would think that respected news organizations that have prefessional experience in journalism, would have the capacity to produce unbiased, high-quality reporting and not be questioned by amateurs.
I understand that humans, including journalists, are not perfect and we all bring our prejudices to anything we say and write. In that case, there is no such thing as a completely neutral, unpartisan piece of journalism. We just have to live with our imperfections and arduously pursue the field of objectivity. What we should not rely on are computers to analyze our objectivity, and rid us of our imperfections!
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