"Giving all voices equal weight is bad journalism" - Simon Miraudo on RTR FM this morning.

"Giving all voices equal weight is bad journalism" - Simon Miraudo on RTR FM this morning. He might have been talking about film interpretations, but there are an awful lot of so-called journalists out there in the mainstream press (yes, I'm looking at the Murdoch and Fairfax crowd) who this could well apply to.

Comments

  1. I find a persons view of Good or Bad journalism mine included is defined by your own views first,  Personal social influences second then facts if at all.

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  2. Garry Winterton I'm thinking the more objective sort of good/bad. If you are doing a report on the effects of ... oh... spaghetti tree blight, and you give equal time to a botanist, a spaghetti tree farmer, and an agricultural economist - that would be good journalism. If, instead, you gave equal time to the same botanist, a structural engineer with a specialization in bridges who once saw a spaghetti tree on TV, and Edward J. "Spang" Wrotfingler (the local trout molester) who once heard a rumour that spaghetti trees are purple (when they are clearly green and white), then that would be bad journalism.

    Similarities to this and the vaccination 'debate' are completely co-incidental.

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  3. yes but facts are not important to ones Perception of good or bad journalism.
    If you like the stories from the murdoch or fairfax crowd then you are not going to like the ABC or the guardian for example.
    It wouldn't matter if the stories were perfect in their facts your inner bias skews things in your mind.

    The Vaccination debate shows this clearly. The facts mean nothing to those who perceive them to be evil or bad and the threat seems too distant for them to change their mind.
    For example when i explained to a vaccination skeptic i knew. That when my father and his siblings were vaccinated just after such things became available. secretly as my grandfather was a naturist and that they were the only family in the street not to have someone suffer from one of the dread diseases. that experience is written of as pure luck by those i know who oppose vaccination.

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