Jay Rosen of New York University is one of the most original thnkers alive about the printed press. This doesn’t mean that all he writes makes sense, merely that he is incapable of being dull about it. In this post from Rosen’s PressThink blog, he has been worrying at a theme which recurs in his writing: do political correspondents have an “ideology” and, if so, what is it? In a nutshell, Rosen turns the conventional search for left or right bias upside down and says that the collective biases are not political but ones arising from the wish to appear independent and/or neutral. (Warning on the packet: it’s long and the comments are well worth reading as well).

British readers will have to do some clicking on the links to adjust to the fact that this is entirely about the US. Such a discussion doesn’t translate automatically to the UK, where reporters have more latitude to express opinion than is generally reckoned proper in America. But his analysis isn’t totally irrelevant or unrecognisable either. Substitute “BBC” for the American publications cited here and the argument works well.

I’m fascinated  by this discussion because it forms part of the wider one about objectivity and fairness in news media which has been driven by the web. If the control and production of news is no longer in the hands of an oligarchy of owners and a thousand flowers of individual expression will bloom, does objectivity, fairness and the separation of fact and comment matter any more?

This debate is given extra thrust by the increasing weakness of the resources mobilised by mainstream media which is leading some commentators to conclude that much of the work done by NGOs should be recognised and encouraged as journalism. Or rather that the boundary previously marked between journalism and advocacy should be abolished. As examples, see this from Paris-based writer and teacher Mark Lee Hunter who is enthusiastically supported by Gazeta’s Wyborca’s energetic Greg Piechota.

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