The Batavian is an open forum

Sometime ago I came to conclusion that newspaper journalism as practiced from about the 1950s on is dishonest.

Journalists beat their chests about objectivity. They report only the facts, they tell us. They have no opinions, no prejudices, no biases.

But the truth is, there's never been an objective newspaper story printed in the history of mankind.

Strict objectivity is impossible.

When a reporter goes to a City Council meeting, he starts making decisions about what agenda items are important, which facts and quotes will get jotted in a notebook and who to interview and what questions to ask once the meeting is over. When the reporter gets back to the office, he starts making decisions about which facts are the most important and which quotes to use and how to weave them into his story.

These are all subjective decisions based on a reporter's experience, prejudices and predilections. 

Some reporters are quite artful in pursuing an agenda by what they report and how they report it, but when called on it, they can just point to the story and say, "I don't express any opinion in this story."

A news story can be 100 percent factual, and laden with opinion, designed to lead the reader to the conclusion a reporter wishes to promote.

The general audience, however, believes reporters should be objective. That's what they were taught by the media.  People often sense the media they're getting isn't objective and become dissatisfied with the coverage they get, but because they haven't thought about how impossible objectivity is, they continue to demand objectivity as the standard.

Rupert Murdoch, the ever insightful media observer, noticed the breadth of this objectivity gap (audiences demand objectivity but only recognize as objective that which conforms with their views) and created Fox News.

He called his news "Fair and Balanced" and conservatives ate it up.  "Finally," they said, "objective news."

But Fox is anything but objective. It's opinionated. It pushes a conservative agenda. On Fox, Republicans can do no wrong and Democrats can do no right.

Every Democrat activist hates Fox News, and the "Fair and Balanced" motto drives them up the wall, but they love MSNBC, which overtly shifted its coverage to appeal to progressives in order to compete with Fox.

So when we launched The Batavian, we decided we would do away with all that phony-baloney "objectivity."

Our goals are simple: Be truthful, be honest, be transparent, provide all the relevant facts, to the best of our ability and hope our own blind stops don't lead us down the wrong coverage path.

That means, if we have an opinion, we'll be honest about sharing it. That's what honest and transparent journalists do in this New Media world.

And in the New Media world, because anybody can publish, there is a free and instantaneous check against our mistakes, biases and wrongheadedness, or just an open forum for others to disagree.

All opinions and observations are welcome on The Batavian.

There was a time when Republicans thought The Batavian was hostile to their positions. Many of the original members of the site were active in local Democratic politics, and I think Philip Anselmo leaned a bit to the liberal side. 

While I espoused a localist-libertarian position, I was (and am) non-partisan.

In this environment, Republicans didn't see many of their ideas being put forward and thought their viewpoints would be unwelcome.

Now, I'm hearing the Democrats are thinking of The Batavian, especially since Philip left,  is hostile to their party and positions.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Naturally, I'm going to be critical of big government programs being pushed by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand or more taxes and spending from David Paterson, but that's because as  a libertarian, I think those are bad policies. It has nothing to do with party affiliation.  I'm critical of Republicans when they espouse more government solutions to problems.

But really, what I believe and write is really immaterial. Mine is just one voice.

The Batavian is an open forum.  Anybody can leave a comment or submit a blog post.  If you don't like what I or anybody else has to say, you can have your say, too.  Of course, be prepared to defend your position in a mature and thoughtful way. There are many smart people who contribute to The Batavian and they won't always agree with you.

We believe that in an environment of open discussion, we can get much closer to the truth than in an environment where only single voices, or singular viewpoints are heard.

The only people who have ever been banned from The Batavian were people who engaged in personal attacks or trolling or not using their real names. Nobody has ever been banned because they were a Republican or Democrat or disagreed with me or another member of the site.

This isn't Daily Kos or Free Republic where you will get shouted down and shunned if you disagree with the prevailing agenda.

So if there are there any Democrats out there, or Republicans, who feel like their viewpoint isn't represented on The Batavian, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

UPDATE: See my comment attached to this post noting a back channel communication suggesting I'm off base and pointing out a few locally involved Democrats who participate that I didn't realize were active in the local party.

UPDATE Monday, 9:45 a.m.I: I've been struggling a good deal since yesterday afternoon about how I feel about this post.  I'm very grateful to all the people who are friends and fans of The Batavian. Some of them happen to be very involved in partisan politics, many of them are Democrats. I never really sat down and counted up how many that might be.  None of them said one mean or angry thing to me about this post, but as soon as I realized that I had overreacted to what just a couple of people said (and particularly an e-mail correspondent who doesn't even live in Genesee County), I felt and feel bad.  And not because of anything related to people being Democrats or Republicans, but because the people I least considered should have been among the first I considered because they've been so loyal to The Batavian.  I went in the wrong direction with this post, and for that I apologize.  (And maybe I'm just being too sensative about my own mistake -- some good conversation has come out of this post. I'm not sure anybody was really offended. But I feel like some people would have a right to be offended).