re: #757 Obdicut

I absolutely agree with that, that a reporter should cite good sources for their claims beyond a certain level. I mean, not for citing that, say, Pittsburgh has not been taken over by man-eating rats, but more grey-area stuff.

My main point is that reporting on ‘both’ sides of an issue is a false, not a real, objectivity. A reporter’s job is to figure out the truth and report that. It goes far beyond simply repeating what two sides of a debate says, but also analyzing the claims made by those sides and whether or not they’re well-supported.

Good luck. We need an extra weekend to finish off our apartment, here.

Ah, well, we were talking at cross-purposes. I never said a reporter should report both or all sides; if I did sort of say or imply that, it was an error on my part. My only point is that a reporter should avoid inserting his own opinion as fact. And that’s done by finding experts, interviewing people, finding witnesses and interviewing them and then reporting what they say, and reporting it AS “so and so says”.