The bounds of impartiality

The media’s loss of trust comes from misjudging ideological shifts.

Image generated by AI.

Impartiality is at the core of public interest journalism. For broadcasters in some countries it’s a legal requirement, and news agencies take it so seriously that it might as well be. The New York Times and Financial Times pledge to operate “without fear or favo(u)r”.

In reality, impartiality is bounded by facts that are broadly held to be true and by the ideology that society adheres to. This is necessary for journalists to function: You can’t entertain the views of flat-earthers in every article about space exploration, nor interrupt your election coverage to ask whether we might in fact be happier under a theocracy.

If a publication is aligned with its audience on these foundational truths, then it’s fairly easy to win their trust. But if it’s misaligned, no amount of transparency or journalistic rigour will save it from accusations of bias.

Consider the businesses using advanced AI to generate horoscopes. This delights people who accept the principles of astrology, but it doesn’t convince any rationalists that their love life depends on the passage of Saturn. No matter how sophisticated the process, a false premise will always generate bullshit outcomes.

The same is true of the media. My first journalism job was covering Iran, which included monitoring state news agency IRNA. Its reporters were well trained and it was a very reliable source for factual developments. But everything it published was built on the ideology of the Islamic Republic – and was therefore, to my Western eyes, frequently nonsensical.

Within the West, there have always been people on the political extremes who are divorced from the mainstream ideology and mistrustful of the established media. But in today’s rapidly changing world, more people are questioning the assumptions that underpin public life. The limits of respectable opinion are fragmenting and shifting, and editors are struggling to keep up.

Moving goalposts

Even ideas once seen as settled science are being questioned. Just ten years ago, almost everybody in the West took for granted the idea that the benefits of vaccination far outweighed the risks. Equally, it was seen as common sense that almost everyone belonged straightforwardly to one of two genders. Both of these ideas are now disputed by significant (and largely separate) minorities.

When a new idea enters the intellectual realm in this way, editors and other gatekeepers must make a decision on how much legitimacy to ascribe to it. This is a tightrope with risks on both sides – either giving too much oxygen to a passing and potentially harmful fad, or failing to acknowledge an important new ideological trend.

Over the past few years, a narrative has emerged across the Western world that mainstream media have consistently shown undue deference to ideas pushed by ‘progressive’ activists. By uncritically adopting radical new ideas around race and gender, the argument goes, they have alienated ordinary people and contributed to the rise of populist right-wing politics.

The idea was best illustrated by Colin Wright, an American evolutionary biologist with a traditional view of gender, who portrayed himself remaining ideologically consistent but moving from the left to the right of the political spectrum as the bounds of acceptable discourse shifted.

As a backlash to many of these new ideas gathers pace, it’s starting to look like the media shifted their narrative frame in response to social activism, not a meaningful change in mainstream values. The unfortunate impression is of journalists trying to bring about a political change, rather than reporting on it.

At the same time, the media are accused of shutting their ears to new ideas on the right. Mainstream opposition to mass migration has been gathering pace in Europe for at least a decade but a lot of media still stick a disparaging ‘far-right’ label on any politician holding this view. Any political taxonomy that groups Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s popular and powerful prime minister, with racist fringe groups is plainly divorced from public attitudes.

In other words, much of the Western media is now operating on a set of assumptions – gender is a social construct, multiculturalism is always good, and so forth – that a large segment of the population rejects. These people’s trust won’t be earned by more transparency or reporting rigour: The castle of standards is built on ideological sand.

Opponents of this narrative argue that the new ideas of the left are part of a long and beneficial progressive tradition; that those opposing them are reactionaries, equivalent to those who opposed gay rights in an earlier era; and that the growing scepticism towards migration is simply a dangerous new expression of racism that must not be given a platform.

Electorates, though, seem to agree with the critical view. Donald Trump’s recent re-election and, in Europe, the rapid rise of the right – all despite relentlessly negative press coverage – suggest that the mainstream media is more out of touch with popular opinion than at any time in its history.

Impartial by design, biased by accident

At this stage, some people allege that the media conspires with the political establishment to push certain narratives, suppress unwelcome views and so forth. Having worked in the media at a fairly senior level, I can say unequivocally that this is untrue. Most journalists are dedicated professionals doing their best to bring an honest account of events to the public, often working long hours for little pay.

But good intentions aren’t always enough. Journalists have too often failed to detect right-wing trends until an electoral eruption – notably the Brexit vote and Trump’s first election, both in 2016. For complex reasons that I explored in depth here, people are more hesitant to express their right-wing views than those on the left, and journalists need to account for this bias in their reporting.

Structurally, newsrooms don’t reflect the societies they serve. Poor pay and widespread nepotism mean that most reporters come from relatively privileged backgrounds, which is reflected in their political views. The public service aspect of the work may be more attractive to left-leaning graduates, while their conservative classmates seek profit in private. And journalists are almost all city-dwellers, who are typically to the left of small-town folk. Diversity initiatives, focused on the more observable categories of ethnicity and gender, tend to neglect these trends.

If diversity of opinion is indeed lacking in newsrooms, it would be very easy for biases to creep in unbidden. Journalistic protocols – getting the other side of a story, seeking comment from an accused party – are only one element of impartiality. Just as important is deciding which stories to cover, how to frame them, and how many resources to invest in reporting them. Taken in aggregate, a publication’s output can reflect its staff’s biases even if each individual story is edited to the highest standard.

Regardless of whether one agrees with this critique, it’s clear that mainstream publications have become less relevant to political discourse across the West, which by their own standards is a critical mission failure. If they are to regain their former relevance, news leaders need to ask themselves hard questions about how they lost the public’s trust.