The new Planet has pledged bias.

Rogers’ piece lays out what I call the “Greater Eunuch” theory of journalism: that the public is better served if newsies check their cojones at the door. Reporters should of course do their level best to keep their own ideas from influencing what they put in news stories. But papers should be written by humans, not robots. It’s easier to leave your own biases out of news if you know what they are. And strongly held opinions add flavor to pieces that are not just straight news reports.....

I was a political activist and even managed campaigns before I became a journalist. I ran a business after I was a journalist. Meanwhile, I raised three kids who went to the Berkeley schools. I know a lot about why the public schools are constantly running out of money because of my years in the PTO — a lot more than the kind of reporter whose main news source is the superintendent’s office.

Experience has convinced me that the public is best informed by people who from time to time cross over the line between participant and observer, not by journalists whose views have always been from the sidelines and never from the field.

Hey, this strikes kinda close to home!

It's very easy to say 'opinion papers are fun! Look at how well British tabloids do, and they have tons of opinion.' I don't think it's that simple. The British tabs have significant pressures to be entirely factually correct: a notoriously harsh libel law, incredible competition, and so on. This tends to keep them from being ideological circle-jerks of self-congratulatory 'journalists' writing obvious articles that agree with the biases of their readers. (Student Action sucks! Here's why! -ed.) It's not encouraging that Ms. O'Malley cites some notoriously circle-jerkesque op-ed writers as her guiding lights. It's like Conservatives citing Ann Coulter.

Not to mention that a brand new paper has a stronger need to establish factual reliability then to be an entertaining attack magazine. Email This Post!