TwoCents
Do your personal biases ever affect your view/perspective on a story you are about to write? What do you do to ensure you always remain objective?
Most definitely, biases are simply the lens through which we process information.
Often, there's presentation bias where just because a startup isn't able to communicate well, it's easy to conclude that they're not doing anything noteworthy, sometimes it's not so. It can also be the reverse where there's a lot of hype but no substance. I'm aware of these and lookout for this.
Often, there's presentation bias where just because a startup isn't able to communicate well, it's easy to conclude that they're not doing anything noteworthy, sometimes it's not so. It can also be the reverse where there's a lot of hype but no substance. I'm aware of these and lookout for this.
Prior knowledge or preconceived notions also play a part in clouding my judgement. To mitigate this I just go ahead and still listen in on a conversation or take a call to learn more about the situation.
For me, recalibrating myself starts with remembering and returning to what my editorial objectives are. I'm trying to shed more light on an important story or explain a concept. I strive to simply look at the facts and simply state them.
For instance, there's a story I'm currently working on that I sincerely doubt the startup is legit and many people share the same sentiment but I'm a journalist, those things don't matter. My job is to simply listen to different parties and gather enough information. You don't just wake up and decide someone is lying, you have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that that's the case.
In closing, a few years ago I read an article titled In the Praise for Bias, [https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/in-praise-of-bias/].
The author of the article argues that biases are not necessarily evil, they simply exist because the answer to the big questions of life many times can't be answered by facts. They then go on to make a case that we should seek to improve and refine our biases rather than trying to ignore them. I agree with this and think it's worth considering in the quest for objectivity.
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