Have you ever tried suggesting, in a group setting, that you’re not sure all of those doomsday climate models are precisely accurate? Let me give you a tip – don’t! You’ll be viewed as a doubter, a naysayer, a heretic. People will wonder if you’re an oil company employee or if you’re just stupid, because you must be one or the other. Global Warming has become a religion, a religion which does not allow questions, discussion, or inquiry. To question one aspect is to question everything. And now, Net Neutrality is in danger of becoming one too.

Dylan F. Tweney just published an article on Wired.com suggesting that Net Neutrality may not be all it’s cracked up to be and will likely result in the end of all-you-can-eat Internet access. I’ll leave it to you to read his arguments (and they are persuasive), and will instead point out the comments following the article. Some quotes:

• “What world are you living in?”
• “I’m starting to wonder if Wired has a telecom shill here..”
• “THE WAR IS ON FOR THE WEB!!!!!! HERE COMES ANOTHER REVOLUTION.”
• “So which ISP paid you to write it?”
• “So was it Comcast or Verizon who paid you to post this article? Maybe both?”
• “Nice snow job.”
• “This is such a great example of a paid article! I love it!”
• “THIS ARTICLE IS BUNK!”
• “ROTFL!! this article is biased…. right winger…”
• “Thou hast beshamed thy family name and homeland; begone from us henceforth and dwindle in the land of Cowardly Poopybutts whence thou dost belong-ed! Sink me!”

You get the idea. While not true of every hostile commenter, many start with the assumption that Tweney couldn’t possibly actually believe what he wrote, or that he did some research and came to his conclusions, but that he must be in the pay of some nefarious non-believing forces.

My aim here isn’t to argue against government imposed “net neutrality,” but rather to point out that we are verging on religion. Once we have a religion, discussion, analysis, and inquiry stop, and are replaced with blind obedience. For people who are advocating a “free and open Internet,” their minds are closing rapidly.

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It seems to me that lately, the prescriptions for the future of news issued frequently by Internet celebrity (and not so celebrated) journalists and pundits have been including items on “truth.” Most recently, Dan Gillmor, in “Eleven Things I’d Do If I Ran a News Organization,” said,

6. We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence. If we learned that a significant number of people in our community believed a lie about an important person or issue, we would make it part of an ongoing mission to help them understand the truth.

Truth has been part of journalism’s code of ethics since the beginnings of “scientific journalism” in 1923, when the American Society of Newspaper Editors issued its Canons of Journalism which included the statement, “News reports should be free from opinion or bias of any kind.” The ethics code of the Society of Professional Journalists begins with, “Seek Truth and Report It.”

The reality, however, is stated in a post on 10,000 Words called “10 Ugly Truths About Journalism“:

5. Journalists are biased
There is no such thing as unbiased…it is humanly impossible. While journalists often strive to make sure their stories are as unbiased as possible, many cover particular subjects or issues because they feel particularly strong about them.

Yes, it is humanly impossible to be unbiased. Journalists, by what they cover, how they report what they do cover, and what they include and ignore, bring bias into their reporting. That’s just the way it is. Most of those who today clamor for “truth in reporting,” really mean “my truth in reporting.” Perhaps the most obvious example of this is a post by Mark Adams on American Street which includes the statement:

From my view the FOXization of the media is destroying it’s credibility and function as a true check on government power — the role that earns the press the moniker Fourth Estate.

Fox’s claim to be “Fair and Balanced” may be over the top, but Adams destroys his own credibility when he blames Fox for destroying the media’s ability to act as a check on government power. If Fox doesn’t challenge this administration, who does?

All of which should make one wonder if a media that tries, or claims, to be unbiased is even desirable? When an editor wishes his reporter hadn’t donated to a political candidate because it affects his credibility, isn’t that just a tad disingenuous? Whether or not he donates, his beliefs are unchanged. The transparency of the donation actually improves his credibility because now his readers know from what philosophical base he writes.

Journalists will never regain their lost credibility until they stop trying to convince the public that reporting can be unbiased. The public knows better. Honest reporting, though, is possible and journalists need to stop pretending they’re unbiased and start convincing us of their honesty.

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