maybe biased opinions should be entirely separate from journalistic enterprises if those journalists want a single shred of credibility. people are mad at trump supporters and anti covid and anti vax stuff, and while i agree that's all stupid, i don't blame them at all for falling for it because main stream corporate journalism has destroyed any and all trust with absolutely everyone. maybe if we weren't constantly being lied to and sold something, more people would believe them when they say important things like "trump is taking away reproductive rights" and "covid exists and people are dying"
That's a fair point. But in this case it wasn't a principled stand against the idea of opinion journalism[1]. It was an act to kill an in-progress editorial piece days before publication, for quite clearly partisan reasons (though most people believe Bezos did it out of fear and not affinity, he'd presumably prefer Trump loses, but doesn't want to be in the line of fire if he doesn't).
[1] Which, let's be honest, is pervasive and popular. You aren't simultaneously arguing to kick Hannity off the air, right?
Pretending there exists “unbiased” journalism is silly. All journalism is biased to some degree. The worthwhile categorization is to what degree the bias exists.
Journalistic credibility comes from presenting facts. Which facts you present, which pieces you publish are in themselves opinions, biases.
That's why I see aiming for unbiased reporting to miss the point of journalism. We want opinions, but not random uneducated opinions, we want well argumented, relevant and proof backed opinions.
"Candidate X is a liar" is valid journalism if there's the facts to back the claim and the analysis to make it a thought provoking piece that brought something to the readers. We have whole Pullitzer winning books going into minute details about how some public figures are crooks.
To note, not reporting, not expressing opinions is also a bias so I don't see a middle ground. For instance if a major national journalism would not publish the news of a candidate getting arrested, that in itself is a biased decision. If they'd publish a dry piece just quoting the official police declaration, that would also be tremendous bias and everyone would see it as a refusal to comment on it.
