Richmond Times Dispatch editor Bart Hinkle, while pimping his latest column about media bias, makes this point about journalists:

A recent conversation on the subject brings up another hobbyhorse point: Everybody in journalism has friends, relatives, acquaintances, vested interests. All of us pay taxes, most of us have mortgages, many of us have kids, some of whom are in school; we all need medical care, we all need transportation . . . It’s kind of hard to achieve perfect Olympian detachment when covering such subjects. That doesn’t mean reporters shouldn’t strive to be fair-minded, but it does suggest expecting reporters to seal themselves off from the world is unreasonable.

I agree that expecting journalists not to have an opinion about the issues they cover is unreasonable.  But what bothers me is not that reporters have opinions, but rather that reporters often try to pretend like they don’t have an opinion.  And that their work isn’t slanted toward one side or the other.

As I’ve said before, I think consumers of news media would be a lot better served if journalists were more open about their personal opinions and biases.  Full disclosure of personal feelings is what we need, not a bunch of people passing off subjective opinions as objective journalism.