Talk:View from nowhere/Archive 1

Archive 1

Merge proposal, May 2017

I propose that View From Nowhere be merged into View from nowhere, which is the appropriate capitalization per MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS. As they currently stand, each article is a content fork of the other, which should be fixed. Biogeographist (talk) 20:52, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

NO MERGE! That other article is about an old book whose subject isn't really very relevant to the subject of THIS article, which is about an ethical failure problem in modern journalism. They just happen to have a similar title. At the very least, if you want to make capitalization conform to what other wikipedia pages are doing, be prepared to make this article the default for this "View From Nowhere" phrase, and create a disambiguation page, and make the wiki article about the old, out-of-print book into a "see also" reference to "The View From Nowhere (book)". I say the book is unimportant compared to the journalism concept, and so should NOT be the default redirect from the disambiguation page, if there is one. That's a lot of work, and no one should start doing it unless they can do all of that at once, 'cuz the current situation is better than a change that doesn't get completed. It's a lot more work than I want to do.... and watch out, there's 1 edit troll out there who wants to erase this article in favor of the the article about the book! ♠Ace Frahm♠^talk 08:52, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ace Frahm: I believe you are confusing The View From Nowhere (which is Thomas Nagel's book) with view from nowhere (which is about exactly the same subject as View From Nowhere). The proposal here is to merge View From Nowhere into view from nowhere, not into The View From Nowhere. View From Nowhere and view from nowhere are a content fork, and should be merged per Wikipedia:Content forking: "Content forks that are created unintentionally result in redundant or conflicting articles and are to be avoided." I agree that the merge is a bit of work and should be done carefully, but it needs to be done. Thanks for responding here and reminding me about this merge proposal; I had forgotten about it. Biogeographist (talk) 14:05, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ace Frahm: Also, I don't think a disambiguation page is necessary. After View From Nowhere is merged into view from nowhere, all that is needed is a hatnote in view from nowhere that says, e.g.: This article is about the term in journalism. For the book by philosopher Thomas Nagel, see The View From Nowhere. And a reciprocal hatnote in The View From Nowhere would say, e.g.: For the term in journalism, see View from nowhere. I also think the alternate capitalization View from Nowhere, which currently redirects to the book, should redirect to view from nowhere instead, since the general usage of the term is more important than Nagel's book. Biogeographist (talk) 14:23, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

  Y Merger complete. — I believe that the objection above was based on a misunderstanding that was clarified by my response. Per Wikipedia:Be bold, I have gone ahead and completed the merge. If there are any further objections, we can continue the discussion here. Biogeographist (talk) 18:39, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

POV check and OR, October 2017

I have added Template:POV-check and Template:Original research to the current version of this article because (ironically for an article whose subject is about the problem of neutrality in journalism) the article seems to make many unsourced claims that expound a strong point of view. Of course, there is nothing wrong with presenting claims that expound a strong point of view—but if such claims are not accurate representations of a reliable source then the claims are original research, prohibited on Wikipedia. Examples of this problem in the current version of this article include:

• "This harms the audience by allowing them to draw conclusions from a story that includes untrue possibilities." The claim that the audience is harmed is a strong claim, and is unsupported by a reliable source, so this may be merely a Wikipedia editor's POV. Such a strong claim should be referenced to a reliable source that presents a strong argument supporting the claim.
• "In such a case, a journalist must clearly define what facts are members of this set, and what beliefs are not a member of this set." The word "must" in this sentence indicates that this sentence is expounding a moral imperative that all journalists should follow. Because the sentence is unsourced, it again looks like a Wikipedia editor's POV. It would be fine to cite a source and say: "[source] says that a journalist must clearly define..." but simply making the claim without a source seems to be a violation of WP:NPOV.
• "This feedback loop creates a self-reinforcing cycle of bad journalism in politics and bad politicians in office." Strong claims of badness in this sentence should be referenced to a reliable source, or, again, it again looks like a Wikipedia editor's POV.
• "Educating the public to be vigilant for this condition in news stories protects some of them from its negative effects." This point seems obvious, but without a reliable source, it is original research.

Other similar examples of POV and OR problems can be found in the current version of this article. Biogeographist (talk) 19:06, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Pure intersectional dogma is an imminent threat

This page, like so many others I have seen on here, doesn't just need citations - it bears no relation to reality at all. In article after article that "defines" the concepts of this new postmodernist religion, the entirety of the text is naught but naked promotion of its concepts (which have somehow taken over everything, and taken my friends' minds from them, and attacked anyone who dares dissent). So clearly, this is not the type of article for me to "correct" (since I see it for the totalitarian nightmare it is). But somebody better stop letting this cult have their way with Truth, because they loathe and wish to undo every bit of thought that lifted our species from serfdom. Of course, if the procedure is that one person reads this and decides my fate, and that person is indoctrinated (a statistical probability now, it pains me greatly to say), well...

This is madness. Wordsmeanthings! (talk) 04:57, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

@Wordsmeanthings!: If you are proposing that this article should be deleted, you are evidently not alone in your sentiment since the article has already been nominated for deletion twice, but both nominations failed, because the citations and further reading show that the "view from nowhere" phrase in journalism is a notable enough subject. Deletion discussions generally attract a diverse set of editors, so there is no evidence that this page continues to exist because of some ideological campaign. There does not appear to be any disagreement that the article needs some cleanup, as indicated by the cleanup tags that the article has had for a couple of years—tags which the alleged ideologues, had they existed, surely would have attempted to remove. Biogeographist (talk) 18:36, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

@Wordsmeanthings!: Journalism -- Researching facts, interviewing witnesses and experts, and presenting a relevant picture of what people said weighed against what can be verified. Arguments made in bad faith are immediately challenged or dismissed. Adjectives and biased phrases which may unintentionally instruct the reader how one should feel about the story are strongly avoided. Journalism is not a search for "balance" but a search for truth. It is left as an exercise to the reader to contextualize what they have read based on their prior experiences.Feldon23 (talk) 15:34, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

@Wordsmeanthings!: View from nowhere journalism -- Witnesses and experts on all sides of an issue are interviewed. Then pundits, consultants, and script writers contextualize these statements based on their own personal experiences into a narrative story. The resulting product is considered to be "balanced" if the ratio of viewpoints collected, regardless of whether those statements are proven to be demonstrably false, is equal. Facts and evidence are collected, but only presented if they do not unbalance this equation. View from nowhere journalism is founded on the idea that every perspective is valid and worthy of being heard and that it is the presenter's job to inform the reader or listener how they should respond to an interpret the story.Feldon23 (talk) 15:33, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Removed text

This removed text, especially the sentence "A journalist who does not help the audience evaluate which set of competing facts are most reasonable (such as by omitting the timeline of events leading to the current scenario) has taken the view from nowhere: a wholly disingenuous standpoint whereby supposed 'ignorance' becomes appropriated to hammer home the point the author wishes to sell", is not correct, because the journalist taking the view from nowhere may not be acting disingenuously and may not even have a "point" "to sell" but may nevertheless not be doing their job as well as they could. See, e.g., Maras, cited in the article. Other valid objections to some of the removed text ("report just what you see" and "omitting the timeline of events") are mentioned in this earlier edit summary. Biogeographist (talk) 17:00, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

NPOV tag

This article reads quite close to being an advocacy page opposing the stated concept of "view from nowhere" reporting. Much of the text discusses the supposed errors of this kind of reporting, much of it unsourced, and without indication that this material was been widely discussed in reliable, tertiary sources. Of the references for this article, a majority are from the coiner of the term, Rosen, a figure no doubt closely related to the topic. 204.154.192.252 (talk) 20:02, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I pointed out something similar a long time ago at Talk:View from nowhere/Archive 1 § POV check and OR, October 2017, but earlier this year Guy Macon archived all the discussions on this talk page and removed all the cleanup templates even though the issue was not resolved. I restored one cleanup template but should have restored the POV template too, so thanks for doing it.

There is no doubt that the article needs to be improved, and there is no lack of reliable secondary sources to use for improving the article: the "Further reading" section contains a number of books that can be used. It just requires an editor with the interest and time to do it. Biogeographist (talk) 03:03, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Merge with other page?

Hello - Novice to Wikipedia editing. I'm doing research on Argument to moderation which lead me here. I want to add some citation needed links, but noticed there is a lot going on and has gone on with this article in that regards. It honestly reads like something pulled from a book and less an actual page on a widely accepted position. I see it was nominated for deletion at some point. Maybe it needs to be merged into another article on journalism or argument to moderation? It feels. Desire Mercy (talk) 20:13, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

The article for False balance looks like a good candidate. Desire Mercy (talk) 20:22, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Desire Mercy: Thanks for commenting about this. My initial guess is that the article shouldn't be merged: if the term is notable, then there should be a separate article on it. The question is: How notable is the term? It looks like there are enough reliable independent sources to make the term notable. But we should also analyze the concept: How does the concept of false balance relate to the concept of the view from nowhere? I quickly googled both terms and one of the top hits is Matthew Ingram's article "Objectivity isn't a magic wand" in the Columbia Journalism Review, which says: "The practice [of journalistic objectivity] began as a way of injecting more scientific rigor into the practice of journalism, he says, but instead it has turned into a devotion to false balance and other elements of what journalism professor Jay Rosen calls 'the view from nowhere.'" If Ingram is right, the view from nowhere is broader than false balance, as it contains other elements beside false balance (but those elements need to be clearly explained in this article), and it's also different from journalistic objectivity, since Ingram implies that journalistic objectivity is the ideal whereas the view from nowhere is the debased version of the ideal.

So as a starting point, all of that suggests that the article should stand, but I would welcome a deeper analysis that could conclude that it should be merged.

Your comment motivated me to cut all the unsourced material from the article, which I just did. For easy reference, here is a list of all the headings that I cut:

• Common patterns of illogic characterize view-from-nowhere reports
  • Innumeracy
  • Self-censorship
  • Special access to sources
  • "He said, she said" pattern
  • Anger from all sides is not an indicator of balance, fairness or truth
  • A good reporter avoids view from nowhere, then suffers accusations of "bias"
• Mitigation
  • Audience awareness
  • Editorial awareness
  • Transparency

I replaced them with a single heading, "Characteristics". Biogeographist (talk) 21:41, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

After doing more cutting and revising the lead paragraph, I now think that what's left of the article should be merged into Journalistic objectivity. This concept is really about an aspect of (the misuse of the appearance of) journalistic objectivity. Any objections to such a merge? Biogeographist (talk) 22:44, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

  Y Merger complete. — Merged into Journalistic objectivity § Criticisms. No objections after a week. Biogeographist (talk) 17:11, 6 October 2021 (UTC)