Just the Analysis, Ma’am

With journalism under siege, audiences actually need and want MORE help understanding the complex and unraveling world

Journalism is in a crisis unprecedented in the modern era — and that’s a good time to reconsider how things are done. The industry has struggled mightily with a business model crisis brought on by the digital revolution, which decimated advertising, subscription and newsstand revenues. And now it faces a full-scale assault from the Trump administration and its cronies.

Many people say that as it fights for its life, under assault from both politicians and the indifference of young people, the news industry must double down on impartiality. I think this is simplistic, and taken too far it’s actually wrong. There is a business argument and a societal argument for prioritizing analysis and commentary, and they align.

Consider the world today:

• The world is growing more complex by the day, and audiences need more help than ever to connect the dots. On all fronts, the pace of change is accelerating, making it harder for the average person who doesn’t have all day to study the news to grasp the forces shaping their lives:
• The labor market is being transformed by AI, upending entire industries and redefining what work means. Trump’s disruption of the global order — once seen as an anomaly — is starting to look like a systemic and systematic unraveling of traditional alliances and institutions.
• Markets and therefore societies are more interconnected than ever, so a banking crisis in the US or a supply chain issue in Taiwan ripple across continents. Science and widespread travel also create both possibilities and dangers for all — whether they come in the form of colossal tech disruptions, climate change, weapons of mass destruction or pandemics.
• A vast generational gap, fueled by technological disruption, has left younger and older people living in seemingly different realities, from how they see the world to how they engage with each other. And they famously have little patience for sifting through arrays of facts.

In this landscape, straight reporting is no longer enough. Audiences don’t just need information — and there is no such thing as the information because one much choose a subset from the vast ocean of facts. They need analysis, synthesis, and perspective to make sense of the chaos.

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My longtime former employer, the Associated Press, is of course the gold standard of impartiality — basically because it has client media of all political stripes. In recent decades it has edged its way toward more analysis, which I promoted in my positions as regional editor for Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Caribbean. Fact-checking became a major thing since the rise of Donald trump, but generally reluctance to take sides remains.

This venerable organization is in a court battle after being denied access by Donald Trump’s White House, ostensibly for refusing to adopt “Gulf of America” — a silly designation which the government cannot impose on private businesses. It’s great that the AP made the subjective decision to recognize that. Now the White House is now also trying to impose a rotating pool system clearly aimed at trading access for good press. And Jeff Bezos recently banned his Washington Post from publishing opinion against free markets and personal liberties — which caused opinion editor David Shipley to resign and was widely seen as cow-towing to Trumpian illiberalism.

More will come, without doubt. Trump is instinctively an authoritarian was wants to bring the press to heel, and key members of the billionaire class have bet on him for business benefit; some own major newspapers and others will follow. Domesticating the media, and placing it in the hands of regime-friendly oligarchs, is a classic authoritarian playbook move — from Vladimir Putin in Russia to Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, and to an extent Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. The goal is to delegitimize independent journalism and replace it with a compliant propaganda machine.

If it does nothing under this assault by the leadership of half the country, the classic media platforms will possibly suffer more business damage which they can ill afford. Faced with such unprecedented pressure, many argue that the solution is to double down on traditional impartiality — that journalists must stick to “just the facts,” as if they have no opinions or perspectives — assuming neutrality are the best defense against charges of bias.

There is truth in that, and I would not tear up the concept: Keeping personal biases out of the news coverage, to the degree possible, is indeed vital. But I also assess that the model needs an update: In its current application it risks flirting with a dishonesty, and when taken too far it is insufficient for the challenges we face today.

To state what should be obvious, the very notion that journalists have no point of view is a myth that violates the laws of nature. Every choice in reporting involves subjective decisions — from which stories are covered to which voices are included and which subset of the mountain of relevant facts are included. Background sections invariably reflect judgment — and judgment is shaped by experience, worldview, and expertise.

Yet serious American journalists have been trained to pretend otherwise and act as though they are blank slates transcribing an objective reality. This is not just disingenuous; it is harmful because it erodes public trust, since people sense the dishonesty even if they cannot always pinpoint its source.

And it feeds a crisis of credibility by allowing demagogues to wage war on truth itself. That’s because in their zeal to feign impartiality, journalists are loathe to take sides in a debate in which one side is lying, and will legitimate and elevate fringe views that are sometimes conspiratorial or simply factually wrong by giving all sides equal weight. Fact-checks start to challenge this — but in many news stories, the context is woefully missing.

Climate change denial is the most obvious example, but there are others: arguments against gun control that ignore overwhelming data on gun violence, anti-vaccine misinformation that contradicts established medical science, pseudoscientific health fads that distort nutritional truths, and the persistent myth that tax cuts for the wealthy always spur economic growth. In each case, the commitment to false balance not only misleads the public but also legitimizes ideas that are demonstrably incorrect.

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Critics will say that embracing subjectivity risks further eroding trust, encouraging unfounded personal agendas, and creating echo chambers. They will argue that journalists must retain neutrality, or at least plausible deniability, to be credible. These are legitimate concerns. But the alternative is to continue a charade that is fooling no one and damaging the credibility of the profession. The answer is not to feign neutrality, and not the false equivalence of bothsidesism; better to embrace transparency, and to ensure any analysis or commentary is argued well and rigorous in its research.

Consider how odd it is that journalists are the only experts asked to hide a viewpoint that derives from their expertise. Imagine asking a doctor not to recommend the best medical procedure, an engineer not to endorse the safest design, or a scientist to withhold their interpretation of data. It would be absurd. Yet, journalists — who spend years mastering their beats — are often expected to act as if they have no informed perspective. They are the only professionals whose expertise is dismissed as bias, even though it is gained through rigorous research, firsthand experience, and interactions with subject-matter experts.

And this expertise has value, because the above-described increasing complexity of the modern world far exceeds most people’s ability to fully understand it. Human cognitive capacity and people’s available time for learning have not increased to match this complexity. This gap makes explanatory journalism not just helpful but essential.

I also assess that because it is useful, efficient and potentially entertaining, if done right it will resonate with youth.

Of course, on most issues there will be a legitimate diversity of views, which is why opinion sections can — and should — maintain a clear point of view but should actively publish dissenting voices. This diversity enhances credibility and enriches public debate. Bezos’ claim that “the internet” is for that creates a false dichotomy, since his publication is very much part of the internet, and most readers visit only a few pages and move on.

And while the distinction between news and opinion sections is needed, the rigid firewall may be excessive. The most obvious candidate for the bin is the notion that a reporter must not write opinion or even commentary — an idea that many countries are already jettisoning and even in the US is being eroded by their appearances on cable news panels. Reporters possess deep expertise in their beats and should be allowed to share informed perspectives, provided they are transparent about their viewpoints. It is possible to have an informed point of view without being partisan, just as it is possible to have expertise without being arrogant. This would not only enhance the quality of reporting but also restore a sense of integrity to the profession.

This is a personal argument for me. At AP, as elsewhere in the US media, our “News Values and Principles” were a straitjacket that forbade any public expression of opinion, however mainstream or obvious. This doctrine was drilled into me, even as I knew I was inevitably making subjective choices; “news judgment” was by definition a judgment, but you knew enough to let that go.

It is time to have that discussion. We should consider a model of journalism that acknowledges subjectivity while striving for fairness and accuracy. In a world where truth itself is under siege this is not merely a professional evolution but a societal imperative. Ignoring it will certainly not save journalism.