(1/) Thread on focusing on fair reporting, as opposed to unbiased reporting, based on a helpful tip from NYT's Astead Herndon, @AsteadWesley, in his AMA at #IRE20.
His explanation helped me better understand this concept and hopefully it can help others, too.
(2/) I asked @AsteadWesley his thoughts on responding to criticisms of bias in political reporting, and how to avoid it in the first place.
He responded that, "if you are fair, accurate, clear, and contextualized... you will not be biased."
(3/) The emphasis on routing out bias largely "comes from a journalism community that's for too long seated the question of objectivity to only being one that's in a partisan framework, and that's, frankly, one that I don't think really suits us," he said.
(4/) If we are fair, if we are accurate, and we have that commitment [to fairness and accuracy], it will lead us in a place that gets us to each side of the issue,” he added.
(5/end) Specifically as a Black political journalist, he said that his work is sometimes seen as "advocacy" for a Black candidate, which is untrue (and biased).
"No party, no candidate, has a monopoly on truth, has a monopoly on facts," Herndon said.
Here’s today’s (Wednesday, Aug 19) COVID-19 numbers in Philadelphia. This is based off of a press release from the Mayor’s Office.
As of today, Wednesday, Aug. 19, there have been 32,569 cases of COVID-19 and 1,735 related deaths in Philly since the start of the pandemic.
This is an increase of 137 new cases and 18 new deaths since yesterday.
Today’s large increase in deaths "is due in part to matching Department of Public Health records with death certificate," according to the press release.