Where would one find a good source of objectivist views on current events in the news and such?

I don’t know if there really is such a thing as pure objectivity. Even your own direct experience and memories themselves are not. All reporting, which is several degrees removed from direct experience, and which would not and probably cannot exist except to serve someone’s agenda (covert or overt), is therefore subjective.

I am talking about the objective idea that A is A. When a politician says they are doing something for the “common good”, what they are really saying is “I am doing something that benefits myself”. The problem with the politicians idea is they have to usurp power from someone in order to give to another. This kind of thinking takes away from ones freedom. If one did not fit in on the side of the one who needs something, but the one whom has something to give, then he is being robbed of something of value he earned and is not given the choice. I just want someone that is way smarter than I am to reflect on the current issues and know how to expose what A is that these butholes out there are talking about. Thanks.

First, let me say that I don’t know enough about Ayn Rand (if that’s the “objectivist view” that you’re talking about) to speak to where you might turn to find news from that point of view. I’m sorry if my answer was just a distraction, if that’s what you were asking…

However, for the sake of continuing the discussion, the common-sense notion of “the objective idea that A is A” is extremely appealing, but might be an unobtainable ideal, due to human nature and the ideas presented in the memory article that I linked to from the NYTimes.

Then again, I try to embrace idea that “80 percent is perfect”, in which I recognize that I can drive myself crazy trying to obtain any ideal (or anything “perfect”, like “pure objectivity”) or I can accept that close enough is close enough. For most things, most of the time, “A is A” works just fine: My car is a 11-year-old Volkswagen. That flower is blooming and the bloom is red. I am about six feet tall. Those are objective facts of the kind you describe.

When you get outside the realm of observable things (into the world of politics, for example), it gets tougher.

In today’s news, for example, we hear that the President and Congress are meeting to figure out how to rescue the troubled financial sector. That is probably an observable fact: the President (or people who work for him and therefore represent him) are, in fact, meeting with members of Congress (or their staffs) to try to come up with a plan that will rescue the troubled financial sector.

It gets tougher still when you start talking about the plan they may come up with: whether it will work, who will actually benefit from it, what the risks of the plan and taking no action at all might be. If you’re looking or an objective report on that, good luck: much of it will be conjecture, for one thing. Even in 5 or 10 or 20 years, after the plan has been implemented and the outcome is known, objective reporting on it will be hard to come by. Was it the right plan at the right time? Was it the plan that saved (or tanked) the economy, or was it other factors?

I hope you find what you’re looking for: a source of news as free from “butthole” biases as possible. It may be a long search. If you keep at it for a while, you may find that you are a source of objectivist views for those around you! Wisdom comes when experience meets intelligence, and you’re obviously looking for wisdom: that inquiry may make you a source of wisdom yourself.

I’d say that unless they were actually in the room during the discussions, speech writing, meetings, etc then there is no way for someone to report a strictly objective point of view.

Even the very idea of reporting objectively is going to create a subjective bias.

When I think about current events, right now the main focus is the election. Politics does not lend itself well to objective reporting because politicians purposely speak in generalizations and broad strokes. This is done so that many meanings can be assumed without them having to be precise (anyone know what the definition of “is” is?)

If you want a good resource for hearing many different viewpoints, then I would check out something like The Week. I’ve been getting the magazine for years and being able to hear the same story from several sources is a good way to investigate the “objective” truth for yourself.

GA for @fireside reminding us that, even if objectivity may not be possible, looking at an idea from multiple points of view is the next best thing. It takes longer, but that’s what we need sometimes: to listen longer, think more, and talk less.

Similarly, as SF writer and futurist David Brin puts it: CITOKATE—Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote To Error. This is what makes peer-reviewed scientific journals so great: constant criticism of submitted content emphasizes reporting of objective, provable, repeatable facts.

The Pew Research Center (http://pewresearch.org/) and the excellent Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com) which is balanced in that the news is Left leaning and the Editorial section is Right leaning.