Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular.” ― E.B. White
The Internet is a great place to find opinions about photography and, I guess everything else. Maybe that’s why some writers, bloggers and YouTubers are often accused of bias. Based on being in this business for 40 years, I believe some of these people are being compensated for what they say. But I also believe that some of the people who are being financially compensated for their thoughts and opinions actually believe what they are saying. Or as George Louis Costanza once said, “just remember, Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
Some Thoughts on this subject
One of the things that I have often written in these posts is that my only bias in what I post here and in my books and magazine articles was to telling the truth. Some might say, that it’s the truth I see it. And I guess that’s true but the one thing that my Mother, who hated lies and liars, drilled into my brains growing up was to always be truthful.
There have been a few instances when I was writing for print magazines when I was assigned to write a review for a product that turned out to be junk. Wen that happens—and it did happen from time to time—before submitted any text I informed the editor about the product’s poor quality and he killed the review. That cancellation cost me money, but not my ethics because I told him I would only write the review if I could say it was crap. In every case where this happens, the editor didn’t want me to say that. In one participial case, the product—a camera bag— literally stunk! I informed the editor, he informed the company and they sent him the product and he verified to me that it stunk to high heaven. He ended up writing a review, I lost the income there too but got rid of the stink!
IN MY HUMBLE OPINION
Sometime people confuse opinions with bias: Opinion is a value judgment and does not state the data, it just interprets it. An opinion can change in light of new information as was the case for a Yashica film SLR that I bought that was problematical to say the least. (I was able to sell it for parts.) And my shift from exclusively shooting JPEGs to RAW+JPEG capture has been well documented in this blog.
Bias, on the other hand, is a judgment that’s usually uncorrelated with data. Bias restricts the acknowledgement or acceptance of a different viewpoint. And more importantly, bias is less likely to change even when new information is presented. There are several forms of bias. Here’s a few of them”
- Implicit bias occurs automatically and unintentionally, that nevertheless affects judgments, decisions, and behaviors.
- Unconscious bias depends on a person’s life experiences and sometimes they have beliefs and views that might not be right or reasonable.
- Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms or strengthens their beliefs and is difficult to dislodge once affirmed.
- Emotional bias typically occurs spontaneously based on the personal feelings of an individual at the time a decision is made.
- Institutional bias asserts that group structures gain legitimacy when they conform to the accepted practices, or social institutions, of their environments.