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Bias in journalism and citizen journalism is difficult to ignore: when reading an editorial before a news piece, it is easy to blindly accept the opinion of the writer just because of the selection or bias of the facts presented.

As a journalist, it is your duty to present all sides of an argument from the very beginning of your article, even in an opinion or editorial piece, so that your reader can read and consider all sides of the story and eventually develop his or her own opinion.

1. Headlines
The headline or title is the first part of the story that your reader will see. It is important to present the headline or title in a manner that does not immediately force the reader to take one side of the story. If you are writing an op/ed piece, it is more acceptable to have a biased headline, but under no circumstances is it permissible to present a news piece with a biased headline. Even in an editorial piece, your headline should present information that is fact-based, not opinion based. The body of your article is an appropriate place to write about opinions, inferences or analysis.

2. Article body

News stories
In a news story or any piece where you are meant to provide both sides of an argument (i.e., not an op/ed piece) it is imperative to give all sides of a story equal weight. Generally, this also means approximately equal word count, although you should by no means feel obligated to match sides with exactly equal word counts. What matters is ensuring that all sides are equally represented.

All sides of a story should be presented in your opening paragraph, and then equally treated within the article. Everything within your piece should be backed up by facts and source quotes: a news piece is not the appropriate medium for the journalist to infer conclusions based on incomplete information. Your goal is to present the facts with as little opinion as possible so that your reader can walk away with sufficient unbiased information to formulate his or her own opinion on what you have offered.

Opinions and Editorials
Much of citizen journalism is not related to news stories, but to opinion and editorial pieces. You may think that this gives you license to provide only one side of the story or a biased set of facts, but this is not in any way true. On the contrary, it is even more imperative that you provide all sides of the story before giving your analysis or opinion.

No matter how well-argued your points are, some readers will disagree with you, and it is important to give the reader enough facts to do so. A reader disagreeing with your point should not be seen as a sign of poor writing or as an insult to you as a journalist. On the contrary, if a writer is able to read and digest your editorial or opinion piece and still develop his or her own idea, this is a compliment to your craft: you have presented your own opinion, but you have simultaneously not excluded information. This is what you must endeavor to do when writing an unbiased opinion or editorial piece.

If you, as a journalist, provide only the facts that support your own argument or ideas, your story is useless. Your skill as a journalist should be in deducing an opinion based on all information, not on limited or biased information, and you must ensure that your reader has access to all of the information you did when you were formulating your final analysis. Of course, you do not need to take the same care in giving equal weight to all sides of an argument as you did in the news story, but you must at least provide a brief summary or analysis of the opposing side and present reasons why you find these facts invalid or irrelevant to your final analysis.

Learn more about this author, Emily Monaco.
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