"I think by laying it out for the viewer I'm avoiding the issue of bias"
About this Quote
The tell is in the phrase "laying it out for the viewer" - a familiar move in TV journalism that sells transparency as neutrality. Abrams is pointing to a contemporary newsroom survival tactic: if you show your work on-air, if you walk the audience through the documents, the clips, the timelines, you can claim you are letting facts speak. It sounds like an escape hatch from a culture war over "bias", where every framing choice is treated as an ideological confession.
But the subtext is thornier. "Avoiding the issue of bias" quietly reframes bias as a PR problem rather than an epistemic one. Laying out evidence is still curation. Which facts make the cut, how they're ordered, how much time each gets, the tone of the host's voice - those are all editorial decisions that shape meaning. The viewer isn't encountering raw reality; they're encountering a guided tour designed to feel unguided.
In context, Abrams sits in the post-cable-news, post-social-media era where trust is the scarce resource and "just the facts" is both a promise and a brand. The line functions as a rhetorical shield: if you accuse the segment of slant, the host can point back to the receipts and suggest the objection is emotional or partisan. It's a savvy performance of fairness that meets the audience where it is - skeptical, exhausted, hungry for receipts - while sidestepping the deeper question: not whether bias can be avoided, but whether it can be honestly disclosed and responsibly managed.
But the subtext is thornier. "Avoiding the issue of bias" quietly reframes bias as a PR problem rather than an epistemic one. Laying out evidence is still curation. Which facts make the cut, how they're ordered, how much time each gets, the tone of the host's voice - those are all editorial decisions that shape meaning. The viewer isn't encountering raw reality; they're encountering a guided tour designed to feel unguided.
In context, Abrams sits in the post-cable-news, post-social-media era where trust is the scarce resource and "just the facts" is both a promise and a brand. The line functions as a rhetorical shield: if you accuse the segment of slant, the host can point back to the receipts and suggest the objection is emotional or partisan. It's a savvy performance of fairness that meets the audience where it is - skeptical, exhausted, hungry for receipts - while sidestepping the deeper question: not whether bias can be avoided, but whether it can be honestly disclosed and responsibly managed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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