The Net Neutrality issue got me thinking about something that I find a bit more intriguing: Press Neutrality.

The freedom of the press is one of the most ambiguous parts of the Bill of Rights. Colloquially, it means that the press can say what ever it desires, so far as it does not break from the truth or break the law in finding the truth (with the exception of specifically marked opinion shows and newspaper editorials).

That ambiguity leads to the bending of the truth to forward an agenda, be it conservative or liberal, Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian. This bending of the truth and the tendency for news sources, both right and left sided, to be one sided makes me wonder what was meant by "freedom of the press."

After careful thought, I reached this conclusion: freedom of the press means the freedom to give an uncensored truth, free from government tampering and censorship. It does not mean that the press can say what ever it desires, so long as part of the truth is told (with the exception of explicitly marked opinions).

The press should remain neutral in matters, giving the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as far as its entire research can show. Sadly, this is not the case, and all press outlets are biased, be it the WSJ, the New York Times, CNN, NBC, Fox News, National Review, etc.

That said, one thing that should not happen is government controlling any part of the press, as this is very far from the press being neutral.

The problem with the press is the one-sidedness all the outlets have. Even those that claim to be "fair and balanced" are biased one way or another. The way bias happens is by mixing partial truths with opinions, and calling it fact. How does one get to the whole truth, with as little opinion as possible?

The answer, as readers/watchers/listeners of the press, is simple sounding but not so simple. The answer is to balance your outlets. For every CNN story you watch or read, you should watch or read the equivalent Fox News story. For every NPR story, an opposing version. For every New York Times story, an opposing version. This is a hard way to become informed, and sometimes one does not want to hear the other side, but it is important that one hears all the sides, whether there are two or two hundred.

It shouldn't be this way. News outlets should be neutral by obligation. They should remain neutral, and tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. One should be able to get the same, unbiased, story from every outlet.

But the freedom of the press should never be infringed.

Nope. Neutrality is impossible. Sorry.

I know it is impossible, but I wanted to put it up for discussion as well as rant about it. I also put in the best way to fight it. I assume you tl;dr'd, so here is the segment:

I read it. I didn't see the point other than to have a pointless circlejerk.

Wrong. Freedom of press is just freedom of speech as applies to disseminating the written word. Freedom of press as in literally a printing press, not as in "news organizations".

If you want a good balance, I recommend mixing Al Jazeera English, BBC, Reason, and NPR. Throw in some of the blatant propaganda sources too to stay informed as to what various governments want you (or don't want you) to think. VOA and RT come to mind.

One thing I like doing for getting my news is having one reddit account for news, and I just sub to a bunch of different subreddits like /r/liberal, /r/libertarian, /r/conservative, and a few neutral ones that I can't think of off the top of my head. Though, I prefer to stay away from the comments and some of the more shill-y subreddits like /r/democrats or /r/republicans or whatever.

edit: it should be noted there was no mention of Ron Paul in the above.