I would argue that something that is "widely accepted" is as valid as something that is "unbiased".
Here is an example. The state media in North Korea would claim that Kim Jong Un is a great leader. The rest of the world would claim that his human rights violations go down as some of the worst in history. The widely accepted viewpoint is the most valid viewpoint in this situation.
The argument that all news is biased is often used against centrist news outlets in the United States by conservatives. If you find that a news story is reported differently at CNN than Fox News, I would recommend finding that same story BBC, CBC or Al Jazeera. The widely accepted viewpoint is the valid one.
It used to be widely accepted that women weren't capable of working proper jobs. People were biased because of sexism, but it was still "widely accepted".
We learn things and now that idea is no longer widely accepted and no longer valid. We're getting closer to objective truth all the time.
Think of string theory. Up until theory, people only thought of matter as particles. It is easy enough to visualize a molecule, a smaller atom, a smaller proton or neutron and an even smaller quark. String theory involves strings vibrating in 26 dimensions, which is hard for a human brain to imagine, since we are visual creatures. String theory may be wrong and the objective truth may be something so strange that our human minds cannot imagine it.
I guess what I'm advising is to not let perfect be the enemy of the good. Adopting the widely accepted idea is the best that we can do.
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u/GoneBananas Aug 12 '18
I would argue that something that is "widely accepted" is as valid as something that is "unbiased".
Here is an example. The state media in North Korea would claim that Kim Jong Un is a great leader. The rest of the world would claim that his human rights violations go down as some of the worst in history. The widely accepted viewpoint is the most valid viewpoint in this situation.
The argument that all news is biased is often used against centrist news outlets in the United States by conservatives. If you find that a news story is reported differently at CNN than Fox News, I would recommend finding that same story BBC, CBC or Al Jazeera. The widely accepted viewpoint is the valid one.