Bardach's Eightfold Path Lays Out A2 Coursework

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This model of writing, editing, and producing various types of texts requires that each significant point-of-view on an issue be represented fairly. Initially, this would seem to be an excellent policy: After all, the marketplace of ideas (as the Supreme Court has reminded us) is strengthened by adding more ideas, not by subtracting problematic ones.

However, when one moves from the abstract to the particular and concrete, the problems with such a strategy become immediately clear. To understand the depths of such a problem, one can consider the current political situation in Libya. A neutral point-of-view would require that a description of what has been happening in February in Libya include Muammar Gaddafi's assessment of what has been happening in the nation that he has ruled for over forty years.

That viewpoint has shifted to some extent from day-to-day, but in general the military leader has argued that Al-Qaeda, Israel, and the United States are drugging young Libyans into attacking their government. The rebels, meanwhile, argue that they are fighting for a more democratic, less corrupt nation. Western nations, as well as some of the other Arab nations, have in general sided with the viewpoint of the rebels, acknowledging the tyranny of Gaddafi's reign. No credible source from the West has suggested that Libyan youths are being drugged by outside forces.

A neutral point-of-view would require that Gaddafi's viewpoint be given the same degree of weight as that of the United Nations.

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After all, he is a central figure, someone who has access to a wide range of information, indeed far more information than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example. However, it should be immediately clear that there is a problem with giving equal weight to all significant perspectives. Of course, one can retrospectively fiddle around with how one defines "significant" or "valid" in terms of whose perspective should be considered valid.

But to decide which perspectives to include only after one has determined which of the perspectives is acceptable is to violate the core concept of a neutral point-of-view. To support this model, the person collecting the information must provide all perspectives to the reader and let her audience decide on the relative validity. This happens all too often in journalism when it is being shoddily performed.

The alternative is a process in which an editorial hand is used to weight different perspectives by how reliable they are likely to be. The editor or writer has to be willing to take on the responsibility of determining which viewpoints must be given greater prominence. This can be an uncomfortable position; it is often tempting indeed to make other people do all the decision-making. But one can push the limits of neutrality only so far. At some point, one has to take responsibility for the information that one passes on to others......

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