> This information will piss off one side a whole lot, and the other side not at all. Is this information non-neutral?
Of course reporting just this information is non-neutral. You are specifically picking facts that back the policies of one side over the other. That's obviously non-neutral. If you are a weather-service, it might be apolitical, but as a general news organization it's hard not to read that as political.
> Could I make my editing neutral by also including the occasional statement that Trump won the election in a landslide?
I mean if your firehose of all facts includes "Trump won the election in a landslide" then sure, but I don't think you honestly believe that to be true. I suppose you could report on members of the house claiming this to be true? It might make more sense to e.g. report on perverse incentives setup by entitlement programs (to go with the climate-change theme, how about how tax-breaks for clean-fuel vehicles disproportionately benefit the rich?)
Of course reporting just this information is non-neutral.
Wouldn't not reporting that information also be non-neutral? As you are, from one perspective, hiding information that one side doesn't want to be shared, thus favoring their political stances.
Yes, not reporting that information would also be non-neutral.
You could have very bland neutral reporting by omitting information that offends both sides (as long as you do so in a ratio that is roughly equivalent to how it occurs in the firehose), and you could have extremely provocative neutral by similarly highlighting that information.
There will be times when one side's opinions are more in conflict with facts of current events than the other, so you probably won't be pissing off both sides equally (this is why my original comment was pondering that, in the current environment, a neutral source could not remain trusted), but if you truly act as a service to that strives to fairly convert the "firehose" to a "drinking fountain" then that's what people (or I at least) mean when saying "neutral source."
I dunno, if your definition of "non-neutral" news ropes in the national weather service saying what temperature it is outside, I think it might be too wide of a net...
1. The NWS does not post only global mean average temperatures
2. My comment specifically said it would be apolitical for a weather service to report this
3. If the New York times were to have an entire issue with just the global mean temperatures over time, that would clearly be both politically motivated and non-neutral.
There are 3 things that you seem to be confounding: apolitical, politically neutral, and factual. One can select which facts to report with the intention of motivating specific policies. That is neither apolitical nor politically neutral, but is factual.
The NWS was commissioned to observe the weather long before climate change was on anybody's radar, so it's clearly apolitical that it does so. The fact that some significant fraction of one of the two major political parties in the US wishes it to stop should be clear evidence that it is not politically neutral. That's fine! There is no demand in TFA, or any of my comments that any or all government agencies need be politically neutral.
Of course reporting just this information is non-neutral. You are specifically picking facts that back the policies of one side over the other. That's obviously non-neutral. If you are a weather-service, it might be apolitical, but as a general news organization it's hard not to read that as political.
> Could I make my editing neutral by also including the occasional statement that Trump won the election in a landslide?
I mean if your firehose of all facts includes "Trump won the election in a landslide" then sure, but I don't think you honestly believe that to be true. I suppose you could report on members of the house claiming this to be true? It might make more sense to e.g. report on perverse incentives setup by entitlement programs (to go with the climate-change theme, how about how tax-breaks for clean-fuel vehicles disproportionately benefit the rich?)