Does NPOV Tell us What Really Matters?

Here's a line I have trouble with in the NPOV guide: "How can we solve the problem of endless 'edit wars' in which one person asserts that 'p' while the next person challenges the text so that it asserts 'not-p?' A solution is that we can accept, for the purposes of working on Wikipedia, that 'human knowledge' includes all different significant theories on all different topics." The reason I'm bothered is, I find nowhere in the guide what the author defines as "significant." One is left with the impression that by "significant" he or she means such things as "influential," "popular," "read or heard about by many people," and so on. And yet, can't ideas be important even when they are not influential or popular? Probably this is an area where the difference between NPOV in an encyclopedia and in journalism is pronounced. Probably the degree of influence of an idea or a person in the past is a reasonable standard by which to decide whether to include or not include them in an encyclopedia. But what if a journalist, in the course of his research and interviews, finds a source whose point of view is very much in the minority, and which may even be entirely unheard of -- and yet which, the journalist decides, is a very sound and important view that needs to be heard by society? Such a view could range from a minority position on a political matter, to an iconoclastic scientist who holds to findings as yet unconfirmed by others -- or perhaps is being vigorously opposed by the scientific mainstream. How often do ideas vital to society come from such quarters? Pretty often, but it can take years or decades for them to become known, and in the advanced digital age we perhaps don't have the luxury to wait for such vital information to surface for the general benefit. The problem is, journalists tend to equate "significance" with "accepted by the mainstream" and especially with "makes millions of dollars." A new wardrobe for Barbie Dolls that strikes a chord with young girls will make it into onto the front page, replete with color photos and sidebars, long before a lone wolf scientist who has discovered a new poison in the drinking water. The AIDS story took several years to get out of the "gay ghetto." I was a reporter in the New York Times newsroom in the early 1980s and remember the many months that passed as reporters and editors heard about the epidemic, but passed on publishing the story because it was "mixed up in gay politics" and was "happening in the bathhouses." Well, it was both of those, but was it any less important for that? Perhaps the few reporters who were pushing on that story from the beginning, and getting stonewalled by editors, should have been listened to more carefully and seriously, much earlier. So again, what constitutes "significance" in journalism? The NPOV in an encyclopedia may justifiably be defined by how many people were influenced by a given person or idea. But those criteria just don't work in journalism. So what criteria should be adopted in newsrooms?

Comments

[mparog]

I could se that. After a females juices

[oral]

Well, this is waving toward the stairs all over