I don't feel you should completely dismiss neutrality and empathy - we need more openness from our news, not less. Journalists IMO should strive for neutrality and distance (knowing they will never attain it), particularly distance from the culture, nation and media which they were born to. They should question the narratives (often delivered pre-made), and use of words they are given in a press release, not relay it, and they should make clear their own biases to readers, at the same time as striving to see the situation from various points of view, not only their own, or the one they were brought up with. They should strive for this this because it brings empathy and understanding, in a way that completely ignoring neutrality and picking a side in often polarised conflicts does not. It is impossible not to have sympathies, but journalists should also try to put their sympathies to one side at least until they have a good picture of the facts on the ground and can form an opinion.
In the example you give, we have lots of terms for the participants in asymmetric warfare, all employed to taint debate before it starts:
IMO the acronym or name chosen by the fighters/armies themselves would be best in each case, rather than a label dreamed up by the military which opposes them - it also stops lazy reporting which groups disparate groups together as one enemy.
I'd rather news didn't have a pre-decided viewpoint/agenda which they try to cut the facts to fit, which is often what partial news or 'op-ed' turns out to be when written by professional columnists. We should not have a liberal view or a right-wing view, we should have journalists who approach each story with an open spirit and actually do the journalism required to come up with an informed opinion and transmit that. That hard work should come before they have an opinion on any story.
In the example you give, we have lots of terms for the participants in asymmetric warfare, all employed to taint debate before it starts:
liberators, freedom fighters, rebels, guerrilla fighters, insurgents, terrorists
IMO the acronym or name chosen by the fighters/armies themselves would be best in each case, rather than a label dreamed up by the military which opposes them - it also stops lazy reporting which groups disparate groups together as one enemy.
I'd rather news didn't have a pre-decided viewpoint/agenda which they try to cut the facts to fit, which is often what partial news or 'op-ed' turns out to be when written by professional columnists. We should not have a liberal view or a right-wing view, we should have journalists who approach each story with an open spirit and actually do the journalism required to come up with an informed opinion and transmit that. That hard work should come before they have an opinion on any story.