Dagbladet makes a big deal out of a survey MMI has conducted about where people believe hosts of popular TV debate programs stand politically. See, MMI refuses to divulge who they're performing the survey for, which makes this a secret survey for a secret company or organization. Secret companies and organizations are of course always news, even outside the slow summer news season. "Secret election survey of TV celebrities", is Dagbladet's somewhat desperate front page spin of this "story".

I'm sure we'll hear the results of the survey soon enough. What's interesting is how the TV journalists mentioned in the survey reacts to the news. NRK's Viggo Johansen finds the whole thing "very silly", and refuses to divulge how he intends to vote, which he considers a "private matter". So does former AKP'er and fellow NRK journalist Knut Olsen. NRK's top election reporter Geir Heljesen agrees that the survey is "extremely silly", and believes that because we hold secret elections, it's "nobody's business" how he votes. Three TV2 journalists have no comment, while Pål T. Jørgensen is unconcerned about the survey.

None of them - and these are among the most influential political journalists on TV - are willing to reveal their party allegiance, or even to indicate where they land on the political spectrum. What's the big deal? All political journalists have political leanings, and these leanings necessarily influence their reporting. Anyone who claims otherwise is more likely to be very good at fooling themselves than to have actually discovered a magical way to separate views from reporting. And the human brain is quite ingenious when it comes to fooling itself. One way is to convince yourself that your section of the spectrum is the "middle", and therefore a point of balance between extremes. Another, probably very common, way is to believe that to occupy a broad section of the spectrum, say, being unable to decide between Labor, the Conservatives or the centre parties, and being tolerant of views inside this section, makes you an unbiased reporter. What then about the far left and right? Politically biased reporting is a fact of life, and only something to be ashamed of when one is dishonest about the extent to which political leanings influences ones work. Which these journalists - and most others - clearly are.

If, God forbid, I ran a media organization, I'd require all reporters to maintain open political bios, explaining their voting record, their current party allegiance, and/or basic political leanings. No good reporter should have anything to fear from this, (what kind of credibility depends on dishonesty?), and it would clean up the air for a more meaningful, less conspiratorial form of media criticism. Secret surveys among journalists indicate massive leftist leanings, about 70% support for Labor and the Socialist Left if I remember correctly. I know it, they know it, everyone knows it. Nobody's being fooled, and it does get tiresome to have to point out public secrets all the time.

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