TIL In 1916 The British Army went on a rampage in Dublin going door to door shooting civilians.

It’s important to at least try to give an accurate portrayal. This TIL looks like the army just wandered around killing people randomly, rather than being in a heavily fortified area being fired at constantly.

By stating just one side of anything, you can induce bias on the reader. If I were to post source material from the army perspective, it would be more biased to their view:

The casualties were very heavy during the fighting. The troops were continually fired at from the roofs and upper windows of the houses. With modern rifles it is impossible to tell by the sound from which direction a shot has come.The rebels were moving from house to house. As the troops for instance moved along the street the rebels would escape out back doors and fire again at the troops from practically every house.

Five (houses) had to be searched and occupied. Always we found that the rebels tried to cloak themselves behind their women. When we began to search a house they threw away their rifles and joined the women herding at the back, pretending they had been there all the time.

Primary source, General John Maxwell

Do you see how it works? I have zero sympathy with what the army did, nor particularly with the rebels. What bothers me though is editorial bias, and I’d be just as bothered if this was posted as a glorious defence of the English army.

By at least trying to show a neutral or unbiased account, you can allow people with no prior knowledge of it to form their own opinion.

Remember that neutral doesn’t mean ‘blames both sides’ - if something shitty happened to anyone along the line, the neutral account will show that just as much as the suffering side will show it and the causational side will not. But by allowing others to simply read the stated facts, free from emotive report or stuff defence, people can make their own judgements.

/r/todayilearned Thread Link - fairsociety.ie