Acknowledging Our Bias
One of the biggest hurdles any journalist must overcome is personal bias, and the editors at Noise are no different. In our last seven months of reporting and, in particular, in the last few weeks as we gear up for our coverage of the 2025 SRC elections, acknowledging our personal bias has been a major point of discussion for our team, and in our interactions with candidates.
So, to set the story straight:
YES: two out of three of Noise’s founding coordinators are running for top SRC positions under the 365 ticket
YES: many more former members of Noise’s team are running for other roles on the SRC, both with 365, and as independents
NO: Noise is not, in any official capacity, affiliated with the 365 ticket
We are an independent student newspaper — we’re independent from the University of NSW, we’re independent from Arc, we’re independent from any external political parties and we’re independent from any factions within the student body. This includes the 365 ticket and its members, who, as previously published, have stepped down from Noise for the duration of the election, and have been barred from any official lines of communication. Our interactions with 365 members in our coverage are carried out to the same standards of any other candidate from any other ticket, and any coverage of any ticket is decided by the members of Noise, not of the ticket.
Still, we acknowledge this is not enough to completely erase any personal biases our individual editors may hold. While Noise does not officially endorse 365 in any capacity, some of our editors may. Beyond that, while 365’s candidates are no longer connected with Noise, they still have personal ties with many of our editorial team, which have not been dissolved by their decision to run for SRC office.
As we begin our coverage of the elections, we will be working hard to ensure any such personal biases do not make their way into any non-opinion based pieces. All of our articles, including those regarding SRC elections, must be approved by two other members of the editorial team before they are published, and this has had, and will continue to have, a significant influence on what we post. We will also strive to ensure any pieces that do contain the opinions of our individual editors are clearly marked as such — this is the impetus for the recent changes to our Instagram formatting. Keeping our coverage fair and balanced is paramount to Noise’s mission of responsible and ethical journalism, and no candidate or ticket will receive preferential treatment in our reporting.
If you would like to know more about our screening processes for articles, or have any concerns regarding our acknowledged biases, please do not hesitate to reach out to our team. Transparency is important to us, and we value the feedback and accountability our readers provide.
