TEXT C
The newspaper must provide for the reader objectively selected facts. But in these days of complex news it must provide more; it must supply interpretation, the meaning of the facts.
However, the opponents of interpretation insist that the writer and the editor should confine himself to the "fact". This insistence raises a question: What are the facts.’
As to the first question, consider how a so-called "factual" story comes about. The reporter collects, say, fifty facts; out of these fifty, his space allotment being necessarily restricted, he selects the ten which he considers most important. This is Judgment Number One. Then he or his editor decides which of these ten facts shall constitute the lead of the piece (This is an important decision because many readers do nut proceed beyond the first paragraph). This is Judgment Number Two. Then the night editor determines whether the article shall be presented on page one, where it has a large impact, or on page twenty-four, where it has little. This is Judgment Number Three.
Thus, iii tire presentation of a so-called "factual" or "objective" story, at least three judgments are involved. And they are judgments not at all unlike those involved in interpretation, in which reporter and editor, calling upon their research resources, their general background, and their "news neutralism", arrive at a conclusion as to the significance of the news.
The two areas of judgment, presentation of the news and its inter pretation, are both objective rather than subjective processes—as objective, that is, as any human being can be. If an editor is intent on slanting the news, he can do it in other ways and more effectively than by interpretation. He can do it by the selection of these facts that support his particular excuse. Or he can do it by the play he gives a story—promoting it to page one or demoting it to page thirty.
The underlined expression "slanting the news" (Para. 5) most probably means______.