Should U.S. newspapers avoid having a political slant?

Most major U.S. newspapers try to avoid any appearance of a political point of view in their news pages. But the same can't be said about British publications, as NPR's David Folkenflik finds in a case study of the country's "opinionated press."

The Guardian, for one, is avowedly liberal. The Telegraph leans right. And some British politicians are just fine with that.

"In Britain, we feel that it's better to know where people are coming from and then to make up your own mind about what you think, because the truth is nobody can be completely impartial and objective," said Conservative member of Parliament Nick Boles. "I mean the idea [that] The New York Times doesn't have a political point of view — it's ridiculous. It does, but it twists itself into knots in an attempt to pretend that it doesn't."

Despite being a Conservative, Boles still talks to the Guardian, just as Republicans or Democrats might engage outlets with a political slant that isn't their own.

Last year, I noted that Republican members of Congress and their staffs were increasingly speaking with reporters from the left-leaning Huffington Post. Republicans were doing so, they said, both on account of the site's huge reach and because they were getting a fair shake from their reporters (regardless of political leanings).

Still, it's unlikely that mainstream U.S. newspapers will follow their U.K. counterparts in adding any political point of view to news coverage. (That's despite many U.S. newspaper readers and surely politicians assuming they already know where the reporters are coming from.)

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger told NPR that "no judgments are free of ideologies, so who you choose to quote and how you structure stories are highly political judgments." For that reason, he argued, there's a "problem with trying to place too much faith in something called objectivity."

Folkenflik looks Wednesday at the debate in the U.S. over opinionated media. You can listen to today's report here.

(Photo of London newsstand after Chilean miners were rescued on Oct. 14, 2010: AP /Sang Tan)