Impartiality and Self-command

Alva Noë offers another great contribution to philosophical commentary on contemporary events. Tom Bowles, a reporter, cheered at the Daytona 500's conclusion, when Trevor Bayne became the youngest winner of that storied event. As Alva writes,

in the world of sports reporting, [cheering] is an absolute no no, universally taken to be an inappropriate expression of bias. But he was the only reporter who chose to defend his actions, and indeed to tweet about them afterward. Three days later Sports Illustrated fired him.

Now, Alva uses the event to argue that the nature of impartiality is often misunderstood to mean observing without feeling. Alva quite rightly argues that expertise means that one has cultivated feeling. (Let's conceded for sake of argument that sports reporters are such experts.) Against folk that think of experts as glorified and highly credentialed Weberian bureaucracts (i.e., rule followers), I am in full agreement with Alva. (To drive the point home: having appropriate feelings is constitutive of one's expertise--of course, expertise is more than feelings.)

Nevertheless, I remain ambivalent about Alva's post. I agree with him that much reporting is "spineless," and mistakes sampling two (often pre-packaged) opposed views for objectivity (and impartiality). But as Adam Smith teaches, the impartial spectator (as do great reporters) also ought to have self-command and Bowles apparently lacked that. (If he is an excellent reporter in other respects, I think that should not constitute grounds for dismissal.) So, Bowles should have cheered inwardly (or even let out an appreciative grunt), but he should have kept quiet about it after. That is, it is a sign of expertise that one does not need public approval for one's deeds--living up to the ethos/norms of one's vocation ought to be enough.