Even the idea that an accent is "a bit" or "heavy" depends on believing that some particular way of speaking is the standard, with zero accent. It's very close to declaring some accent the "right" way to speak.
Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the natural human tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless.
There isn't a 'right' way to speak, but there are accurate facts against we can measure bias.
> Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the simplistic tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless.
I'd add that the most important step is understanding one's own, and understanding that you always have biases that are invisible to you.
> there are accurate facts against we can measure bias
In the context of reporting, bias isn't about reporting accurate facts. That's honesty or accuracy. A source could be very biased but 100% accurate (by cherry picking facts that fit an agenda) or neutral but inaccurate (by reporting everything they hear without any evaluation or judgement).
Bias is about choosing what facts are worth reporting, and which words (with similar denotations but different connotations) to use to describe those facts.
> the most important step is understanding one's own, and understanding that you always have biases that are invisible to you.
Yes, I agree about choice of facts also being part of it (I wouldn't exclude accuracy either). I didn't use precise wording, so it's a good point to add.
But my conclusion is the same: The 'story' is usually pretty accurate, IME, within certain limitations (e.g., news moves quickly, and I find the NYT often omits some important questions, though not political ones).
You're treating that theoretical average or median, even if no one speaks that way, as the standard accent against which all others are compared.
That's one way in which people sometimes choose a "right" or "zero" accent. Another is by social standing ("the queen's English" was literally that).
Either way, that's declaring one accent the right way of speaking, and describing people who speak differently as having a "heavy" accent instead of simply a different way of speaking.
Perhaps a specific example would make this clear. There are many dialects and accents of German in Germany. Which one would you declare the standard, and who would you describe as having a "heavy" accent?
My point is that making such a judgement is wrong to begin with, and one should simply describe a particular accent by its features or regional distribution, not as "heavy".
(And to respond, briefly, to the comment below: when learning a foreign language you choose to learn a particular dialect and accent. That doesn't make other accents "heavy", they just aren't the accent you've learned.)
It declares it standard, not "right". If you learn a foreign language having a standard to aim for is good and large deviations are difficult. Stop trying to turn this into right or wrong.
My whole point is to avoid turning this into right or wrong by realizing that an accent or a bias merely describes a particular way of speaking or thinking, not a degree of deviation from some standard.
In linguistics, this is the prescriptive vs descriptive debate. It's not controversial that a prescriptive grammar declares how a language should or ought to be used. Declaring one accent the standard is a similar prescriptive position.
Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the natural human tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless.