Objective journalism: Good riddance
Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on September 26th, 2009 by Sean Haugh
Objective journalism is dying, and it can’t happen soon enough as far as I’m concerned. It was always a crock anyway. What once was a sweet noble lie attempting to serve the facts has become the open enemy of truth and knowledge. People are instinctively recognizing this and starting to take their business elsewhere.
People act as if objective journalism is the only kind of legitimate journalism that has ever existed, when in fact the notion is only about 100 years old. It used to be that all journalists wore their biases on their sleeves and let a supposedly discerning reader sift through it to find their own opinion. Did you ever wonder why several small town newspapers still have names like the Democrat or the Progressive? Because when they were founded, that was their explicit editorial and reporting policy.
Truly objective journalism has always been impossible. To achieve it, one would have to write impractically long accounts including every single relevant fact. Yet the TV news is only on for 30 or 60 minutes. The first decision any reporter has to make is what narrow set of facts to include and which must be set aside. And that’s just for one story. All the news that is fit to print is far more than can fit in a daily newspaper.
Let’s face it, we’re biased creatures. The vast majority of news stories are written with a predetermined point to make. It is a very rare person who can give full balance to all points of view on any issue. The best any media outlet can do is offer a variety of reports and opinions to achieve any balanced coverage.
This of course assumes that balance is a desirable quality in news. It is one of the pillars of objective journalism. Yet by making balance a primary value, the news media has actually skewed the truth and elevated a lot of lone morons from well-deserved obscurity into national prominence.
Here’s a simple living example, just happened earlier today. Our town is searching for a new City Manager and our Assistant City Attorney is one of the three finalists. A reporter called me because I had said some positive things about him publicly and wanted to get a quote. At the end of the interview, she asked me if I knew of anyone who had any negative opinions of the man, so she could get a more balanced story. Honestly I had to say that I have never heard anyone utter even one critical or negative word about the man, and I have spoken with plenty of people about him. Imagine that.
The true story is that no one can think of a bad thing to say about the man. Everyone who has dealt with him professionally holds him in the very highest regard. But if we are to get the balanced story, surely we must dig up someone who will say something nasty about him. I’m sure if she looks hard enough she can find some old high school ex-girlfriend or a crackhead who will say anything for $20. I don’t think this particular reporter would even contemplate such a low tactic. But think about how much news these days is driven exactly by such poor witnesses.
Balance is the quality of journalism that allows a voice for idiots that nobody was paying attention to in the first place, like PETA or Barry Lynn. For every story you have to have somebody to take the opposing view, and sometimes the only person willing to do it is a complete yahoo. A yahoo who now has permanent work and a ticket to fame, thanks to objective journalism.
I probably shouldn’t complain, seeing as the “only no” strategy has worked for us Libertarians too. Sure, I love getting those calls from a reporter who thinks, “gee, who could possibly be against this wonderful new government initiative?” And I make sure they spell my name right too. I’ll play the game and manipulate the press as best I can, no shame in that. But frankly I’d rather make my own news.
And that’s exactly what people are doing. Much has been written about the explosion of blogging, as well as the far more opinionated news sites ranging from WorldNetDaily to IndyMedia to the humble publication currently on your screen. That Matt Drudge is a rightwing nut, sure if you insist, but you have to admit he keeps the rest of the media honest. The mainstream news types still attempt to cling to their mantle of fair and balanced objectivity, dismissing Drudge and the rest of the Internet news paradigm out of hand. What they should realize is that more and more people are coming to believe that this is how the news should be reported.
But there is still some confusion among the public on this point. We were raised in the golden age of objective journalism, and it can be difficult to dislodge its presumptions. I was on a call-in radio show recently, along with a representative of IndyMedia. We were talking about the recent vandalism at the state GOP headquarters and IndyMedia had published an article by someone who seemed to think it was a fine thing. One caller took issue with that editorial decision, claiming it was irresponsible and wondering why they hadn’t taken it off the site. One of the hosts mentioned that this caller was not alone in his opinion.
Of course such an article would have no place on a mainstream news website. Editors would worry that this could be mistaken for the opinion of the entire organization - what, does CNN really condone vandalism? But IndyMedia and the rest of the Internet is different. There it’s pretty obvious that this is just the opinion of one guy, and somebody at the site thought it was interesting enough to post it. If you don’t like it, there’s plenty more news out there to read.
What I love about Internet news is that so much of it is written in the first person. The reporter has become a storyteller again. The reporter was always a character in his stories, but now we embrace that fact instead of pretending it isn’t true. Instead of simply reporting, we encourage conversation. The Internet makes it much easier to talk back to us than, say, writing a letter to the editor. We want your comments. We want you to think.
Objective journalism has come to discourage thinking. The zeal for reporting a balanced set of facts has closed the door to analysis, except for a segregated half page in the back. What passes for news these days is simply regurgitated press releases. Sure, it’s another angle you want to work when seeking coverage, to make your press releases closely resemble a newspaper article on the chance that the lazy sods will just publish it whole. If they use it at all, you can at least count on being quoted with a straight face most of the time, as if you were speaking some unchallengeable fact.
At the same time, ownership of media outlets has become increasingly corporate. These multinational corporations have a lot at stake in how the news is reported. They have developed such a glaring conflict of interest that frankly they’d have to be insane to encourage any reporting which could adversely affect their political position or their profits. If these corporations have it in good with the status quo, and they always do, they have a very strong interest in keeping any questioning of it to a minimum.
The great thing about monopolies is that they are untenable. It wasn’t that long ago that the hold of objective journalism on the news seemed monolithic. One could simply not imagine how you could go into business and compete with CBS. But then it happened anyway. People made and distributed the technology to allow the competition to occur another way. It always happens like this. As soon as you corner the market on trains, someone’s bound to invent an airplane.
We’ve lived with objective journalism for some time, so it will take awhile for its effects to wear off. More likely it will mutate into a new form. After all, facts are still important, and the whole reason why objective journalism started in the first place.
The desire to let the facts speak for themselves is quite noble. But we have found it is not enough to feed the minds of an informed populace. It is far more honest for reporters to be forthright about their opinions and for editors to encourage their readers to peruse a variety of perspectives.
Instead of attempting to create some mythical prepackaged objectivity, we would be better served as journalists to allow the objectivity to occur in the minds of our readers.
Sean Haugh is assistant editor for Liberty For All. Sean is married to longtime Libertarian Pam Adams, and they have a family of three dogs and five cats. Besides them, Sean loves God, Liberty, and Oklahoma Sooners football. Write to Sean at seanhaugh@mindspring.com.
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September 26, 2009 @ 1:28 am
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Objective journalism: Good riddance | iblogforextracash.com said,
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September 26, 2009 @ 4:42 am
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