With the proliferation of devil-may-care bloggers and the factsbe- damned TV cable shout fests, the culture of our profession is trending toward a journalistic Woodstock, where everything except disciplined reporting is considered cool. What a pathetic lot these journalists are. It would only excite the current media-bashing frenzy.
And the public would still be the losers. The State of Objectivity. More and more, reporters who still view objectivity as our guide and goal stand out like someone wearing a suit at a Metallica concert.
In , the Society of Professional Journalists, without fanfare, dropped the term from its code of ethics. In , Brent Cunningham, managing editor of Columbia Journalism Review, wrote in an Objectivity is a standard that requires journalists to try to put aside emotions and prejudices, including those implanted by the spinners and manipulators who meet them at every turn ….
Objectivity has been on the ropes before. Yet the standard persisted. So what is this shackle that roils our profession decade after decade and now seems to have reporters cowering in fear and passivity? Objectivity is a standard that requires journalists to try to put aside emotions and prejudices, including those implanted by the spinners and manipulators who meet them at every turn, as they gather and present the facts. They recognize objectivity as an ideal, the pursuit of which never ends and never totally succeeds.
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Simply put, in most situations, there is a right and a wrong, and sometimes not making a choice is choosing the wrong side. By upholding objectivity, journalists tend to side with the oppressor rather than the oppressed, which goes against everything a journalist should be.
A journalist should be an active voice for the people, using their voice to side with the people being harmed at all times.
To clarify, I am not saying to lose the reporting aspect of our jobs. We should always seek to inform. However, sometimes siding with the people is as simple as word choice. Through video evidence, I saw a murder happen right before my eyes.
That was a big slap in the face because news outlets were telling my community that what we saw was a lie. The second issue with objectivity is the sense of privilege it accompanies.
No matter if the story runs, at the end of the day, I am still a Black, queer person living in America who faces the threats reported during the news in my daily life. On the other side of the argument, some journalists argue that without objectivity, there is no difference between a journalist and a common person, because journalism loses its standards.
The only difference between a journalist and a common person is a couple journalism classes and a platform.
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