Whatever became of “objective” news reporting? You know, the kind that just gives you the facts, without any slant or bias, the kind we used to have back in the good old days?
In this current era of shouting-heads cable TV shows and hot-talk radio and incendiary blog posts, when everyone with a Twitter account can make news, it’s understandable to pine for the lost paradise of “objective” journalism.
Where you stand determines what you see, and one must stand somewhere to see anything.
I recently read an essay on HuffingtonPost.com by Thomas Kent, deputy managing editor at the Associated Press, decrying the decline of respect for what he termed “impartial” reporting. He says even though everyone has personal beliefs – including journalists – that shouldn’t preclude even-handed reporting.
“Doctors may not like their patients' politics, but they don't kill them in the operating room,” he says. “Lawyers eloquently defend even the sleaziest clients. Journalists who seek to be impartial should be able to cover people and events irrespective of personal feelings.”
Hard to disagree with that. In fact, every reporter worth his or her salt does that every day. But people will often equate this sort of impartial reporting with "objective" reporting … and that’s a mistake.
The fact is that -- like unicorns -- “objective” journalism is a myth. It doesn’t exist; never has. Historically, what was called “objective” journalism just meant it reflected the conventional wisdom/values/prejudices of the day.
One of my earliest news editors told me how, when he was a cub reporter in the Seattle area in the late 1950s, everything the Boeing Corporation did was reported as good, and whatever was good for Boeing was good for Seattle. Any other perspective was rejected as ”biased.”
Here’s the thing … To report on anything, one must observe it. To observe anything, one must stand someplace in relation to it. That place is, literally, your "view-point." And that place will, to a large extent, influence -- if not determine -- what you see.
A favorite illustration ... In the Robert Heinlein novel Stranger in a Strange Land, there are characters known as "Fair Witnesses." They are rigorously trained to observe without judgment or evaluation, and as such their testimony in a court is considered unimpeachable. If you point to a house on a distant hill and ask a Witness, "What color is that house?" they'll answer, "It's white on this side." They won't assume it's white on the side they can't see.
Now suppose you had a house that was white on one side and blue on the other. If you put normal people on opposite sides of the house and asked each, "What color is that house?" one would say, "White, of course." The other, "Are you nuts? It's blue!" Only someone standing 90 degrees to both observers would be in a position to say, "Ah! White on this side, blue on that side."
Where you stand determines what you see, and one must stand somewhere to see anything.
So the trick, for a journalist, is to stand on as many sides of an issue as possible, the better to gain a full view. Then one can render an informed evaluation of what the reality is.
At NPR– and here at JPR – it’s a matter of policy, as well as of journalistic ethics, to do our level best to look at the stories we report from multiple directions, to take different viewpoints and run them though some basic questions: Does this stand up to scrutiny? Is it based on valid evidence? Does it even make sense? We look for the weaknesses, the inconsistencies and try to poke holes in each argument. Then we turn around and do the same to the other viewpoints, as well.
When you do this, you come to a place where you can draw some conclusions. Because “impartial” doesn’t mean “everybody’s right”. It doesn’t mean splitting the difference between one side and the other and calling it good.
It means seeking the truth of a situation, as best as you can determine it, and then reporting what you found, without, as the saying goes, “Fear or favor.”
And that's as close to "objectivity" as any human can come.
Liam Moriarty has been covering news in the Pacific Northwest for nearly 20 years. After covering the environment in Seattle, then reporting on European issues from France, he’s returned to JPR, turning his talents to covering the stories that are important to the people of this very special region.
