The (journalistic) world as it is…
Brent Cunningham, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, considers the fate of “objectivity” in journalism and notes that few agree on what it means. He quotes Michael Bugeja, a journalism professor at Iowa State: “Objectivity is seeing the world as it is, not how you wish it were.”
I’d like to take his class, because I have no idea how it’s possible for a human being, raised in a culture, limited to a finite set of uniquely-evolved senses, bound by history and politics, influenced by media, family, and friends, can possibly see anything “as it is.” Seeing something “as it is” doesn’t even mean anything in any but the most objectivist philosophies (and I would argue it’s meaningless there, too).
Cunningham explains the allure of objectivity:
Objectivity has persisted for some valid reasons, the most important being that nothing better has replaced it. And plenty of good journalists believe in it, at least as a necessary goal. Objectivity, or the pursuit of it, separates us from the unbridled partisanship found in much of the European press. It helps us make decisions quickly–we are disinterested observers after all–and it protects us from the consequences of what we write. We’d like to think it buoys our embattled credibility…And as we descend into this new age of partisanship, our readers need, more than ever, reliable reporting that tells them what is true when that is knowable, and pushes as close to truth as possible when it is not.
I agree with that last part about reliable reporting–the original intent of journalistic objectivity. I think objectivity is best conceived as a process, much like scientific method, for discovering, gathering, examining, evaluating, interpreting, and presenting information “as close to truth as possible” (notice: no definite article). Objectivity in journalism should not be equated with the pristine ideal of so much failed philosophy.
Cunningham takes his critique of (philosophical) objectivity (applied to journalism) in an interesting direction:
But our pursuit of objectivity can trip us up on the way to “truth.” Objectivity excuses lazy reporting. If you’re on deadline and all you have is “both sides of the story,” that’s often good enough. It’s not that such stories laying out the parameters of a debate have no value for readers, but too often, in our obsession with, as The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward puts it, “the latest,” we fail to push the story, incrementally, toward a deeper understanding of what is true and what is false.
I would assert that journalistic objectivity, as I defined it above, helps cure this ill. Here we see the two, philosophic and journalistic objectivity, equated:
Some 75 percent of journalists and news executives in a 1999 Pew Research Center survey said it was possible to obtain a true, accurate, and widely agreed-upon account of an event. More than two-thirds thought it feasible to develop “a systematic method to cover events in a disinterested and fair way.”
The problem term here is “disinterested.” This remnant of scientific method remains part of the defining characteristic of journalistic attitude long after so much of the scientific community has dismissed it (as an attitude if not as a process). Interest is what compels you to look at something–consider its importance, structure, or utility–in the first place. Journalists, however, apply disinterest to attitude–despite what the quote above implies–leading to exactly the silliness Cunningham recounts.
Cunningham concludes with two “modest proposals” for rethinking objectivity. Each is worth serious consideration.
An added bonus of this interesting article: Cunningham demonstrates an understanding of the structural biases of journalism. (via Romenesko)
You make reference to my comment about objectivity. An objective rhetorician might have qualified such a comment, noting that an educator might have more to add to the brief quotation in Brent Cunningham’s important article. In my classes I help students work through all those filters that you mention in your post, informing them that they cannot remove all such filters–they are subjective beings, of course–but that trying to see the world as it is, is the only route to clearer vision of a shared world. Otherwise, one is a doomed to think and react according to cultural and other influences, including racist and stereotypical behaviors learned at home or in enclaves. Incidentally, I have a Ph.D. in English (not journalism) and base that quotation on objectivity, in some part, on Arnold’s prose writings. Thank you for your contribution. In many ways, we agree. But I thought you would appreciate a reply on your comment from a primary source–me.
Dr. Bugeia…thank you for your comment. I’m glad to have your contribution.
If this were an academic, peer-reviewed forum, my treatment of your quote would have been different, i.e. conforming accepted procedures of academic citation and fidelity to sources.
Re: “but that trying to see the world as it is, is the only route to clearer vision of a shared world.”
We may certainly agree about many things, but not about this. I do understand humans to be, in part, “doomed to think and react according to cultural and other influences, including racist and stereotypical behaviors learned at home or in enclaves.” This is not, however, relativism. It is experientialism.
Perhaps more accurately, I think, we are doomed to react to the world in human ways (re: Lakoff and Johnson’s embodied philosophy). These experiences, known only through the filters of our uniquely-evolved senses and much cultural/historical/political baggage, are very real and make up the only thing we are capable of understanding as “objective” reality.
As I’m sure you’re aware by now, I’m a transactionalist not an objectivist or subjectivist. I believe both subjective and objective accounts of reality and human experience are necessarily incomplete.
Again, thanks for your contribution. I’m glad to see you found your way to this blog. BTW, how did you find your way here?
I appreciate your response very much. Of course, the longer one works in academe and researches (I have a forthcoming book out of Oxford Univ. Press), the more one realizes that other belief systems, paradigms and theories all have merit in the community of ideas … of which I am grateful to be a part.
I came across the posting because of a google.com search conducted to learn more about an alumnus … a rather nostaglic experience, for I remember a time in the stacks when I would look for one text and find another with an entire world opening up to me, in which I did not yet realize I had interest.
Dear Dr. Bugeja:
While working on a debate on objectivity in journalism, I came across your remark that objectivity should be handled in a scientific process and I could not agree more.
If a journalist gathered the information in this manner, maybe more articles would be considered unbiased.
Thanks.