This guy gets it:
Not even Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the ultimate statement of observer-subjectivity, derails the scientific concept of objectivity.
Why? Because unlike journalistic objectivity, which proposes itself to be an artificial perspective, scientific objectivity is a documented process. A requirement of that process is that it be recorded clearly enough that findings are repeatable for all observers (in the case of laboratory experiments) or clearly controlled for the observer’s subjective perspective (field observation of a single event or series of events). When viewed from a distance, this process of objectivity varies for each individual discipline, but its philosophy is constant: Always be aware of the subjectivity of the observer, use agreed-upon standards, and show your work.
As I have said before: Objectivity is a process not a stance.
Daniel Conover understands that objectivity as a philosophical ideal is a problem. I’d repeat what I’ve often written: The philosophical ideal is plainly impossible because we can only know the world as humans are meant to know it; we cannot know it as it is. Our objective processes–e.g. scientific method–allow us to know the world in ways suited to our understanding and experience such that we may manipulate the world for our own benefit.
What Conover seeks is something like what journalism sought at the dawn of our current professional age (in terms of epistemology): A process by which we may accurately describe events–make factual statements–such that readers of all kinds may experience similar “results” –and trust those results.
I’ve expressed the same sort of thing a bit differently by cramming the ideas of journalism as a discipline of verification and journalists as custodians of fact together as a justification for a text-based analysis of facts. In other words, there’s nothing subjective or biased about taking two statements by two political opponents and checking them against our understanding of the situation (which would include simple fact-checking for starters). The “results” could be understood as factual, objective reporting.
Conover imagines a process/software solution (a seriously cool idea)–a process in which facts may be checked back to authoritative sources. The one minor problem I have–because a rhetorician can’t help it–is this: Such a system ignores that, while facts are facts, facts mean different things to different people. And people act in political and economic ways based on what facts mean to them, i.e. facts get filtered through a system of values before they get used. Any process/software solution would still require the hard work of sensitive and intelligent journalists.
I highly recommend you read every word of Conover’s cogent essay.
Tag: journalism
