Objectivity

Question: What are the benefits and drawbacks of objectivity versus engagement in journalism?

Key Points:

- Objectivity isn't always the best journalistic solution and we must find a balance between objectivity and expressing deeper truths. 

Benefits of objectivity: 

- Viewed as ethical 

- "Fair"

- Allows for both sides to be heard and represented

- Lets the public make up their own minds regarding an issue.  

- Helps to guide readers through the flood of information 

- Professional obligation to frame the message (Schudson 31)

Drawbacks: 

- Objectivty can cause only surface level news stories, without pushing deeper

- Steven R. Weisman, the chief diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, says that he felt obliged to dig more when he was an editorial writer, and did not have to be objective. “If you have to decide who is right, then you must do more reporting,” he says. (Columbia Journalism Review)

- objectivity makes reporters hesitant to inject issues into the news that aren’t already out there.

- This is not a call to scrap objectivity, but rather a search for a better way of thinking about it. 

- In Vietnam, many of the beat reporters who arrived believing in objectivity eventually realized, if they stayed long enough, that such an approach wasn’t sufficient.

- John Laurence, a former CBS News correspondent, about his years covering Vietnam: “Because the war went on for so long and so much evidence accumulated to suggest it was a losing cause, and that in the process we were destroying the Vietnamese and ourselves, I felt I had a moral obligation to report my views as much as the facts.” (Columbia Journalism Review)

Benefits of Engagement:

-  Uncover deeper truths on an issue

- Better reporting

- Moral obligations, bias is sometimes needed

Drawbacks of Engagement:

- Doesn't allow the public to form their own opinions

- Journalists can persuade the public and bend the truth to get their own point across.

- The other side of the story can be overshadowed by journalist engagement and recognition and truthful facts regarding both sides can be pushed aside.

Questions:

- What cases should journalists be allowed to not be objective?

- What would be a good way to balance objectivity and engagement/taking a side?

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