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What is Objective Journalism?
Edwards, David
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2017/842-what-is-objective-journalism.htmlDate Written: 2017-03-21 Publisher: Media Lens Year Published: 2017 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX20533 Despite objectivity being widely accepted as a norm in journalism, Edwards discusses how opinion and bias are still an inherent part of 'reporting the facts.' Abstract: - Excerpt: A fourth, closely-related problem is that not taking sides - for example against torture, or against big countries exploiting small countries, or against selling arms to tyrants, or against stopping rather than exacerbating climate change - is monstrous. A doctor treating a patient is biased in seeking to identify and solve a health problem. No one would argue that the doctor should stand neutrally between sickness and health. Is it not self-evident that we should all be biased against suffering? Finally, why does the journalistic responsibility to suppress personal opinion trump the responsibility to resist crimes of state for which we are accountable as democratic citizens? If the British government was massacring British citizens, would journalists refuse to speak out? Why does the professional media contract outweigh the social contract? Journalists might respond that 'opinion-free' journalism is vital for a healthy democracy. But without dissent challenging open criminality, democracy quickly decays into tyranny. This is the case, for example, if we remain 'impartial' as our governments bomb, invade and kill 100,000s of people in foreign countries. A journalist who refuses even to describe the Iraq war as a crime is riding a cultural train that normalises the unthinkable. In the real world, journalistic 'impartiality' on Iraq helped facilitate Britain and the United States' subsequent crimes in Libya, Syria and Yemen. This is the ugly absurdity of the innocent-looking idea that journalists' 'organs of opinion' can and should be removed. So if we reject this flawed and immoral version of objectivity behind which so many corporate journalists hide, what then is objective journalism? Are we arguing for open bias, for a prejudice free-for-all disconnected from any attempt at fairness? Not at all. Subject Headings |