When media ‘objectivity’ is dereliction of duty
Journalists aren’t bystanders – they’re key players in a democracy
Journalists aren’t bystanders in a democracy.
Democracy relies on them to take action – to fact-check political lies, expose wrongdoing, explain the issues, and warn the public about the consequences of their votes.
Our political system cannot survive without an informed citizenry that’s equipped with shared, verified facts. That means journalists are not passive members of the audience – they’re supporting actors in the drama.
I’m not saying they should be kingmakers, deciding which candidates they like and distorting the news to fit their personal opinions. But they must not shy away from exposing politicians who use lies and hate to threaten democracy. That’s not the media being unfair – that’s the media doing their duty.
Whether journalists realize it or not, they operate from a set of values – ideally, values shaped by deep concern for what’s important to the public. Yes, I said “a set of values.” Because no one in the news media is truly objective, and when they try too hard to appear to be, it sometimes compels them to do the wrong thing.
The issue of objectivity came up last week when Tara McGowan, who runs the left-center news outlet Courier Newsroom (where I’m a paid consultant and writer) declared that “objectivity has always been a fallacy” and that transparency about a news organization’s values is a key step in building trust with an audience.
That raised the ire of Ben Smith, co-founder of the news website Semafor, who called McGowan’s remarks “an incredibly corrosive line for partisan media to take against people who try to be fair.” Smith is such a standard bearer for objectivity in journalism that he hosted professional liar Tucker Carlson for Semafor’s debut event in 2022. By some accounts, Smith got “steamrolled” in that encounter. And that’s the danger with performative objectivity: It requires journalists to let people lie to their audience.
You see, the real problem in American journalism isn’t that some outlets have values; it’s that some outlets spread disinformation. The main reason Fox News is bad for democracy is not because it’s right-wing – it’s because Fox lies to support criminals.
In my four-decade career as a daily newspaper editor, I assigned reporters to cover plenty of stories, and I wasn’t objective. I chose stories I thought would benefit our audience and our community. I was undoubtedly wrong sometimes. But it’s impossible to be unbiased. The very act of assigning a story is a value judgment. Every story is shaped by multitudes of biases, from who gets quoted to how they’re described to what gets edited out. Pretending otherwise is, as McGowan put it, a fallacy.
A few years ago, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen wrote about “viewpoint disclosure.” He said one way for journalists to build trust would be to compose “here’s where I’m coming from” statements to disclose their biases and values. My “coming from” statement might say that I’m pro-democracy, anti-racism, pro-LGBTQ rights, in favor of women’s body autonomy, and supportive of Joe Biden as the candidate standing in the way of a disastrous Trump presidency. But I am not a Democratic partisan. I’m glad that Andrew Cuomo was forced out of office, and I think Robert Menendez ought to get the hell out too. Most of all, I am not objective. I believe in being fair to the facts and the public, not to political operatives.
Of course, “where I’m coming from” statements would blow the minds of news executives who want to pretend their journalists don’t let their opinions affect their work. Frankly, I want journalists who have deeply studied a subject to draw rational conclusions. If someone has been on the climate change beat for years and doesn’t have any strong opinions about it, they won’t be my go-to expert on the subject.
The publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, spoke recently to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, making the case for objectivity, or as he called it, “independent journalism.” He described it as “an insistence on reflecting the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.”
But the Times seems to wish it was 1983 and Tip O’Neill was cutting a bipartisan deal with Ronald Reagan. It has utterly failed to face up to the unprecedented danger of MAGA fascism. Either that or the Times thinks objectivity means not caring whether democracy survives. (I raised that issue in a recent newsletter.)
My friend Bryan Smith has a nickname for the New York Times — the Great Dumbfounded Paper, reflecting the news outlet’s tendency to protect its self-styled objectivity by pretending it doesn’t know why bad things happen. The Times prefers to blame “politics” instead of the people who are actually at fault. That supposedly makes the Times appear “fair.”
One of the most disturbing parts of Sulzberger’s speech was his dismissal of the idea of being on “the right side of history.”
“Simply put, journalists don’t serve the public by trying to predict history’s judgments or to steer society to them,” he said. “Our job as journalists is firmly rooted in the present: to arm society with the information and context it needs to thoughtfully grapple with issues of the day.”
While the New York Times often comes across as arrogant, that statement suggests the paper has a poor sense of its own power and potential. We’re facing an election that could plunge this country into a dictatorship and the folks at the Times aren’t worried about how history will view their role?
How terribly objective of them.
Kara Swisher interviewed the historian Tom Ryback for today's episode of "On With Kara Swisher".
Ryback studied the media of pre-war Germany and shows the striking parallels to our present moment.
In particular, he notes the blitheringly nochalant coverage by the NYT, which failed to acknowledge or imagine the momentous dangers, despite the fact that Hitler (like Trump) explicitly spelled out his intentions for Germany, and the world.
As a daily journalist for some 30 years, I always prided myself on being "objective." (Case in point: while I'm unalterably opposed to the death penalty, I had to cover several death penalty appeals as well as -- once -- witness an execution. I take pride in never having had my reporting attacked for being biased.)
But later in my career, I met a journalism professor who eschewed "objectivity" in favor of "neutrality" in reporting.
Whatever you want to call it however, there was a key word in Sulzberger's comments that is the most important word, and that is "context."
Without context, opinions become facts. For example, perhaps a candidate rails against the high crime rate and vows to do something about it. But if the reporter knows that crime statistics are in fact falling and below historical levels -- which happens to be the case in many places -- that needs to immediately follow the candidate's claim. That is adding "context," not opinion and gives the reader needed information to assess the candidate.
I'll never forget an editor who fussed at me for looking for an analyst on a story about American Airlines purchasing new jets. He said to me something like, "Look, John, you've been covering American Airlines and the industry for several years. YOU KNOW what buying billions of dollars worth of new jets signals. You write it."
A new world was opened to me and I like to think I was a more complete reporter after that.
PS: As an editor, I once caused quit a stir when I told a reporter, in the immediate aftermath, maybe the next day, of the April 19, 1993 tragedy in Waco, TX, to try to find out what was going on in the house as it burned down.
Naturally, we couldn't get to any of the survivors because they were in jail (or maybe the hospital). So I told him to talk to the lawyers and get them to tell them how their clients had described it.
To avoid a story full of "he saids" and "the attorney relayed" or other such cumbersome attribution and build a cohesive, continuous story, I had the reporter write one paragraph high in the story explaining the attribution and how we got the information. He wrote: "This is their story, gleaned from lawyers who spoke with six of them now jailed on charges that include conspiracy and murder."
Following that came a narration of the events as assembled from the various interviews. (Here a link to the story: https://greensboro.com/.../article_420fa1ce-5e3f-557c....)
This happened to be with The Associated Press, and the story moved on national lines pretty much as it. Editors from around the country called demanding attribution. I was thankful that higher up editors than me stood by the story.