Is objectvity dead?
That's the trendy argument of the moment, espoused by pundits like Jeff Jarvis and others. They say objectivity in journalism is an outdated remnant of the pre-digital news era, and that 21st century reporters should spew their opinions whether they tack left, right or center.
This may be a trendy idea, but as far as I'm concerned it's one that's as dumb as they come.
The argument the anti-objectivity types make seems to go as follows: True objectivity is impossible, since all humans, reporters included, have their own set of biases and preconceptions. So instead of engaging in a kind of charade of objectivity, journalists should tell readers and viewers exactly where they're coming from, politically and otherwise. Then those news consumers can decide for themselves whether they trust what those reporters have written or broadcast.
Well sure, reporters aren't robots. They have opinions. But the idea that journalists can't set aside those opinions and gather factual information in an objective and impartial manner essentially negates the idea of professionalism in journalism itself. The message seems to be that it's impossible for reporters to conduct themselves in a professional manner and uphold certain standards on the job, so why bother?
Given that this is nothing so much as an insult to the thousands of reporters who do uphold such standards every day, I wonder: Would the self-appointed leaders of any other profession be as disparaging of its practitioners?
Another aspect of this argument is its implicit criticism of he-said, she-said reporting that gives both sides of a story but never draws any conclusions or reveals any truths. Fine, but there's plenty of objective reporting that does draw conclusions without getting on a soapbox (the investigative work of ProPublica is but one example.)
And as anyone who's ever taken philosophy 101 knows, there are different kinds of truths. An industrious reporter can determine whether the local mayor is a bribe-taking crook. But can he also determine whether abortion is moral, or if the death penalty is just? The pundits would have us believe that objective reporting is a failure if it can't answer questions that clerics and philosophers have wrestled with for decades.
The anti-objectivity types also point to the skyrocketing popularity of the opinion-mongers at Fox News (and to a lesser extent MSNBC) at the apparent expense of the more newsy CNN. People want opinions, they say. So give the people what they want.
I'll resist the impulse to rant about how the news business should do more than give people what they want, and instead ask this: Does the success of Fox News prove anything much beyond the fact that a lot of conservatives like hearing commentators whose views reinforce their own? I say no.
True, Fox News crushes CNN and MSNBC in the ratings, but the three objective (and supposedly outdated) evening network newscasts are still watched by millions more people. And if opinion really is what people want, then why isn't MSNBC doing better than a distant second to Fox?
Meanwhile on the web, where news consumers really are migrating, there's little evidence that readers are eschewing news for opinion; most of the top 15 news websites are reliable purveyors of objective reporting.
(Indeed, the real problem for the news business isn't a lack of appetite for hard news; it's the indifference of young people, who have far more options but consume far less news of any kind than their parents and grandparents did. As a college journalism teacher I can tell you that the students I talk to have no more interest in opinion-mongers like Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann than they do in Diane Sawyer or Brian Williams.)
In the end I think the objectivity-is-dead theory is really about the egos of its proponents, who somehow imagine that people actually care what journalists think. Maybe news consumers do want to know what O'Reilly or Olbermann (or Krugman or Kristol for that matter) think.
But when people click on the story about the latest Taliban attack in Afghanistan, or the one about the state budget deficit, or the one about the test scores from the local schools, do they really care what the reporter thinks, or do they just want some news?
