(Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash)
I spent four lovely years of my life as a journalist. I would be hard-pressed to say that those were the best years of my life, but they weren’t bad.
When I was coming up in grade school and college, I never really had any interest in being a journalist. My biggest gripe, frankly, was with the way that journalists wrote. I hated the bland, stilted sentences that journalists were expected to write with, and the fact that they were supposed to keep their wording on a 6th-grade reading level for the larger reading audience.
I take great pride in the fact that my father-in-law once asked me why I thought using the phrase “sadistic glee” in a sports article was a good idea. My news editor at the Barrow County News told me I was writing everything wrong by not following a strict, specific journalistic language style and wasn’t organizing my stories the way most people did. Given that I was still the sports editor and that he didn’t exactly make me stop…I didn’t.
In so many ways, I am not a journalist. I am a writer.
However, I still have some of those journalistic bones floating around in my body. Don’t ask why the bones float. It’s a medical problem and I’m fairly certain it would be a HIPAA violation for me to disclose any additional information.
When working at the newspaper, I developed a love for breaking a story. It was our publication that broke the story of Atlanta Falcon Jason Snelling getting arrested with marijuana a few years back. That is, if you don’t count the random music blog that beat us to the story by a couple hours somehow, but I’m pretty sure the other folks on staff and I were the only people who actually read that blog.
Even though it wasn’t my byline on that story, I got a significant thrill from being part of a breaking story that people had interest in. That was cool.
Some of you can attest to this, too, that I developed a taste for calling out “wrong-doers” with my platform. Sure, maybe that habit got me in hot water with a certain high school football program, and yes, I had to constantly change my Twitter password to ward off hacking attempts for the rest of that spring, but I was one of the first journalists in the state of Georgia to actively discuss this topic. And not long after, the local TV news stations were talking about it.
But I want to talk about that column for a second. See, there were some people who were mad at me for writing that column and who demanded a retraction. And they didn’t get one, largely because it was, in fact, a column that alleged Grayson was recruiting players rather than a news article.
There is a very important distinction that has to be made between columns and articles at this crucial juncture of our discussion. Columns are opinions. News articles, however, must be backed up in fact.
If I wanted to, I could write a column right now alleging that Governor Brian Kemp is actually the reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher and that he is intent on restoring British Monarchial rule to the state of Georgia. I have no evidence for this, but I could write that column because it is my opinion. If…that is. If…that were my opinion.
When these guys come marching down I-85, don’t say I didn’t warn you. (Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash)
Without evidence, though, I could not write an article stating such.
It would not be very objective if I wrote such a column. I can assure you, I would throw Gov. Kemp under the bus so fast if I thought he were trying to bring the monarchy back. There would be zero objectivity there.
But who cares? It’s just my opinion. If you read a column with such a crackpot opinion, would you be remotely dissuaded? Of course not.
Now what if you read an article with well-sourced information and expert testimony discussing how Gov. Kemp had surreptitiously rewritten the state constitution to allow for an unblocked secession of Georgia to the United Kingdom? If such an article existed, would you give it more weight?
You might be tempted to. If those facts could be backed up, you’d certainly give it a thought. Until…you saw that this article was written by the same nutjob who wrote a column bashing Gov. Kemp a few months prior. Then you’d be perfectly happy to dismiss whatever credible information was leaked outright.
In recent days, I have seen a couple of opinion pieces talking about the need for contemporary journalism to cast off the shackles of objectivity. Some of these articles reference Trump’s Presidency as the turning point, saying that his tendency to make up facts have ruined journalism and that factual objectivity is no longer possible. Some articles talk about how objectivity prevents people from talking about issues of race and class dealing with the Black Lives Matter movement fairly, or similar social movements.
I also read one article that talked about how President George W. Bush’s White House influenced “objectivity” by putting out a lot of official press releases that were dubious, at best. Mind you…that article wasn’t the most current.
Much of the conversation has been spurred on by the escalating violence between Israel and Palestine in recent weeks, culminating somewhat with the Associated Press decision to fire a young journalist for her previous pro-Palestine activism while in college.
There was another column I saw that outright led with a headline about how journalistic objectivity wasn’t “fair,” but I was unable to find that one again.
In reading these articles, I’ve come to a few conclusions. Most importantly, the only thing that objectivity shackles a journalist to is truth. The piece from 2003 about Pres. Bush lamented the fact that reporters were clinging too much to official press releases that may not be reliable, and that their attempts at appearing objective left the stories lacking.
That was not the fault of objectivity. That was the fault of cowardly or lazy journalism. If you doubt the veracity of an official release, you are not being objective by running with a flawed story. True objectivity is seeking out the facts that either uphold or disprove that official release. In fact, going along with that official story because it might fit the narrative you or your corporate ownership wants to tell is the exact antithesis of objectivity.
You can’t just lie. Right, Gov. Kemp? We know the truth. Or should I say…Gov. Thatcher?! (Photo by Taras Chernus on Unsplash)
The same is true with our “Post-Trump” journalists who whine about objectivity being such a burden. If you believe that the former President was speaking falsely, you would not betray objectivity by researching those statements and proving them wrong. You only betray objectivity when you shout, “Liar!” and leave it at that. Even if you are correct in calling him a liar.
Where our contemporary journalists get into trouble and risk their credibility is by sticking to an overarching narrative about politicians and individuals and letting that lens distort every story they touch. That’s how we get journalism where this guy is always evil, this guy is always just, and the reporter is always flawlessly accurate.
The article about “movement journalism” I linked to previously was especially frustrating for me because people are conflating journalism with non-fiction narratives. Objectivity demands facts and verifiable truth. Admittedly, that can be difficult when talking about broad concepts like “racism.” Is racism bad? Obviously. But how exactly do you convey that idea in a news story? How can you combat racism in a news article about city council meetings or state-wide legislation?
I don’t know. But it should probably be done carefully. This is also where I believe that we shouldn’t be so afraid to distinguish between hard news and narrative non-fiction. If you want to tell the stories of people in your community, that’s great. It isn’t news, but it’s great! And it can still be done objectively by letting people tell their story. In fact, it is often much easier to maintain objectivity when letting a source talk rather than trying to analyze all the different inputs for a hard news article.
The people who call themselves movement journalists walk a very difficult tightrope, and it’s one they believe objectivity thwarts. Which is really pitiful thinking. Objectivity lends your story credence. Objectivity lends your movement credibility.
There are obviously some people out there who believe that a black reporter could never talk about something like the Chauvin trial objectively. And you know something? You will probably never convince “those” people otherwise. That’s not your job. Your job as a reporter is to tell the truth without sensationalism and, most importantly, without lying. I don’t presume to tell anyone how best to represent themselves or their community. Far from it. But I do believe that anyone can be truly objective.
We all have our own inherent biases and beliefs. Journalism demands that we ask difficult questions of others and judge the facts. Objectivity demands that we ask difficult questions of ourselves and judge “our facts” against the actual facts.
If we can do that consistently, then our audience will know they can trust us.
One of the things that frustrated me so much with each of these more recent articles about denying objectivity is how they tried to compare the need for more diversity in the newsroom to the dismantling of objectivity. They would argue that “objectivity” was the tool of the privileged or the white elite in order to maintain status quo.
Nope.
There is a strong argument to be made that an article (or even a publication entirely) cannot be truly objective if it ignores diverse opinions. Whether that means interviewing a diverse body of sources or having a diverse writers room, who cares? Make it work. Ignoring objectivity in the name of diversity is like ignoring sunscreen at the beach in the name of supporting Brett Favre. The two are hardly related and you’re gonna get burned.
The one consistently fair point that I saw in each of these articles was that people believed adhering to a skewed idea of objectivity kept certain stories from being told. To go back to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an article that humanizes Palestinian victims and creates sympathy for them might be misconstrued as lacking objectivity. And this is an issue where I can see both sides of it.
Make no mistake. It is vital to talk about the victims of war and conflict. Doing so is not bias. But that doesn’t mean the readership will see it that way, and now we get to the even stickier part of objectivity. The readership has to be ready for it.
If the source of your information is truly objective, that means you are going to dislike what they have to say from time to time. As an audience, we cannot let ourselves get rankled just because we dislike what someone says. What matters is whether or not they are telling us the truth.
Objectivity from the readership means embracing uncomfortable truths above comfortable lies.
True, the types of stories we choose to highlight can, in fact, direct the narrative. More specifically, the stories we choose to ignore can direct the narrative away from what needs to be highlighted. I would still argue that it would show a lack of objectivity to ignore significant stories or communities. But once we choose to tell those stories, we have to do so fairly and truthfully.
“Objectivity from the readership means embracing uncomfortable truths above comfortable lies.”
Of course, one of the movement journalists referred to in the earlier article said that she sometimes doesn’t attend city council meetings on her beat so she can instead talk to people in the community.
Let me ask this question. How can the people in the community be informed about the decisions that their community leaders are making if the person who is paid to inform them isn’t going to those meetings? This reporter is not doing her readership any favors by outright neglecting her job.
Again. Ignoring sources of information in the name of objectivity is completely absurd. I applaud the woman for doing the work of talking to people in the community, but you cannot sacrifice one source for another. You are still ignoring the objectivity of balance in doing so and failing to inform your readership.
The main reason that objectivity matters, though, is because reporters are flawed people. They can be wrong. We can all be wrong. And if we eschew objective facts for our personal opinions and goals, then we cannot be trusted. If we sit on a story we don’t like because it hurts someone we admire, then we are false reporters.
There was an athletic director at one of the schools I covered a few years back who kept hiring coaches from a school he used to teach at. When I noticed this trend in a recent athletic hire, I made a note of it in the story about that new coach. It pained me to do so, because I know how that perceived favoritism can be damaging to an AD, but I had a responsibility to tell the truth. Since I knew the fact, I had to report it. The AD even owned up to it in his meeting with parents about the new coach, and he still has his job several years later, so clearly I didn’t hurt him too badly.
I’ll give you another story from my post-journalism career. A few years ago, someone sent me a hot tip about a big story in the world of sports. They’d heard a rumor from someone else and wanted to know if I knew anything about it. I did not, but that journalism bone was itching. That’s what happens when it floats too far off course, I guess.
Serendipity led me to a source who knew a source who could verify everything I’d heard. It was a true story. However, I was no longer working in sports journalism, so I chose to pass the story along to a few other venerable publications since I did not have the platform to sufficiently break the story. Even if it was potentially a national news item.
Pictured: Journalists who do not need objectivity. (Image Property of Imagine Entertainment/20th Century Fox Television)
Well…that story never broke. The outlets I went to sat on it for various reasons, some legitimate and some less so. In my opinion, that omission was a failure of objectivity. A venerated figure would have been portrayed in a negative light, and at a very inopportune time, and so nobody wanted to touch it.
(For the record, I’m not breaking that story now. It’s been too long now and would only look like muck-raking gossip after so many years. So don’t even ask.)
If we choose journalism, then we have to do so with a valid understanding of objectivity. We cannot believe that objectivity is an obstruction or a shackle to be cast off. Objectivity is a safe-guard for the reporter and a safe-guard for the readership.
Journalism without objectivity is journalism without credibility, and that is journalism that does not deserve to shape the future.