I’ve just finished Stephen Ward’s book, The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond, and it should be required reading for thoughtful journalists, journalism educators, media critics, bloggers….
(Note: The link above goes to McGill-Queen’s University Press, the book’s publisher. You may prefer to track it down through your favourite independent bookstore or Alibris.)
It’s not necessarily an easy read: Ward covers 400 years of the development of journalism and the continual evolution of journalistic ethics and the concept of objectivity. His bright, fluid writing style helps immensely.
The going gets tougher in the final section as Ward, a journalism professor at the University of British Columbia here in Vancouver, lays out his prescription for what comes after the current understanding of objectivity. It’s a deep and well-thought-out theory he calls pragmatic objectivity.
What he has done, to put it way too simply, is provide a philosophic framework that underpins the best journalism. Ward tosses out the standard, and discredited, current idea of journalistic objectivity and replaces it with a philosophy that allows for a broader approach to truth-seeking within constraints that include integrity and fairness. (As I said, this is way too simple a recap of his theory.)
Ward doesn’t attempt to reinvent journalism, but to provide a new theory to provide a solid basis for the practice of journalism, whether as “just the facts” or as analysis and even argument. It’s a theory that makes sense intellectually and at a gut level.
A sample:
The aim of a theory of pragmatic objectivity is to find a place for objectivity in a world where fact, value, theory, and practical interests intertwine inextricably. Pragmatic objectivity does not require detachment from all values and perspectives — an impossible demand. Instead, it tests the essential activities of interpreting, evaluating, and adopting a perspective. Objectivity operates as an instrument of rational restraint within the pragmatic, purposive activity of journalism. Pragmatic objectivity is acutely aware of, and therefore allows for, human feelings — it wears a human face.
Ward loses me only in the epilogue of his book, The Future of Objectivity, when he deals with online media and insists on treating it as something apart from “journalism,” and when he writes of the need for a global ethics of journalism. The latter, it seems to me, is weakened by Ward’s dependence on a solely western perspective. Those are minor quibbles, though, and do nothing to erode the strength of this piece.
Ward’s book is a book of theory, not a practical guide to the application of pragmatic objectivity. He writes:
It is up to journalists themselves whether they wish to adopt pragmatic objectivity as an ethical theory. As for the application of pragmatic objectivity to specific stories, that will depend on the practical wisdom and holistic judgment of journalists in the field.
Ward’s book is a big book, with big ideas that need to be spread and discussed and even, as he suggests, tried in the field by journalists eager for an updated ethical platform to guide and explain their role in their world.
So far, there’s no buzz in the mediasphere on Ward’s book. I hope that changes as more people are exposed to his proposed theory. It deserves to be widely read and discussed.
(ODDLY: When I did a Technorati search of the Ward’s book to see who is writing what — no one is other than me at the moment — one of the text ads that got served up was this: Downloadable Papers: Established site sells papers on Journalism Ethics. Yeesh.)
TAGS: JOURNALISM, OBJECTIVITY, ETHICS, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY
