I find it hard to believe that the O word — objectivity — is still a matter of teeth-gnashing and hairshirt-wearing among journalists and critics. Yet, here it is again, in the CJR’s article The Objectivity Problem, based on some debate that’s being batted around by a few A-list bloggers.
Coincidentally, I read this today, from a 50-year essay by E.B. White:
I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or nonpolitical, that doesn’t have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright. The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is. This he does. It is only when a press gets its twist from a single source, as in the case of government-controlled press systems, that the reader is licked.
To me, the whole discussion about journalists and objectivity, and its pallid sibling “balance,” wastes time. For one thing, objectivity is an outmoded idea, from a passed age of efficiency experts and conversion of craft to profession. I like White’s idea of journalists who are “born upright” — honest and honourable in intent and practice, regardless of which side of perpendicular they lean to.
(The essay I refer to is titled Bedfellows and, like much of what White wrote, it is a marvel.)
TAGS: JOURNALISM, OBJECTIVITY, E.B. WHITE
Or, as Hunter S. Thompson said, “With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradition in terms.”
Yes, the moment we start talking about the “angle” on a story, some form of objectivity is lost.
True objectivity isn’t possible – the best we can hope for is transparent bias; as you say, honour and honesty.