Objective? The Media? Sometimes.
How can any news organization make any pretense of being objective once it has taken a public stance supporting or opposing any candidate or taken a position on any political question?
The LA Times and the Washington Post have announced that they will not be making any endorsement in this year's presidential election. The owners of both papers stated that they made the decisions not to endorse. There has been vehement and very public objection to these decisions by the respective newspapers' staffs. Editorial staff members at both papers have resigned in protests. Staff at both papers are upset, claiming failure to endorse a candidate violates long-standing tradition. The Post had endorsed a presidential candidate in every election since 1988.
The Post was founded in 1877. It endorsed candidates in most elections, but sat out the Presidential elections in 1960, 64, 68, and 72. Those were the years of the Vietnam War and widespread riots in 1968. I don’t recall many eras in US history with as much internal turmoil as the 1960s and 1970s. Why not make an endorsement?
Post columnist Karen Attiah quoted former Post editor Phillip Geyelin as writing that political endorsements “may have the effect of pinning a campaign button on a newspaper’s political reporters. … On the other hand, a compelling argument may be made that a newspaper ought to be willing to take a position on an issue on which every public-spirited citizen is expected to reach a conclusion.”
Geyelin followed with “Readers, I think, no longer want to be told by newspapers who to vote for, or what to be in favor of, or against, as much as they want to know what matters.”
I think Geyelin had the right idea.
I don’t want some goober with a barrel of ink and a truckload of paper to tell me who I should vote for any more than I want that person to tell me that tofu and twigs are better for me than bacon and grits. Instead, show me the facts. Use numbers and concrete examples when you have them.
One of my Ole Miss roommates in the late 1970s was a journalism major. He worked hard to get his stories straight. After graduation he did TV and print sports reporting in Meridian. He eventually moved on and spent the last 20-25 years of his life as a news writer for CNN. Every once in a while, he’d mention some story or other that he’d done for Wolf Blitzer or some other CNN talking head. His pieces always followed the Joe Friday formula of “just the facts, ma’am.” I think he did good work.
In person? His opinions and politics were so far left he made Bernie Sanders sound like Ted Cruz. That never showed in his reporting. He followed the old school rule that opinion belongs in the opinion section. News belongs in the news section.
Like my roommate, every person who writes for any news organization comes in with their own biases and opinions. Some recognize that and go out of their way to present opposing views. I like those writers.
Others, believing like Jake and Elwood that they are on a Mission from God, make a point to infuse their bases into everything they write. That used to be called Yellow Journalism. The new term is Advocacy Journalism. Ole Miss Journalism professors Tom Farrar and Gayle Denley told us that wasn’t what news reporters did. That was the job of editorialists.
Some advocacy journalists are so convinced of the rightness of their cause and their opinions that they believe that those who disagree with them, whether it concerns salvation or the wrongness of eliminating a state income tax are evil and should be destroyed. We recently saw a prime example of that in a statewide publication that professes to be objective.
So, back to the original question.
How can any news organization make any pretense of being objective once it has taken a public stance supporting or opposing any candidate or taken a position on any political question?
By doing what my roommate did. Recognize your biases. Keep opinion on the opinion page. Keep news in the news section.
And don’t pretend to be fair and balanced when you know you’re not.
