OBJECTIVITY
A former executive editor of The Washington Post and current journalism professor wrote a guest essay for the Post addressing evolving opinions in journalism as to the proper role of “objectivity” in reporting and editing news. A conservative columnist for the New York Times responded with his own piece, castigating the first essay for suggesting “objectivity” might have become a pseudonym and cover for a news organization’s adoption of a traditional white, straight man’s perspective and orientation.
The two essays raise the question of whether it’s humanly possible, or even desirable, for a news organization (or any human, for that matter) to be objectively “objective.” This piece offers the case that it’s neither possible nor desirable.
The former executive editor, Leonard Downie, Jr., wrote “Newsrooms That Move Beyond ‘Objectivity’ Can Build Trust,” printed in the Washington Post on January 30, 2023. He wrote that he, having risen in the ranks under the guidance of Ben Bradlee at the Post in the Watergate era, rejected the traditional idea of “objectivity” as a viable standard for a newsroom, because he and others came to identify it with “unquestioning news coverage of institutional power.” In other words, acceptance of and acquiescence to the abuses of the powerful.
In place of “objectivity,” Mr. Downie seeks to promote the editorial goals of “accuracy, fairness, nonpartisanship, accountability, and the pursuit of truth.” He feels those goals are better than “objectivity” to avoid “false balance” or “bothsidesism” or moral equivalization of morally disparate points of view. He pointed out “bothsidesism” can impair reporting on race, gender, sexual practices and identity, wealth distribution, abusive policing, immigration, climate concerns, and other topics often considered left-leaning, from which it can reasonably be assumed that Mr. Downie is on the progressive side of politics.
Mr. Downie and his colleague Andrew Heyward had prepared a report on journalistic objectivity, and his essay drew from comments they obtained from media leaders and experts. Many of the comments favored modification or abandonment of “traditional objectivity” and adoption of more diversity of reportorial and editorial viewpoints. Mr. Downie said his own aim was “not just for accuracy based on verifiable facts but also for truth.”
There is nothing “objectively” objectionable or controversial expressed here by Mr. Downie. A fair reading of his piece is that he and many journalists simply regard traditional notions of objectivity as a false flag flown by white, straight, power- and privilege-preserving old guard journalists.
Yet the New York Times columnist identified many offenses in Downie’s essay. In “How to Destroy (What’s Left Of) the Mainstream Media’s Credibility,” Bret Stephens says Mr. Downie and his colleague “have a mistaken idea of journalism’s purpose in a free society.” He educates us all as to the proper purpose of journalism. He asserts The Washington Post and other news organizations “lose public trust when they pretend to be something they aren’t,” implying they have no interest in truth or accuracy. Mr. Stephens reminds us that the organizations are “businesses,” by which he implies we should all be mindful that they are just selling a product and we should all be suspicious of their motives. He says, “We [the journalistic community} are not simply disinterested defenders of democracy writ large,” which seems an odd assertion in a piece dedicated to the proposition that journalism should be scrupulously “objective.”
His remedy? Mr. Stephens advises that, in order to regain public trust, news media “could get off our high horse and be a bit more self-aware about our privileged and often troubling role in society.” That appears to be in line with Mr. Downie’s skepticism about traditional objectivity, but with the added cynicism that news is primarily about selling a product and not about the quality of it.
Mr. Stephens offers three more pillars of the “purpose of journalism in a free society,” over and above his suggestion we should all discredit journalism as mere merchandising. He says journalism isn’t in the ‘truth’ business, but that its job is only “to collect and present relevant facts and good evidence.” The “truth” component is entirely to be left to the consumer of the facts. To Mr. Stephens, “nonobjective truth” is appropriate only on the opinion page, where subjective takes on events are expected. Journalism, he says, is to provide “the public with the raw materials it needs to shape intelligent opinion and effective policy,” sort of like Sargent Friday on Dragnet limiting himself to “just the facts.”
Mr. Stephens third pillar of the purpose of journalism is the proposition that, while it may be hard to achieve, objectivity is “an immense help…to keep reporters from putting their own spin on things or excluding people and arguments they dislike from coverage.” He disagrees with Mr. Downie, applauding “bothsidesism” as a “crucial way to build trust” in a diverse culture. He rejects out of hand that objectivity is “somehow tainted by a white, straight male pedigree,” without resort to facts and figures as to who makes journalistic decisions in America. He thinks the idea of taint is as absurd as questioning calculus or medical science just because they are largely the product of white men. Apparently he sees proper news reporting and editing as being as reducible to unequivocal fact as an equation or lab counts.
His fourth and final point in providing us with the proper purpose of journalism in a free society is that it is about “listening” as well as “reporting.” He agrees with Mr. Downie that diverse newsrooms “can help readers gain the perspective of people from marginalized communities.” (How he squares this with his insistence that reporting provide just factual “raw material” is unclear; an Islamic black trans male should extract the same factual raw material from the fire or shooting or accident as anyone else.) But a reporter’s “listening” duty “must also extend to the sorts of Americans much of the mainstream media now sees, at best, as a foreign tribe, and at worst, grave threats to democracy itself: people like religious conservatives, home-schoolers, gun owners and Trump supporters.” In violation of this “listening” duty, he says much of mainstream journalism treats “this part of America” with “condescension and name-calling (‘racist,’ ‘misinformer,’ ‘-phobic,’ and so on).”
Distilling the four points of Mr. Stephens’s tutorial on the purpose of journalism, we get:
Journalism is a business, so let the buyer/consumer of news beware.
Journalism has no business delving into truth, but must restrict itself to factual raw material.
Traditional journalistic objectivity is, in fact, favorable to “bothsidesism,” and that’s a good thing.
Journalism should be courteous and polite to Trump supporters and religious conservatives.
It’s hard to identify what role Mr. Stephens actually envisions for journalism. It appears he thinks “Journalism should be a neutral data base, offering a reliable stream of accurate who, what, where, and when, without a hint of judgment or position as to the events reported, with the exception that, if the reporting could possibly be construed as favoring any party or position (like calling a riot a riot, for instance), then care must be taken to present an equally favorable presentation from other points of view (it was also a nice, well-intended expression of First Amendment rights). But, on the other hand, if the who, what, when, and where of the reporting concern a lie, or misinformation or disinformation, or unreasonable, unfounded and paranoid fear, that cannot be reported as such, because it’s disrespectful to liars, information-distorters, and phobic people. Or, if it must be reported, it must be reported neutrally: “Senator Whimsy said today the sun rose in his state today in the West, because too many of the state’s residents favor abortion.” The reader must decide if that’s kooky or not. Alternatively, we should disregard all mainstream media all the time because it’s just a business.”
It seems Mr. Stephens sees his prescriptions as antidote to the dangerous destruction of whatever vestigial credibility is left to the mainstream media. That destruction is represented by Mr. Downie’s having the temerity to suggest traditional journalistic objectivity is not really objective but a tool for protecting entrenched privileges and interests.
Pared to essentials, Mr. Stephens view is that journalism should be neutered, because it is really “the mind, voice and arm of the political left” (he says this is the “belief of many Americans,” but it is his own view as well). But he’s not addressing journalism at all—he’s addressing only the progressively oriented wing of journalism. He uses “journalism” repeatedly in his essay, but every reference is actually directed to and against “mainstream media,” meaning what he sees as liberal journalism. He’s unconcerned about fairness, or objectivity, or balance, or nonpartisanship in journalism at large. He wants mainstream media to be more favorable and flattering in depicting the political right.
Fox News makes no appearance in the essay. The Wall Street Journal is unmentioned. Breitbart—not here. They are among the journalistic organs that are the “mind, voice and arm” of the political right. Fox doesn’t appear to embrace a standard of sensitive listening, or to enforce a prohibition against condescension and name-calling as to the left. Fox News might be said to encourage viewing liberals as “at best, a foreign tribe, and at worst, a grave threat to democracy.” Mr. Stephens has no concern about overall journalistic standards, but only journalistic allegiances.
This supposed tutorial on the purpose of journalism in a free society never grapples with the fact that this particular free society comprises one half that sees the other half as a foreign tribe or grave threat to democracy. Our primary “news” is that we are riven to a consuming and maybe existential extent. Our “news” is that we fear, distrust, despise, and dehumanize each other. Our “news” is that we all fear devolving either into an autocracy or into a godless socialism. Our “news” is that religious conservatives, home-schoolers, gun owners, and Trump supporters largely imagine one template for the society and that secularists, public-schoolers, gun control advocates, and Biden supporters imagine a far different template, and the fight is on as to which template will prevail.
The proper purpose of journalism in this still-free society isn’t objectivity. It’s preservation of the society as a viable and recognizable version of itself. Journalism is like any other human organization or endeavor: its participants have points of view. Culture exists to instill and to discourage certain points of view. There is no objective point of view, other than the bland cataloguing of all points of view as if all have equal human legitimacy or utility. They don’t and they can’t. Even if in the mind of God or in the Forms of Plato there is the correct point of view, it doesn’t matter—we’ll never acknowledge it or agree to it.
Journalism is the most promising of our disheveled institutions. Not progressive or conservative journalism, but the whole mess of it, including all its abusers and manipulators on both sides. We still communicate, even if vituperatively, indelicately, meanly. But journalism as a whole, reporting who and how we are by virtue of our beliefs and behaviors, is inherently evaluative, because we all are evaluative. There are no neutral humans, no neutral behaviors, no objective and fully fair-minded beliefs or thoughts—they’re all oriented one way or another. All important and meaningful communication carries judgment, moralization, discernment, encouragement or discouragement of feeling and behavior. There’s no objective Mr. Stephens, or Mr. Downie, or Mr. Helms. We’re all on our own “high horses,” and we all could be “more self-aware.” But saying our curative is for mainstream media to pretend that January 6 wasn’t an unalloyed national tragedy and disgrace is false.
Mr. Stephens, whose essays I’ve followed for a long time, is a dogged apologist for conservative ideology. Despite the saving grace that he repudiates Trumpian excesses, he and other “moderate” conservative opinionators provide cover and legitimacy for Trumpian excesses relentlessly. His pieces are a habitual grousing that the left is unfair and haughty, a constant complaint that conservatives suffer persecution and disrespect for their good-faith views. They do, and so do progressives. And both sides sometimes get excoriated for their bad-faith views as well. It’s hard to understand how a pundit can write about journalistic objectivity without mention of the standards of conservative journalism, without some effort to compare and contrast the approaches of the two opposed “minds, voices, and arms” of our cultural divide. It’s hard to see why Mr. Stephens doesn’t include an acknowledgement that one of the liberal organs, The New York Times, provides him with pulpit and bullhorn to complain about mainstream media, to express resentment at such players as The New York Times, and presumably pays him for it.
Journalism is the whole shebang, conservative and progressive, good-faithed and bad-faithed in both camps, earnest and manipulative in both camps, and there are no completely unsullied participants. Taken as a whole, the question is whether there is still an active and vibrant exponent for all views out there. That’s the only way to measure a society’s journalistic objectivity, and it’s quite different from whining that “mainstream media” is slanted while remaining mum about its opposing forces. We still meet this standard of objectivity, so far.
Speech is at risk everywhere—the Supreme Court is being lobbied to overturn New York Times versus Sullivan. Books are being banned and sought to be banned. “Religious belief” seems to occupy a primacy and untouchability that trumps other discrimination concerns for this Supreme Court. Whether The Washington Post is polite and coddling to Trump supporters, whether it “listens” attentively and encouragingly to them, is among our lesser concerns. Mr. Stephens knows that as well as any thoughtful person, but he keeps the grievance going.
Another level of irony in this situation is that this commentator doesn’t agree fully with Mr. Downie. I agree with Mr. Stephens that journalism doesn’t belong in the business or service of “truth,” beyond the rudimentary insistence on fact-checking and multiple-sourcing of who, what, where, and when. Mr. Downie wrote that his editorial goals include accuracy, fairness, nonpartisanship, accountability, and the pursuit of truth. If his “truth” includes some higher goal than factual accuracy, I think he’s wrong. There is no “true” or untrue political or moral or spiritual or any other kind of belief. There are only more and less functional and harmony-facilitating beliefs, and we’ll always disagree as to what that entails.
I also disagree with Mr. Downie’s statement that nonpartisanship is a worthy goal of current journalism, for the same reason I object to Mr. Stephens’s position that mainstream media should be nice to Trump supporters. The Republican Party has continued to align itself with Trump, and it is effectively the Party of Trump. Indications are that a ditching of Trump will result in elevation of a smarter, more dangerous Trump figure like Mr. DeSantis. There is no sin in any journalism organ speaking out and opposing Trumpism autocracy and evisceration of law and institutions. In fact, it’s a dereliction not to oppose them.
“Partisanship” is an actual entity only when a relatively cohesive nation is participating collectively in a “democracy” that all define as having some set parameters. We shed that status with January 6 if not long before. Partisanship has no meaning when the thrust of one party is to redefine and eviscerate the democracy itself. That is civil unrest, destabilization, threatened disruption of the structural underpinnings we require as a country. It’s an internal threat that functions the same as an external one.
A final irony is that Mr. Stephens’s essay appears on its face to be relatively benign, thoughtful, imbued with concern for journalistic objectivity and evenhandedness. He looks back wistfully at some imagined past: “We were a saner country when we could argue from a common set of uncontested facts,” he writes near the beginning of the essay. What roils the country now is not serious disagreement about the facts of our behavior. It’s the interpretation of, response to, level of alarm at, the “facts” we all know and observe. January 6 is a fact. Testimony of hundreds of witnesses, mostly Republicans, before the January 6 Committee is fact—not that every word was accurate, but that the overwhelming evidence was that Trump and many of his helpers sought to subvert an election and the transition of power. How the new conservative supermajority of the Court rules on formerly settled law is a fact.
Mr. Stephens apparently thinks “objectivity” in journalism (if one is in mainstream or progressive journalism, that is) includes a solemn duty not to say anything that hints at approval or disapproval. “Thousands approached and entered the Capitol today. Here are some video clips. Here at NBC, we decline to characterize the approach and entrance further, trusting in our viewers to form their own opinions. In fact, our official position is neutral as to whether this was a positive, negative, or neutral event in the country’s history.”
Herbert Morrison broke Mr. Stephens’s objectivity rule when he wept and uttered, “The humanity…” while reporting the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. After all, it was a German airship controlled by the Nazi regime. Some might have been pleased it burned and crashed, and Mr. Morrison shouldn’t have imposed his emotional gloss on the who, what, where, and when.
The innocuous-seeming essay of Mr. Stephens is another instance of massive disingenuity of conservatives afraid to say clearly and out loud: “Trump is a mortal danger to everyone. His hold on the Republican Party is a bad thing. The party itself has become a bad thing.” That would be unobjective.
Written February 10, 2023
©2023 by Lawrence Helms
