Objectivity didn’t fail journalism. Journalists failed it

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Much like America, journalism has descended into anarchy in recent weeks. While progressive politicians push to abolish the police, prominent journalists are calling to abolish the long-standing principle of reporting news objectively.

The nation’s so-called “newspaper of record” recently became ground zero for this “Bizarro World” journalism, an initiative that threatens to destroy the credibility of the craft by making it seem unprincipled, dishonest, and biased.

After staffers protested the New York Times publishing Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s controversial op-ed on nationwide protests, the editorial page editor resigned, and the newspaper promised to change its policies. Similar conflicts emerged at other outlets.

Due to the “tumult” caused by Donald Trump’s presidency, Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan argued the old approach of “‘just tell me the bare facts [and] don’t be on anyone’s side’ … doesn’t always work, especially right now … that’s why the notion to ‘represent all points of view equally’ is absurd and sometimes wrongheaded.”

60 Minutes correspondent Wesley Lowery declared: “American view-from-nowhere, ‘objectivity’-obsessed, both-sides journalism is a failed experiment. We need to fundamentally reset the norms of our field. The old way must go.”

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen proposes reporters instead “tell it like it is without also insisting on the View from Nowhere.” For several years, he’s been leading a movement to upend traditional journalism practices. He contends, “American journalism is dumber than most journalists.” In 2013, he predicted, “If the View from Nowhere continues on, unchallenged, trust in the news media will probably continue to decline.”

But the opposite is true. Journalism’s long-standing principles did not fail; rather, journalists failed to adhere to them. As journalists abandoned those core values in favor of an alternative approach, public trust in the press declined.

A 2018 Gallup poll found that only 32% of Americans say the media “is careful to separate fact from opinion” compared to 58% in 1984; 45% see a “great deal of political bias in news coverage,” up from 25% in 1989; and a majority couldn’t name a source that reports news objectively. Meanwhile, from 1999 to 2019, trust in journalists declined from 55% to 41%.

The problem with journalists telling it as they see it is they’re constrained by a myopic view. And they’re not as smart as they think.

“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old. … They literally know nothing,” observed Obama adviser Ben Rhodes in 2016.

Indeed, among today’s journalists, nearly 80% are white, only 7% are conservative, and a significant number live in one of three cities — a demographic completely unrepresentative of America. Most reporters are generalists with humanities degrees, many are millennials, and few come from poor backgrounds.

Should we entrust them to “tell it like it is” to a working-class family in Nebraska?

“Journalists, at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste,” conceded journalist Will Rahn. “We believe we not only have access to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice. You’d think that Trump’s victory — the one we all discounted too far in advance — would lead to a certain newfound humility in the political press. But, of course, that’s not how it works.”

Instead, in recent weeks, reporters have wildly speculated on health issues, such as the Atlantic article predicting great “human sacrifice” when Georgia ended its COVID-19 lockdown in late April. A month later, coronavirus cases hadn’t surged.

Journalists have distorted the meaning of laws, such as the New York Times story on Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act, which was excoriated by legal experts.

The press has even publicized fake news, such as the CNN, Politico, Newsweek, New York Daily News, and Associated Press reporters who grossly misrepresented Trump’s remarks about George Floyd.

This penchant for narratives over facts has likewise led to deeply flawed reporting by the New York Times’s staff on major stories ranging from Russiagate to the history of slavery.

When experts have attempted to challenge popular media narratives either by publishing opinion pieces in the outlets or on alternate platforms such as YouTube, journalists have sought to censor them.

There is a remedy for this problem. Because journalists’ perception of reality is vulnerable to distortions and biases, the profession a century ago adopted a practice similar to the scientific method to discover the truth. It’s known as objectivity.

“The concept … [does] not imply that journalists [a]re free of bias,” the American Press Institute explains. “It call[s], rather, for a consistent method of testing information — a transparent approach to evidence — precisely so that personal and cultural biases [do] not undermine the accuracy of the work. The method is objective, not the journalist. Seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, all signal such standards. [It] is what separates journalism from other forms of communication such as propaganda, advertising, fiction.”

Similarly, the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states the most important principle for journalists is to “seek truth and report it.” In order to do so, “journalists should … support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.”

Defenders of the avant-garde approach to journalism might counter that some views shouldn’t be amplified. “If we say the world is round, we won’t feel obliged to find someone to argue the flat-earth position,” Rosen stated.

But that’s a straw man: How often do journalists tackle a settled issue like the earth’s shape? The biggest news stories usually involve controversies that reasonable people can disagree on and require difficult solutions. Experts have debated and flip-flopped on how to handle the coronavirus, for example. Journalists undermine their search for the truth when they deprive their coverage of critics who ask different questions and make different background assumptions. Studies show that groupthink leads to poor problem-solving. Conservatives and liberals alike can fall victim to motivated reasoning and confirmation bias.

The New York Times, of all news outlets, should know better. Objectivity standards exist precisely because of its past failures.

In August 1920, Walter Lippmann published a “scathing account of how cultural blinders had distorted the New York Times coverage of the Russian Revolution,” API notes. “The news about Russia is a case of seeing not what was, but what men wished to see,” Lippmann wrote.

So, he and others developed ways for journalists “to remain clear and free of his irrational, his unexamined, his unacknowledged prejudgments in observing, understanding and presenting the news.”

Unfortunately, history is repeating itself at the New York Times. But given the current staff’s questionable understanding of history, perhaps it’s no surprise.

Mark Grabowski is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He teaches media law and ethics at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York.

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