Today's New York Times story on Ken Tomlinson's hired gun analysis on liberal bias in public broadcasting is more about injecting bias into news than eliminating it. By supposedly uncovering bias, the study was meant to provide the rationale for Tomlinson to inject right-wing rhetoric into public news in order to provide "balance." But the whole equation is based on the principle that news is inherently biased (see above post). If these journalists were actually trying to find some objective truth -- based on fact, not rhetoric -- than balance is a non-issue. Truth is the ultimate value -- truth substantiated by evidence.

Notice that the broadcasters quoted in the story are "stunned," and say they try to be informative, not "polemical." This is probably true, which is why they are under attack. The Bush administration has mounted a very successful assault on journalism as objective truth-seeking by having their propogandists trumpet the value of "balance." They trump objectivity and truth with fairness, defining it as providing the viewpoints of all sides of a news event, without (this is the important part) coming to a conclusion about the veracity of either perspective. The primacy of "fairness" over truth has led to the most disheartening trend in journalism -- the news story written or reported by taking one party's press release, running it with quotes from the opposing party's press release, and offering no independent assessment of the truth of either. This is the basic content of most Washington news coverage today.

And this is what the radical right wants, because the "balance" battle is one they are fully armed to win. If truth becomes the primary goal of journalism, they're in trouble.

The greatest teacher I ever had was Dr. Robert McClure of Syracuse University. Back in the 1970's, Dr. McClure was one of the first scholars to promote the idea that objective journalism was an impossible ideal, unachievable in a world of individuals who could only see the world through a limited prism of their own prejudices and experience. In fact, according to the good doctor, the myth of objectivity had created a flaw in our democracy, in that people believed in the objective truth of what they heard, saw and read in the news. Better that journalists and media outlets admit their philosophic prejudices, he said, so that people understand the context of the information they received. As technology increased the variety and number of media voices, the debate between the competing perspectives would enable the citizenry, on an individual basis, to come to their own conclusions about the truth or falsity of differing perspectives on events, politics and policy. In essence, from this media battlefield of conflicting perspectives, a social consensus could emerge from a much more honest debate.

Dr. McClure was a genius, and an inspiring teacher. But he was fatally wrong. He didn't take into account that the most far-reaching media outlets in America would be driven by the need to generate profits for shareholders, and to preserve the political relationships of their ownership. He didn't foresee how the segmentation of media would create an environment in which people of one political perspective would never have to be exposed to information or news that might cause them to question their existing worldview. And he certainly did not predict that the death of the objective ideal in journalism would allow those in power to create a propaganda machine that could masquerade as news, a machine whose sole purpose was consolidation of power and subversion of constitutional balances.

In establishing the belief that the ideal of objective journalism, and in essence objective truth, was dead, the good doctor and those who followed opened the door for propagandists to argue that their untruths carried the same weight as a factual truth. Thirty years ago, a Fox News could not have existed in the United States. It would have been perceived as an equivalent to Tass/Pravda, the Soviet Union's party line propoganda machine. Today, Fox's masters can argue their news is no more subjective than CNN or network news (or for that matter, The Nation) -- all news is subjective, and can justifiably be delivered -- "spun" -- according to the political perspective and goals of the outlet's ownership and its political and business allies.

As a result, facts are buried, reality skewed, events distorted, and lies packaged for public digestion. The fall of objectivity provides full moral foundation for the rise of propaganda-as-reality. If everything is subjective, there is no such thing as the real truth.

But there is. There is. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and we did go to war for a lie. Bill Clinton did not deserve impeachment. Guantanamo is an abominable stain on America's ideals, and we did torture people there. And on the other side, Democratic congressmen are too beholden to insurance companies, casino interests, oil interests and other moneyed interests to play the opposition role they've abrogated in the last decade.

Journalism must regain its faith in objective truth, of the supremacy of the fact, if our democracy is to survive. Journalists must come to see their occupations as a higher calling, even as their salaries are cut and their numbers reduced. Let's be blunt: Objective truth is still breathing in the blogosphere, and among many independent journals and journalists. But compared to the monolithic presence of mass media in the lives of most citizens, it's simply not enough to move the body politic.

So what do we do? That's what I want to blog about. I don't have a clue. But I want to talk about it with people who care, and find out for myself if objectivity truly has a pulse.

Tag: Objectivity