Kirk Caraway, the internet editor for the Nevada Appeal, asks a very obvious question about Bush's budget - why didn't anyone ask any tough questions about it? But I like what he notes about the degradation of objectivity:
"You see, reporters are taught to tell all sides of the story, and present them equally. And this seems like a fair way to report the news, until the story subjects figure out how easy it is to manipulate the process.
"It's really rather simple. If you are in a position of power, tell a big lie, the bigger the better, and when anyone questions you on it, attack them as biased or partisan. The press will treat each side as equal, and the lie is passed on as truth."
"You see, reporters are taught to tell all sides of the story, and present them equally. And this seems like a fair way to report the news, until the story subjects figure out how easy it is to manipulate the process.
"It's really rather simple. If you are in a position of power, tell a big lie, the bigger the better, and when anyone questions you on it, attack them as biased or partisan. The press will treat each side as equal, and the lie is passed on as truth."
posted by Tom at 8:12 PM
1 Comments:
It seems to me that truth is basically irrelevant within the current concept of "objectivity" in journalism. In a capitalist society, the journalist must place profit high in his list of priorities, and profit requires as large a readership/viewership as possible. If the goal of the journalist is not objectivity, then he simply figures out who his base is -- the target audience of Fox News is fairly obvious -- and goes after them by reporting subjectively, treating that audience's worldview as the center and placing the rest of society as an extremist fringe. If, on the other hand, the journalist seeks objectivity, this means he must appeal to those coming from different viewpoints, religions, races, political affiliations, etc. Thus, objectivity becomes not about truth REGARDLESS of the audience's viewpoints, but objectivity BASED on the audience's viewpoints, and the journalist futilely attempts to locate some middle ground, treating all sides as objectively equal. In a society where half the audience is seen as liberal and half as conservative, what you end up with, then, is overly safe, pasteurized, skewed journalism, i.e. CNN. A reporter is expected not to find out objective truth, but rather to toe the nonexistent line down the imaginary center of leftwing and rightwing partisans. The only flavor to this journalism comes when they allow representatives of those partisan groups to mindlessly duke it out in that sad sort of "Crossfire" theater, of which Jon Stewart so easily made a public mockery.
Unfortunately, to many the failure of the impossible CNN-type journalism lends credence to the Fox Newses, who after all cannot be put to shame in the same way because they don't attempt objectivity at all, and they are entirely grounded within their own grand narrative.
As long as the concept of objectivity remains tied to the whims of the capitalist society it functions inside, objectivity is subject to those who control the opinions of the masses. It is nearly impossible for a news corporation to be expected to find objective truth when 51% of the US population believes in the Bush grand narrative, and creationism and evolutionary theory are supposed to be thought of as equally valid.
Post a Comment
<< Home