Me and WorldNetDaily on the same page? Scary. But I can't help it, I think Bob Kohn got this one right. Well, till he runs off the rails a bit at the end. And the Columbia Journalism Review should be ashamed. Brent Cunningham blows it when he says objectivity "excuses lazy reporting." The opposite is true; objectivity requires aggressive reporting. Objectivity is not balace, or fairness -- objectivity is dedication to the truth, no matter what your bias going into a story.

Webster defines objectivity as "being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought." In other words, what is, not what I think it is. I realize the philosophical simplicity of such a statement would hardly be considered very modern, or post-modern, or post, post modern. But the belief in truth over relativism is the only thing that makes journalism, and subsequently democracy, practicable. If we cannot know the truth in any instance, then everything is a lie. Karl Rove's paradise.