Stay Clear from Personal Bias

Elizabeth Harris

eh109111@ohio.edu

SPJ’s Code of Ethics states: “Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts.” All journalists are bound to experience some type of conflict of interest throughout their career. Whether it be religious, political, personal experience, family related, or economic, a conflict of interest for some type of story is inevitable.  Many times, conflicts of interest that arise can be very difficult for the journalist to deal with; where to draw the can be questionable. However, a good journalist should know when to draw the line when in comes to conflicts of interest.

When working in the field of journalism it is inevitable to become personally vested in some stories. Whether this personal vestment is due to a prior experience, or gained while reporting on a case, how journalists choose to handle it is crucial.

Photo courtesy of the Huffington Post 

Two key components of journalism are objectivity and truth. When journalists choose to get personal in their stories, these two components are challenged. Opinions should be saved for editorials – not objective stories. However, some people are beginning to believe that it is journalists right to express always their opinion. I, along with The New York Times associate managing editor for standards, Phillip Corbett, completely disagree. In a Times article, Corbett states:

“ I flatly reject the notion that there is not such thing as impartial, objective journalism – that it’s some kind of pretense or charade, and we should just give it up, come clean and lay out our biases. We expect professional in all sorts of fields to put their personal opinions aside, or kip them to themselves, when they do their work – judges, police officers, scientists, teachers. Why should we expect less of journalists?

Corbett’s opinion of holding journalist to the same standards of individuals in other professions is completely true. Why should we expect less of journalists when it comes to keeping personal bias aside? The answer is that we should not.

If journalists know that their own personal opinions may jeopardize their ability of reporting objectively on a story, their decision should be to make that conflict of interest known to their editor and simply not report on it.

Political personal bias tends to be a huge problem when it comes to conflicts of interest. For example, say a reporter is dedicated Obama supporter who also happened to be a huge proponent of ObamaCare. This reporter was assigned to write an article on the many troubles the ObamaCare website went through during its launch. However, since this reporter loved ObamaCare so much and wanted the rest of the public to support it, he chose to keep many of the negative facts about the website, making it seem like nothing was wrong with it at all. Therefore, readers of the article did not get the full, true story. This example, demonstrates how personal bias can jeopardize the objectivity and truth in a story. This reporter should have chose not to report on this story; he should have known that his personal opinions would be a conflict of interest that would keep him from reporting on the full truth.

Overall, it is crucial for journalists to always remain objective and report the truth, no matter their personal beliefs. It is our duty to know if we have a conflict of interest in a story that will keep us from being 100 percent objective. If a conflict of interest arises in a story in which they are reporting on, journalists should always take the responsibility to remove themselves from that story; it is unethical not to do so.