No, Objectivity isn't Dead

Nick Henthorn
nh685616@ohio.edu

If you posed the question "is objectivity dead?" to Google, the answer you'd receive is a categorical yes. The first search result is titled "Objectivity is dead, and I'm okay with it." This is not true.

It is not possible for objectivity to just disappear into the ether, where the journalistic world woke up one day and, shocked and dismayed, discovered that objectivity could not be found anymore. Objectivity can only be abandoned, as it does by those who go forth and falsely tell readers that a fundamental root of journalism and information in general had a lifespan.

Objectivity is more elusive, more inconvenient, and more demanding for today's journalists, but one thing it is not and can never be is dead.

It is those three things for a few chief reasons. In an age of news where outlets are so easily accessible and the industry is so saturated, objectivity may not get as many of the all-mighty clicks as news with incendiary flames of passion and fervor woven into the story. While I write this with grief, some journalists like it this way, and some can be found in this very university.

I recall Judy Woodruff taking the time to pay my Journalism 1010 class a visit, where she was asked why PBS was thought of as dry, and why couldn't they spice things up a little. This is hazardous thinking. The idea that news is obligated to entertain and inspire awe in readers, listeners and watchers can lead the people providing the news short of the truth. If news is an entree it should not be delicious, only digestable. Dry news is not a failing of any outlet, but the best way to convey objectivity that there is.

Credit: Detroit Public Television

Journalists can also be pushed away from objectivity because of how exposed they are to their audience. As Dan Kennedy wrote for WGBH, social media makes it impossible for journalists to separate their work environment from their personal one. This leads to some journalists' twitter profiles being filled with hot takes and scathing criticisms while they claim their work is still objective. In the year 2018, a journalist's Twitter profile is their work. And that makes objectivity a round-the-clock effort.

Objectivity is impossible, some may say. I, and everyone on the earth, have a bias, they say, and pretending that I don't is lying. To that, I reply, having a bias does not compel you to spew that bias all over your work.

Restraint is one of the most important qualities a journalist can have today, one of the reasons being that it allows him or her to respect their audience, and give them only the facts of any matter without pulling them towards their own personal conclusion. I myself have a few opinions. Opinions on freedom of speech, on immigration, on gun rights, and on and on and on. But those biases don't belong here, so I'll leave them to the side. It's not impossible.

Some have captured the word "objective" and casually contorted it to mean "fair." How this was allowed to happen behooves the mind because fairness is a subjective term. This rewriting of journalistic tenets makes the word the exact opposite of itself; it makes objectivity subjective. What is fair to one may seem horribly slanted to another.

For objectivity to be preserved in a time where half of America doesn't consider any news source to be such, a fair way to present the story should be thrown on the back burner, and journalists should use all their tools and training to go back to the good 'ol five Ws that we have been taught since grade school.