Facts and Objectivity

Emma Kennedy

ek001915@ohio.edu

There is difference between objectivity and reporting about news that is completely wrong in nature. This is what people do not understand when they talk to journalists about objectivity. When a shooting happens, no one accuses a journalist of not being objective when they say the event was tragic and portrays the shooter as a villain.

When something truly wrong happens, or truly good, there is no need to be objective. Not every story has two sides worth telling. Yes, there are technically always two sides but just because there was shooting we as journalists do not report from the side of the shooter, we report the tragedy.

There are people who sympathized with Hitler but journalists did not publish articles saying he was an alright guy, they published articles that he was a murderer and dictator. This is because when something is blatantly good or bad there is no need to find the middle ground. Imagine a tornado ripping through Kansas and having a newspaper or news channel post that it was not a complete tragedy. Some news is black and white and does not require any grey.

Non-objective reporting is when a story has two sides but only one is reported. When a news organization is obviously choosing one side of a story and making a statement about something. This is when reporting becomes political, when the news isn’t blatantly good or bad and the news picks a side on their own.

We see this a lot in politics because news organizations tend to lean one way or another and have a bias. This is done with framing and word choice; some organizations are more severe with their bias.

When an article is posted about Trump and it is opinion, such as the CNN article about him having a golf problem, that is an objectivity problem. However when an article is posted about one of his proposed legislations failing and it actually did then that is not a problem with objectivity. 

When the president fails it is not biased to publish that he failed, a failure is a failure there is no middle ground. When Trump does something wrong in the eyes of the majority then it is not biased to call him out. 

We need to stop being so afraid of bias, taking a side is not always a bad bias. There is not always a need to be completely objective at all time. The world is mostly grey but there is some black and white news. There is news that requires a side to be chosen. 

There will always be someone that will disagree with an article no matter how objective it is. There are people who believe the world is flat so therefore facts clearly do not matter to everyone. If something bad happened report that it was bad. If something good happened report that it was good. Objectivity is a good thing but we also need to publish facts full-heartedly not half-heartedly.