Objectivity Was Always a Myth In Journalism

Newspaper clipping on Tulsa Race Riots from Oklahoman.com

   

A journalist operates as a medium between events and the public. Their job is to investigate events, issues and ideas for an eager public that needs their work to see the truth around them. In this role, it's often been said that a journalist strives for objectivity or that they are a balanced figure in an incredibly biased world. Clearly, too, our class has read many ethics codes of conduct that have emphasized that a good reporter is objective.

One of the articles we read this week, "Why Journalism is shifting away from Objectivity" argues that the Donald Trump presidential era is bringing the industry into an era where objective journalism is no longer the goal. The article supports its points by talking about the erosion of trust in media, mainstream news feud with Trump and opines on the future in the process.

There's only one problem with this article: objectivity was always a myth in the first place!

As we enter into an era that is more tolerant and less explicitly racist than the past, the work of journalists in previous decades shows itself as more and more faulty by the day. For instance, take a look at the reporting on the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 by the Tulsa Daily World.

Objectively, this was an incident where white rage and the American government joined forces to domestically terrorize Black Americans. For those people, Black wealth, families and communities were destroyed. The Tulsa Race Riot has recently been immortalized in pop culture through television shows like Watchmen and Lovecraft County, who both use their platforms on HBO to shed a light on an oft-forgotten history.

At that time, racist White journalism didn't do its job to tell the truth about what happened in Tulsa. Attached at the top of this blog post is the front page of the Tulsa Daily World after the event. In bold, the headline says nothing of the Black people who lost their life. Instead, it reads "Two Whites Dead in Race Riot". 

Was that objective reporting? Was that balanced? Nope.

Truthfully, I am suspicious of the recent push to undermine objectivity in journalism because in truth, it has never existed in the first place. Journalists of every era all have blindspots and prejudices that influence every decision of their reporting process. While it may not always be as obviously egregious as the Tulsa Daily World's headline, it has manifested itself in covert ways in countless papers.

I do not think that it is a coincidence that as newsrooms are becoming more diverse and increasingly vocal against White supremacy, objectivity is being called into question. One only needs to look into our past to see that people have never been truly objective, but they've been allowed to masquerade as such because they were White. They were given an unearned authority that their Black counterparts were not given the benefit of the doubt to experience.

Hopefully, the future of journalism is one where readers, writers and everyone in-between are able to be self-aware about the history and state of their industry. Currently, complaining about objectivity or the lack-thereof nowadays shows ignorance and dismissal of past injustices.