November 9, 2010 | 11:31 AM | By

Is journalistic objectivity outdated?

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Are the ideas of journalistic objectivity and balanced, fair reporting outdated?

Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor and media blogger, calls for journalists to come clean about their personal views and political leanings:

self-respecting journalists should consider it an obligation to be transparent. Self-respecting news organizations should be honest with their communities and reveal the aggregate perspectives of their staffs. It’s relevant.

We have the ethic of journalism exactly reversed from what it should be: Journalists should be the most open, the most transparent, a model of honesty.

Over at Collide-A-Scape, Keith Kloor asks whether the idea should apply to science journalists, as well as political reporters:

What about this? I assume Jarvis is referring to all journalists, not just political reporters. So I wonder how science journalists feel about this. Do they think it would be a good thing for journalism if they revealed who they voted for in an election?

What about the reader? Do you feel this is necessary? Also, would your perception of an article on climate change be influenced by your knowledge of the political orientation of the reporter?

It’s an interesting question. Many climate change bloggers make it perfectly clear where they stand, at least on climate and energy issues – denier, skeptic, hawk, etc.. And in such a polarized debate, where simply adhering to scientific consensus is considered a bias, it’s almost impossible to be universally perceived as objective. So is it worth the effort? Would owning up to political leanings clear the air for a more honest discourse? Or demolish the last possible avenue to respectful dialogue?

  • http://twitter.com/mims Christopher Mims

    I generally agree with Rosen (even in this), but there is something to be said for at least attempting to be objective. Getting both sides of a story is very important and if we’re not reaching past our own biases, we are doing the reader a disservice. Pretending that we don’t have those biases, though? That’s completely disingenuous.

    Maybe we simply need to redefine objectivity: It’s not “my biases are opaque and my work bears no trace of them,” rather it’s “here are my biases, but you should trust me because I’m trying to get at the whole story, regardless – I’m trying to get at the truth even if it can’t exist outside of whatever framework each of us is operating in.”

  • Jed

    Just to be a gadfly, wouldn’t those journalists who feel strongly that they’re ‘right’ about an issue deny that they have a bias, since they don’t see their position as biased, but rather the ‘normal’ position?

    To actually address the question posed by Keith Kloor, I don’t think it matters too much which party a science journalist votes for, since there are a myriad of reasons for voting for a particular party, many of which have no real bearing on whether or not a science journalist can accurately report and reasonably comment. On the other hand, if a science journalist were to have voted for (say) the creationist members of the Texas School Board, I would indeed want to know that.

  • Jo

    I would say that more important in the area of science and science reporting is the question of backers. Who owns the media outlet the journalist is reporting for? Who is paying for the research being carried out? Nothing has a more determining effect on that which is reported than the political and, moreover, financial interests of the body paying for the report! In the case of Climatide that body is NPR (balanced reporting, in as far as reporting ever can be). Were the website a cynically motivated foray into direct journalism for BigPharma or Agribusiness, then the nature of the reported could not be said to be ‘balanced’ or ‘unbiased’. As long as journalism is transparent enough on the macro level, then the micro level – in as far as political allegiances of individual reporters goes – is as transparent as it need be, without call for journalists baring their personal politics. The god awful wearing-your-heart-on-your-sleeve style reporting belongs to the petty commentators and deckchair critics such as Limbaugh et al.

  • Anonymous

    At a recent symposium on transatlantic perceptions on climate change at Boston University a German journalist said that journalists and editors there felt less constrained to make judgment calls to weed out propaganda, rather than presenting it as “two sides” and “letting the reader decide”.

    I’d be much more pleased if I could rely on editors to do due diligence in checking expert credentials (eg has this denier done actual relevant published work) than having him or her “come clean”.

    Finally, it may not be the journalists’ biases people should worry about but the publishers and editors.