fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

Objectivity in journalism is not only a fallacy but a dangerous goal.

In my ethics class today we were given three choices and the what the news does:

1. Watch over government
2. Inform the public
3. Empower the public to make decisions that improve their lives

Of course, these three harken back to years worth of debates. Many students stuck toward the first two until they started thinking more specifically about the externalities of the first two. Donica gave us a rundown of No. 3, which represents Public Journalism or Civic Journalism. And the same battles began.

One student identified No. 3 as giving people options and tradeoffs and realized many newspapers do this all the time. Another student and I debated another more common conflict in No. 3 (these are paraphrased from memory:

Other student: I don’t see how you can do number three without being biased
Me: You do it like so and so said, providing tradeoffs and advocating for your audience’s truth like Jake Highton says
Other student: But who are you to decide what’s truth?
Me: By using common public values to decide what is right and wrong (should’ve said common sense)
Other student: So then you are only writing about what’s good?
Me: No, truth can still be bad, but you’re not just laying out an argument. If someone is lying or something is wrong, environment for example, you point that out, you don’t just say it like it’s okay (should’ve said becoming a mouthpiece for liars and spin doctors).
Other student: But then who are you to impose your values on other people?

We stopped there as the rest of the class moved on, but I found her statements indicative of the journalism culture and particularly troublesome to society in general.

She basically said in order to be an objective journalist, you cannot have values. Therefore, because journalists publish themselves to other people, in order to remain perfectly objective, you cannot make moral judgments on what you observe and write about, otherwise you are inherently biased.

With this argument, an objective journalist is ammoral. Therefore, of the three purposes above, an ammoral journalist can only “inform the public.”

In order to watch dog the government, you must initially make a value judgment on the actions of the government and its employees. There must be a right vs. wrong premise and basic appreciation of common/public morals in order to decide “this is something bad, I as a journalist, am responsible for holding this government accountable to the public, who share my sense of right and wrong.” 

This is not objective. You may be able to write objectively, giving he-said-she-said with no commentary. But without subjective values and morals, you cannot even fulfill this role in your job.

But to do No. 3, you must not only appreciate your audience’s morals and values, but empathize with and share them. Public journalism believes journalists are a part of their community. And to write from that frame of mind you must either have a dynamic and rich connection with your audience or you must be one of that audience. In other words, you must be moral and understand right from wrong and then present your news in that way.

So the question becomes, can a journalist empathize with the community? Should a journalist empathize with a community? Does it take a special set of values to even be a journalist? Doesn’t news judgment mean we already share those values (proof again that objectivity does not exist)? What are journalists moral values?