Bob Giles: What Journalistic Objectivity Really Means
Posted at 7:07 am, October 13th, 2006
The predictable reaction to a story reporting that New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse had expressed personal opinions in a speech at Harvard last June raises intriguing thoughts about the meaning of journalistic objectivity.
Her comments raised questions over the paper’s ethical guidelines, which discourage news staffers from “expressing views beyond what they would be allowed to say in the paper.” Byron Calame, the paper’s public editor, wrote about that issue in a recent column.
Greenhouse said in her keynote address at the annual Radcliffe luncheon that “our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha and other places around the world. And let’s not forget the sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism.”
The speech received little attention until it became the peg for a story on National Public Radio that asked whether, as a beat reporter, she went too far in expressing her opinion. Greenhouse says her comments were “statements of fact,” not opinion, as underscored by the Supreme Court in striking down the administration’s policy of holding terror suspects without charges.
“The notion that someone cannot go and speak from the heart to a group of college classmates and fellow alums, without being accountable to self-appointed media watchdogs, means American journalism is in danger of strangling in its own sanctimony,” Greenhouse says.
Her comments, as reported on NPR, drew a mixed response from other journalists, who acknowledged that they agreed with her opinions but were troubled that, as a beat reporter, she stated her them in a speech.
For many, the Greenhouse comments were taken as confirmation of media bias and the existence of a so-called liberal media. Others wondered how she could be “objective” in her coverage of the Supreme Court if she held such strong opinions. Tom Kunkel, dean of the University of Maryland journalism schools, put it this way in an interview with The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz: the average person can reasonably ask, “how can that not color her stories?”
By all accounts, Linda Greenhouse has been an impartial observer of the Supreme Court for 28 years. Her reputation is drawn from an ability to report with a disinterested pursuit of the truth, even though it is reasonable that she would have a point of view about the work of the Court and about the opinions she has read. Daniel Okrent told Kurtz he reviewed her work during his tenure as the Times public editor, and “did not find any trace of her views in her work.”
What is missing from this discussion and from previous controversies over journalistic objectivity is a more meaningful understanding of the term. Objectivity is not a state of mind that influences how stories are framed and sources chosen. Walter Lippmann, writing in the 1920s, argued that journalists should acquire a scientific spirit that would be the cornerstone of their pursuit of news, enabling them to examine evidence and verify facts. This is the real meaning of objectivity.
Its faithful application is critical in today’s world, where information is spun and twisted to serve official agendas and political ideologies. Objectivity, by this definition, is an essential tool that can enable journalists to write stories that help their audiences figure out the truth, as far as it is known.
October 13th, 2006 at 11:43 am |
Linda Greenhouse is correct. The statements she made at Harvard University were, as she insisted, “statements of fact.” That is obvious to anyone who has been paying attention. To argue otherwise is to fall into the trap of putting mealy-mouthed “balance” above all—-seeking out and giving equal weight to contrary arguments, false or not, in the name of fairness. That convention is a journalistic weak spot that has been exploited by this Administration as adeptly as Senator McCarthy exploited the rigid demands of the doctrine of objectivity in the 1950s, which as applied at the time required that journalists report his charges without mentioning that he had never produced evidence for them.
We hear a lot about a so-called “liberal bias” in the media, largely because of a sustained campaign by the right that more or less began decades ago with a suspect poll showing reporters to be more liberal than the population at large. What is glaringly absent from current discussion is any poll or mention of bias among the owners and CEOs of media companies, or of the editors they appoint as gatekeepers, who actually control far more than reporters what goes into our newspapers and on the air. The result of this one-sided debate is evident to anyone who turns on television news or opens most publications. Reporters, editors and producers play it safe by giving a disproportionate amount of space and airtime to the right (just compare the affiliations of guests on any current-events discussion show). We are all poorer for it.
October 13th, 2006 at 12:55 pm |
What Linda Greenhouse calls the fact of a ‘sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom’ is for many other people the fact of ongoing efforts to stop legalized murder. When her personal opinons on the issues of the day get aired so publicly, I think NYT readers have a perfect right to begin paying extra attention to her word choice and wondering about her framing of questions and point of view when covering abortion issues before the high court. Is it any surprise the once universal trust in the fourth estate has eroded?
October 13th, 2006 at 2:09 pm |
The question then becomes, if an NOAA scientist were to speak to a group and insist that global warming is a reality, no one is speaking about it and the Bush administration is a bunch of lunatics, would he be trusted to conduct objective studies in the future?
Journalists, for the most part, lack the luxury of double-blind experiments, as well as the time to conduct them (or write equally tested stories). In the absence of that kind of time, is it feasible for journalists to apply any aspect of the scientific method to their reporting? Are we shooting off on half-cocked hypotheses before fully testing them? Do I have three angry emails about today’s 1A because of it? Questions abound.
October 13th, 2006 at 4:04 pm |
Walter Lippmann’s standard : “journalists should acquire a scientific spirit that will enabling them to examine evidence and verify facts “, is the only realistically achievable standard , therefore the highest .
Adults with a blank slate (no opinion on a mainstream topic) do not exist as a practical matter . What we know for sure is that not giving an opinion aloud or publicly is perhaps evidence of reticence ,censorship, self censorship , diplomacy or fear but it is not evidence of not having an opinion .
Moreover , where has it been demonstrated that those who do not arrive at a conclusion on a weighty matter (forming an opinion ) are somehow better able to convey facts , conveying fact being the most sacred goal of journalism .
In my experience , those who don’t engage sufficiently enough critical analysis to form a fact based conclusion , where firsthand knowledge , experience or scientific evidence is available , are at the bottom of my list of people who should be journalist.
October 14th, 2006 at 1:24 am |
What is a fact? Journalists have their ideals, cynically put: “anything we report that no one argues with.” How many of those are we ever treated to? We try hard is eventually the best we can say. Scientists know they are better off only in terms of time. Whatever “scientific proof” they have today is subject to the next experiment that produces new “facts.”
Elusive things, facts.
Lippman had it right when he spoke of the “scientific spirit”. The scientific spirit will produce better results, yet still often flawed.
MDs comments on women’s reproductive freedom highlights the problem. Roe v Wade is the current standard…the law. The Bush administration and MD want to change the law and have every right to their efforts. When MS Greenhouse says: …”the sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom” that is a fact. That’s what you do when you are trying to change the law. What Ms Greenhouse personally believes is of no consequence. I trust those who want a different abortion standard will continue their “sustained assault”. That’s how it is done.
October 14th, 2006 at 10:06 pm |
No one has touched on an element of this whole issue that has bothered me for some time.
If a journalist, to some folks’ horror, states an opinion on an issue – and it’s an issue he or she writes about – how hard is it, really, to analyze the said article(s) and look for evidence, subtle or blatant, of slanting the news toward their side of the issue?
Sometimes I think news articles should be reviewed much like a play, a movie etc. – how well they told their story, how fair it was assembled, etc. If I taught journalism, we’d do a lot of that. The results of our craft are out there – but we don’t do that kind of introspection nearly enough. Or if we do, it’s to caustically put down a fellow journalist, or praise a friend, rather than a true impartial look at the strengths and weakness of a story or the coverage of an issue.
It’s all about balance. To me, anyway.
October 18th, 2006 at 6:40 pm |
Let me see. Mr Herford suggests the statement that the Bush Administration’s efforts are a “sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom” is an statement of fact. Is such a characterization less value-laden then the same fact expressed as “the Bush Administration is engaged in a sustained effort to protect the unborn?” Both statements are arguably true, but certainly reflect different perspectives. If Greenhouse had said that the Bush Administration’s Court appoints appear to be directed to eroding the eroding the “Roe v. Wade” it would be more objective.
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