When pursued to its

ultimate logical conclusions,

objectivity turns out to be a hoax,

a fiction that, in expert hands,

usually hides precisely the opposite,

a very definite world view which

colors all choices, percepts, and opinions

It's always easier to see the bias of others

than to recognise one's own

A story that supports the status quo

is generally considered to be neutral

and is not questioned in terms of its objectivity

while one that challenges the status quo

tends to be perceived as having

a "point of view" and therefore biased

"Objectivity" is the sacred cow of professional mainstream journalism. All "professional" J-schools stress the importance of filling reportorial and editorial duties with the utmost "objectivity".

The problem is that, when pursued to its ultimate logical conclusions, human objectivity turns out to be a hoax, a fiction that, in expert hands, usually hides precisely the opposite, a very definite world view which, wittingly or unwittingly, colors all choices, percepts, and opinions.

In an environment in which most J-school students are simply indoctrinated to become unquestioning, careerist cogs in the machinery of corporate media, discussions of this kind may serve as an alarm bell for those wishing to become real journalists, real servants of the public interest.

The bias of objectivity

It's always easier to see the bias of others than to recognise one's own. A story that supports the status quo is generally considered to be neutral and is not questioned in terms of its objectivity while one that challenges the status quo tends to be perceived as having a "point of view" and therefore biased.

Statements and assumptions that support the existing power structure are regarded as 'facts' whilst those that are critical of it tend to be rejected as 'opinions'.

The officious policing of impartiality and balance will mean ensuring that statements by those challenging the establishment (government or business) are balanced with statements by those whom they are criticising, though not necessarily the other way round.

Too much emphasis on objectivity in news and current affairs can lead journalists to leave out interpretations and analysis which might be construed as personal views.

They play it safe by reporting events without explaining their meaning and keeping stories light and superficial so as not to offend anyone.

Journalists who accurately report what their sources say, can effectively remove responsibility for their stories onto the people they interview and quote.

The ideal of objectivity therefore encourages uncritical reporting of official statements and those of authority figures. In this way the individual biases of individual journalists are avoided but institutional biases are reinforced.

The enforcement of impartiality tends to give powerful industry spokespeople guaranteed access to the media, no matter how flimsy their argument or how transparently self-interested. No such access is guaranteed to critics.

When a powerful company is criticised for endangering human lives or the environment it is only fair to give it the opportunity to answer the criticisms but does balance and impartiality require that it be given equal time?

Are individual criminals given equal time to answer allegations against them? In their attempts to be balanced on a scientific story, journalists may use any opposing view even when it has little scientific credibility in the wider scientific community. Sharon Beder @ Cyrano's Journal

The pretense of ideological impartiality is
the fundamental lie of all bourgeois journalism

Early last century, industrial technology allowed business interests to produce mass media at a cost that outclassed the capacity of non-corporate media to compete. As a result, radical publishers were marginalised and media diversity rapidly narrowed.

To counter claims that society was being, in effect, brainwashed by this media monopoly, corporate publishers promoted the idea of "professional journalism".

For the first time, reporters would be trained in special "schools of journalism" to master the arts of objective, balanced reporting. Big business moguls would be in control but, as good democrats, they would see to it that their journalists were scrupulously fair.

In reality, powerful biases were built into this new media "professionalism" – key among them a presumption about who should be the primary source of news.

American media analyst Robert McChesney explains that the new, professional press, "regarded anything done by official sources, for example, government officials and prominent public figures, as the basis for legitimate news".

This reliance on official sources naturally "gave those in political office (and to a lesser extent, business) considerable power to set the news agenda by what they spoke about and what they kept quiet about".

Thus the Telegraph's environment editor, Charles Clover, wrote to a Media Lens reader:

"I am a reporter. Reporters report what other people say. Generally we report important, influential people, but only when they say something new, because what important people say is of most interest to others, and they are the ones who shape our world."

In the Times, the then ITV News (now BBC) political editor, Nick Robinson, wrote of the 2003 invasion of Iraq:

"It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking... That is all someone in my sort of job can do. We are not investigative reporters."

To the extent that a media system accepts that its 'professional' role is to report a news agenda set by officialdom, it must largely renounce the task of challenging that agenda.

If the government, for example, rejects as hopelessly flawed a report on civilian casualties in Iraq – if it decides to 'move on', say, from the November 2004 Lancet report – who are professional news journalists to disagree? Media Lens