James Swift: After Deadline: How Objective Do You Want It?
Feb. 7—Let's talk about objectivity for a minute.
Long story short, it doesn't exist. We can all pretend that we can take a cold, impartial, totally neutral, scientific stance on issues, events and topics, but that means we'd have to stop being human.
And humans aren't meant to be unemotional and disinterested. Otherwise, all our ancestors would have been eaten by wooly mammoths eons ago.
One of my favorite canards from folks outside the media industry is this staunch belief that "both sides" ought to be well represented in news coverage.
Well, right off the bat, that's a bit of a logical fallacy. Because there's not just two sides to a story, there's about eight billion of 'em, since literally EVERYBODY on the planet has a different perspective. And if we tried to put every possible "side" in a story, it would take us a lifetime to write just the first draft. Besides, do you know how hard it is to get people in China to call you back about local stormwater projects?
Nine times out of 10, when someone chides the media for not "telling both sides," it's kind of a code word for "Hey, why ain't you saying what I WANT you to say?" And let's be real here; not everybody's opinion is worth publicizing. If we're writing a story about water line repairs, do you really think we ought to call up some hippy-dippy conspiracy theorist that thinks gender-changing chemicals are being pumped through the pipes?
Heck, let's take it to the extreme here. Why not make our obituaries tell "both sides"? I bet there are plenty of ex-husbands and ex-wives out there that would love that little editorial policy.
You want TRUE objectivity? Well, I guess that means if we're doing a story about a fundraiser for child cancer research, we need to get some quotes in there from somebody who is ANTI-child cancer research. And if we're going to do a story about a Baptist church bake sale, it's only fair that we get some hot takes in there from a Buddhist, a Seventh-day Adventist and one of those esoteric cults that still worships Ra. I mean, that's real neutrality in reporting, ain't it?
Does that mean every time we do a story about a new bank or restaurant opening, we ought to mention all the other banks and restaurants in town and remind you that their overdraft fees and entrée prices are lower? And what about coverage of political party events? It just ain't Democrats and Republicans out there, you know. If I'm going to write a story about a Joe Biden or Donald Trump fundraiser, wouldn't it be truly objective if I got some comments in there from the Prohibition Party, the Green Party and the Legal Marijuana Now Party?
Of course, it'd take about three or four months to write the story, but all the bases would be covered ... assuming the Party for Socialism and Liberation doesn't splinter off into separate groups before deadline.
There's something of an unspoken reality about media in the 2020s. Ever since the advent of social media — which more or less has supplanted "traditional" media as a communications tool for a large percentage of the U.S. population — people's appetite for news has changed drastically.
Long story short, a whole lot of people don't even WANT objective news to begin with. They want things that either reinforce and validate their preexisting beliefs and prejudices or things that paint "the other side" as evil incarnate.
Which means people are going to complain no matter HOW objective the reporting is. Opinion has become fact, and no amount of actual evidence can convince some people of the error of their ways.
Whenever people tell me newspapers ought to be "objective," I can't help but shake my head. Irony of ironies, their definition of "objective" is probably a lot more subjective than they assume. And a lot of times, those noble attempts to be "more objective" only muddy the proverbial waters and make stories even less comprehendible. Maybe, just maybe, we DON'T need 40 different opinions to accurately and fairly give you the basic details of an A-1 agricultural rezoning.
Personally, I don't care about being "objective," and neither does anyone else who has survived in the news industry for more than a decade. Frankly, the only thing I care about is telling you people the truth — which isn't as black and white as we'd sometimes like it to be.
Sometimes the truth isn't just hard to find, it's absolutely impossible to ferret it out. Think about all the trials that go down where there are no eyewitnesses and it's literally this-person-said and that-person-said. Only two people will ever know for sure what really happened, and the fella writing the story ain't one of 'em.
You get existential moments like that all the time when you're in the news business. And "objectivity" doesn't do you a bit of good. In today's social climate it isn't the old "who, what, when and where" — it's closer to "Who knows?"
