do their own respectful listening, that they’ve arrived at their conclusions not through the narrow tunnel of partisan talking points but via the winding, multi-forked scenic route of interviews and investigation. In other words, via objectivity.
only rational way out…will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.” Few Americans, except perhaps Lyndon Johnson, were outraged by that. Most, I think, approved of it, were even grateful for it, because it wasn’t partisan propaganda but rather his reasonably considered— LET’S EXAMINE THAT WORD. Some hold a more purist view of objecand yes, objective—judgment. Cronkite didn’t offer it in a way that tivity: A journalist presents both sides of a story, keeps his thoughts said, “If you disagree with me you must be Hitler.” He was saying, to himself and lets the reader decide. Others take a less purist view: “This is where I ultimately land on the issue, and I hope you take Objectivity is a noble but impossible goal, and a journalist often what I’ve just presented to you and come to your own independentlooks disingenuous patting himself on the back for being objective thinking conclusion.” Just as important, he was telling his viewers, when in fact most readers are smart “I’m sharing my own conclusion with enough to detect his or her outlet’s you because I respect you enough to point of view in his articles. know that it would be dishonest of And then there’s Miami Herald me at this point not to.” “need to humor columnist Dave Barry, who Sometimes we’re panelists at foracknowledge that we’ve helped says, “We journalists make it a point to ums, sometimes we’re moderators. los narcos dig the mass graves know very little about an extremely The panelist is expected to voice his that are scarring Mexico’s landwide variety of topics. This is how educated opinion; the moderator is scape” because “our anti-drug we stay objective.” expected to be the objective host. Does policies are so narrow-mindedly But what do the journalism gods it wreck my credibility as a moderator focused on battling supply say? Lippmann once wrote, “There if I’m sometimes also a panelist? Of can be no higher law in journalism course not. Cronkite understood that. instead of reducing demand.” than to tell the truth and to shame In fact, I think encouraging that the devil.” His highest law doesn’t dual role could be the antidote to our say, “Be uncompromisingly objeccurrent Fox-MSNBC media culture, tive.” It says, “Root out the truth and not a surrender to it. The reality is that use it to keep the bad guys honest.” the opinion genie is out of the media That should involve an objective bottle, and I doubt we can ever put it process, but it doesn’t necessarily preback. And that genie was freed most clude a personal conclusion. Lippmann and journalists like him in the of all by one powerful factor: the Internet. Facebook, Twitter: We live 20th century rightly advocated objectivity as strongly as they did in a hyper-personalized, even narcissistic media age today, where because the American journalistic process that preceded them, from opinion is the norm, not the exception. Some of that is good, some Benjamin Franklin to William Randolph Hearst, had been much too of it is really bad. partisan, much too yellow, to serve the interests of an advanced LET’S START WITH THE BAD. While I’m the first to applaud the media democracy. democratization that the Internet ignited, it also led to the idea that IN 1968, AFTER FILING AN OBJECTIVE, on-the-ground report on anyone with a basement, a bathrobe, and a computer is a journalist; America’s failing military mission in Vietnam, Walter Cronkite took and most of those basement bloggers think journalism means: Bitch off his glasses, looked in the camera, and offered his empirical, nonabout whatever pisses me off. As a result, as opposed to readers in the ideological opinion: “It is increasingly clear to this reporter, that the 20th century, too many 21st-century readers want real journalists to
I said that we
Does revealing my opinion like that make me a rogue journalist?
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