- How would you define the concept of journalistic objectivity?
Journalistic objectivity is a concept of fairness. It is about seeing all facts – truths – and communicating all those facts to an audience without injecting your own thoughts to it. It is an unbiased, clinical, and professional presentation of information to an audience.
Using that example, I would like to define journalistic objectivity as the ability to sift through all available information and determining the truths, whether one agrees with it or not.
- Is it possible to be an objective journalist? What things may get in the way of objectivity? What things could journalists do to maintain objectivity?
I think that being an objective journalist is hard, but it is also possible. It is hard because as thinking social beings, humans are bound to form their own opinions, more so journalists who seek out and are exposed to more information than a large percentage of the population. Being an objective journalist also requires one to be willing to at times fairly give attention to unpopular notions or sides, even at the risk of suffering the wrath of fanatics.
Emotions play a huge part of day-to-day life and may get in the way of objectivity. Take for example the recent event that sparked the gun law debate. Lawmakers had been pushing for better gun laws for quite some time, but after that tragic day, journalists have put it in the headlines, some even expressing their own opinions about the issue. Hence, it is safe to say that a tragedy such as that one causes heightened emotions, which led to disregard for journalistic objectivity.
Beliefs and values may also get in the way of journalistic objectivity. If a journalist is tasked to cover an issue which he is passionate about, there is a risk of him focusing heavily on the parts of the issue that he believes in and not giving justice to other points of view. For example, in the Philippines, a biased Christian journalist covering a rebellion may report in full detail about the many churches Islamic rebels looted but does not report of the number of mosques that Christian soldiers ruined. In this case, there is a choosing of sides and omission of important information. As journalists, this should not happen, but sadly, it happens quite a lot.
I think that maintaining objectivity, like most things, requires practice. It also requires the journalist to constantly check and adjust his methods to make sure that he is treating an issue fairly. The journalist should remember that his job is to make sure that the audience is presented with all the useful facts and information. To maintain objectivity, I think that the journalist should keep in check his emotions and biases and to look at all the available facts.
Practicing objectivity also requires some form of playing the devil’s advocate. One may believe so strongly about a certain thing but to be objective requires one to look at the other side of the coin. It requires one to challenge or to set aside his beliefs and look into other possibilities. He may not necessarily believe in these other possibilities, in fact, he may strongly oppose them. But it is his job to make sure that these other possibilities are given as much thought as those he believes in.
- Do you think it is important to be objective as a journalist? Why or why not?
Objectivity in journalism is important. As a journalist, the job calls for delivery of all useful and available facts – the audience looks to the journalist to give them those facts so that they could be well-informed and can therefore form their own opinions. I think that it is the responsibility of the journalist to give his audience that freedom to make their own sound opinions by presenting to them all sides of a given issue.
If the journalist failed to be objective or decided to slant the news based on his own beliefs, he risks losing not only members of his audience who do not agree with him, but he also risks misinforming his audience and therefore could lose his credibility.
This does not mean though that the journalist should disregard his values and beliefs and not form opinions. It just means that the journalist should be fair enough and open-minded enough not to impose his own opinions on the audience. It requires a certain degree of trust in the audience’s ability to sift through all the facts given to them to come up with their own thoughts and opinion, which is what journalism should really be about.
