News You Can Lose

The news for the news business is bad.

American news consumers don’t trust what they’re reading, watching and listening.

A new study just published by the Knight Foundation and Gallup found that half of the people they surveyed “are not solely skeptical of news today—they feel distrust on an emotional level, believing news organizations intend to mislead them and are indifferent to the social and political impact of their reporting.”

Only 23% said that journalists were acting in the public’s best interest.

In other words, Americans are saying journalism, as practiced in this country today, is about as trustworthy as a George Santos IOU.

Americans are smart and they don’t trust the news because the newspeople themselves have abandoned objectivity.  Too many journalists today believe objectivity is obsolete in concept and in practice. 

To some, being objective means you are inherently biased.  

According to Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Wesley Lowery, who spoke at a Columbia Journalism School panel discussion called “The Objectivity Wars,” said if you want to be objective then you are from an old school of “almost exclusively…upper class white men” who made all the coverage decisions.  He said objectivity “has always been wielded to silence people who do not fit with the politics of the people who own and operate the newspapers.”

At that same forum, Rutgers historian David Greenberg had a somewhat more inclusive take on objectivity.   He defended the pursuit of objectivity as “the attempt to identify our own biases and correct for them so they don’t inflect the conveyance of the news.”  He called it “aspirational journalistic objectivity.”

If you held a loaded mic to my head, I would have to agree more with Greenberg and reject Lowery’s hate-filled exclusionism.

As a journalist for more than four decades, objectivity was aspirational, yes, but if I didn’t relentlessly pursue it then I would have become an advocate, and that was anathema to me.  

Did I, do I, have strongly held beliefs?  Of course.  You’ve been reading some of them on Friendwithoutbenefits.com.  But I tried like hell to put them aside and report the facts so my audience could make their own informed decisions.  Many journalists I worked with strived to do the same.

But today, being an advocate is not only accepted in some newsrooms, it is precisely why some journalists have been hired. Young journalists are getting into the business because they want to be advocates for their “own truths.”  Some come from activist backgrounds and are permitted to continue to work for their causes.  

That needs to stop.

It would never have dawned on me to go to the meetings, rallies and conventions of groups whose positions I supported.  

Maybe I’m an old school schmuck but I took my vow of objectivity so seriously that when my kids asked who I voted for I wouldn’t tell them. 

Newsrooms have become much more diverse, with women and men of different colors, genders and backgrounds lending their voices to coverage.  Bravo to all those “upper class white men” who not only talk about diversity but who hire diverse staffers and empower them to participate fully in coverage decisions and execution.

But within the increased representation by formerly marginalized groups, has there been much diversity of political ideologies?  Newsrooms are dominated by progressives and those whose opinions differ, are few and far between.

Real diversity in a newsroom is when everyone’s truth is respected and is allowed to be articulated, without the peril of personal ruination.   

News leaders must stand up for the principles of our profession that was once upon a time, respected and admired.

Objectivity is not a dirty word and it should not be deleted because some loud voices now equate it with oppression.

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University recently released a treatise entitled “Beyond Objectivity.”  Two retired journalists, Leonard Downey, Jr., formerly of the Washington Post and Andrew Hayward, the former President of CBS News, wrote it.  

They spoke with lots of current high ranking news editors on the issue of objectivity and so many of them said objectivity has jumped the shark.  They said things like they “never understood what it meant,” that it was a “political football,” that “objectivity is not even possible.”

So let’s go back to that survey I told you about to show you how disconnected these folks are to the people that consume their product.

The people surveyed were asked if they agreed that national news organizations do not intend to mislead.  Fifty percent disagreed, only 25% agreed.

More than half said news organizations don’t care about the best interests of their readers, viewers or listeners.

So, here’s what I would tell the post-objective posse of reporters, editors and professors.  Objectivity, no matter how flawed its definition, is still the bedrock, the starting point for journalism worthy of trust.

Tell your people that you value and crave their life experiences, truths and perspectives, but they do not automatically cancel out the life experiences, truths and perspectives of their colleagues.  All views are valid in a respectful, professional dialogue with the goal telling the very best and most meaningful stories we can.  

Journalists, serve your audience with the facts, not opinion.  The American people are telling you that you’re out of step, that you don’t get it.  You are the caretakers of an incredibly important Constitutional right.  Give it to ‘em straight and don’t think you’re smarter than they are, objectively speaking.