When major world events happen, be it the invasions of and withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the leaking of the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft ruling overturning roe Roe v Wade, terrorist attacks, school shootings, political scandals, disease outbreaks, moral panics and run-of-the-mill corruption, Americans turn to journalists to provide them the news.
Whether it was Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Gwen Ifill or your local community newspaper reporters, readers rely on journalists to be objective reporting both the facts, the responses and proposed solutions from politicians, activists and the general public.
The goal of being objective in reporting the news is a foundational tenet of our profession. Readers and viewers are supposed to trust us journalists because we report the news dispassionately and accurately and aim to give multiple sides a voice when warranted so readers can make decisions on their own about what the news means to them and their communities.
This doesn’t mean we have to give equal weight and equal space to two sides when one is overwhelmingly supported by a vast majority of the population, but we must acknowledge that a minority view exists and that the public has a right to hear from those viewpoints, even if for no other reason than for the public to the dismiss them as fringe or merit-less.
When it comes to politicians, experts and public representatives engaged in a political or social debate, we do our best to present both sides as dispassionately as possible.
As human beings, husbands, wives, children, parents and even voters we clearly have opinions, views, ideas and partisan leanings across the spectrum, just as all of you do. Anyone who has argued with me on the phone or over email knows that as an editor I am passionate about a great many things, but when it comes to what we print, I happily publish letters to the editor rebutting my editorials or our news stories, rebuking me, often by name, for my stances and printing a variety of views.
This newspaper isn’t mine; it’s yours, dear reader. I merely helm the wheel and if you disagree with my steering, you can tell me so — and many of you do. A lot.
What differentiates a journalist from a pundit or a blogger or a commentator is that we do our best to present two or three or four sides of an issue with as little opinion as possible in our prose, so readers can make informed decisions about how they feel about an issue.
We choose the words carefully and craft stories to lay out facts as clearly as we can, peppering them with quotes from sources, data and statements of fact so that while readers may argue that a story has a viewpoint, it is that of the people in the story, not the author.
Readers don’t call us to ask our opinions, they trust us to tell them others’ opinions.
We rely on the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics for our professional guidelines and review them when we have an ethical question that posits a quandary about what to do with a particular story.
In hiring qualified applicants, colleagues from other newspapers will sometimes recommended a few graduating college seniors. However, I mourn for how some so-to-be graduates fundamentally misunderstand what we do when I stumble across things like this May 4 tweet from a journalism student: “The most important thing I’ve learned in college is that objectivity is an unattainable/outdated standard for journalists, and people in general.”
The senior who tweeted this just graduated from — sigh — the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, my alma mater. Cronkite would spin in his grave if he were to read that statement made by a graduate who claims to follow in his footsteps. Even someone earning a D-minus graduates, I regretfully suppose.
Objectivity is the standard and the goal for journalists. It’s not easy, but that’s why we can call ourselves journalists. If this so-called graduate can’t dare strive for this most basic fundamental, do our future readers a favor and quit. Go work in public relations or for a law firm or on a political campaign, where the standards for honesty and objectivity and fairness aren’t so gosh darn hard: You don’t have the heart nor the guts to be a journalist.
Covering the news isn’t easy. There’s heartbreak and tragedy in the stories we report on, but we report on them because we must and because we can be objective. It’s a choice and a duty to be objective. Opinions certainly have a place in editorials and on the opinion page and in the direct quotes from our sources, but not our prose.
Young wannabe journalists should be reminded that we were given explicit protections by the First Amendment, but if we throw that away selfishly because we don’t have the courage to be fair, those protections are at risk — not from politicians who will take them away, but from readers who won’t trust us. Trust is our only currency.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
