Posted on 02/01/2023 11:09:47 AM PST by george76
We previously discussed the movement in journalism schools to get rid of principles of objectivity in journalism. Advocacy journalism is the new touchstone in the media even as polls show that trust in the media is plummeting. Now, former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward have released the results of their interviews with over 75 media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Notably, while Bob Woodword and others have finally admitted that the Russian collusion coverage lacked objectivity and resulted in false reporting, media figures are pushing even harder against objectivity as a core value in journalism.
We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. Writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy.
Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll decried how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”
Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”
Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism.
Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.” Her 1619 Project has been challenged as deeply flawed and she has a long record as a journalist of intolerance, controversial positions on rioting, and fostering conspiracy theories. Hannah-Jones would later help lead the effort at the Times to get rid of an editor and apologize for publishing a column from Sen. Tom Cotten as inaccurate and inflammatory.
Polls show trust in the media at an all-time low with less than 20 percent of citizens trusting television or print media. Yet, reporters and academics continue to destroy the core principles that sustain journalism and ultimately the role of a free press in our society. Notably, writers who have been repeatedly charged with false or misleading columns are some of the greatest advocates for dropping objectivity in journalism.
Now the leaders of media companies are joining this self-destructive movement. They are not speaking of columnists or cable hosts who routinely share opinions. They are speaking of actual journalists, the people who are relied upon to report the news.
Saying that “Objectivity has got to go” is, of course, liberating. You can dispense with the necessities of neutrality and balance. You can cater to your “base” like columnists and opinion writers. Sharing the opposing view is now dismissed as “bothsidesism.” Done. No need to give credence to opposing views. It is a familiar reality for those of us in higher education, which has been increasingly intolerant of opposing or dissenting views.
Downie recounts how news leaders today
“believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”
There was a time when all journalists shared a common “identity” as professionals who were able to separate their own bias and values from the reporting of the news.
Now, objectivity is virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”
Outlets like NPR are quickly erasing any lines between journalists and advocates. NPR announced that reporters could participate in activities that advocate for “freedom and dignity of human beings” on social media and in real life.
Downie echoes such views and declares “What we found has convinced us that truth-seeking news media must move beyond whatever ‘objectivity’ once meant to produce more trustworthy news.”
Really? Being less objective will make the news more trustworthy? That does not seem to have worked for years but Downie and others are doubling down like bad gamblers at Vegas.
Indeed, the whole “Let’s Go Brandon” chant is as much a criticism of the media as it is President Biden.
If there is little difference between the mainstream media and alternative media, the public will continue the trend away from the former. MSM has the most to lose from this movement, but, as individual editors, it remains popular to yield to advocates in their ranks. That is what the New York Times did when it threw its own editors under the bus to satisfy the mob.
As media outlets struggle to survive, these media leaders are feverishly sawing at the tree branch upon which they sit.
Hillary’s Suppressed Thesis on Her Marxist Mentor Saul Alinsky .. It was during Alinsky’s involvement in organizing the Chicago Seven riots that Hillary Rodham became actively involved with Alinsky..
In a 1993 interview with the Washington Post, Rodham summed up her thesis by saying, “I basically argued that Alinsky was right..
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3457384/posts
Lies have always had a father, and now a Mother!
For most of our history each town or region had two papers, usually one conservative and one ‘progressive’. Look at how many papers are still called ‘The ** Republican’, or my local one, the Press Democrat.
The whole idea of ‘objective’ journalism was a 70 year failed thought experiment.
Most conservatives don’t like ‘objectivity’ any more than libs; hell look at FR- the second someone doesn’t like something it becomes ‘Fake News’, and thus no more discussion is necessary (obviously the more someone calls something ‘Fake News’, left or right, the more one needs to look at the story)
When it comes to strategy and tactics, he was pretty damned spot on. It is heartening to see how many of us on the right are using his tactics. One thinks of Patton shouting about Rommel ‘I read your damned book’.
I'm reminded of the scene with the newspaperman in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, where he drunkenly boasts of the press writing the "truth" as it sees fit. This problem is like a deep infection, causing a host of other problems that we are now experiencing.
There has been no objectivity in the mainstream for a long time. It’s all propaganda.
That scene makes my blood boil. “When the truth conflicts with the legend, print the legend”, or something like that, as if that bit of mendacious sentimentality were admirable. Meanwhile the actual hero is lying in a box, to go to his grave unknown. A rather bitter message.
LIAR!
sorry... didn’t read your comment... just jumping to the FR conclusion without spending all that time reading... blech...
hehehe
you’re not a liar.
Advocacy journalism is the new touchstone in the media even as polls show that trust in the media is plummeting.
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Yes “polls” but an even more telling and “objective fact” is the TV News Rating Services. “Liberal” outlets like CNN are in the RED ZONE financially and in danger of going out of business. True desperation has set in to CNN managers.
Suits me that Liberal “Journalists” want to declare themselves free of any obligation to objectivity. Hell, we’ve all witnessed that in practice by them for decades. Glad to hear them tell the truth for a change.
.
Advocacy for pursuing objective truth is great in journalism. Advocacy which requires objective truth to be sacrificed is not.
News Leaders Call for the End of PRETENDING Objective Journalism
<>news papers floundering, going out of business, <>
Jeff Bezos bought the WaPo ten years ago when the paper faced bankruptcy.
A brilliant move by Bezos.
By keeping it afloat and letting the Marxists print their garbage, Bezos’ Amazon empire is safe from the threat of anti-trust.
“ I think that ship sailed long ago.”
Yeah - seems they’ve complied in every way possible and then some
It’s not even debatable but rather the degree to which news has been corrupted
And hear I thought there job was the provide the facts. Silly me.
Objectivity never actually existed in journalism. That’s right from the source.
https://librivox.org/public-opinion-by-walter-lippmann/
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6456
Keep believing that crock and 5 will get you 10 you believe in climate change too.
Difference is that before, most cities had more than one newspaper, one generally was more conservative than the other, so you had a choice. In most cases, that choice doesn’t exist anymore.
“Saying that “Objectivity has got to go” is, of course, liberating. You can dispense with the necessities of neutrality and balance. You can cater to your “base” like columnists and opinion writers”
You also can get rid of expensive humans and let AI write your propaganda.
nope, and not even a reach around...
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