I’m thinking about the mundane, “what happened” type of journalism. It’s not an expert issue, it’s an issue of someone having the job of finding out “what happened”, figuring out if “what happened” is related to other things that did or did not happen, and presenting that without bias in a way we can understand.
Plus, we need objective arbiters of the truth. I know we conservatives are sure we have the truth on our side, and the liberals seem to feel the same way. But truth isn’t a pliable commodity, and our country will not survive if we have two sets of truth coming from two sets of sources. If we can’t get the truth in common, we can’t do anything.
We need an unbiased media to filter out the fiction from the fact. We get too much of a “he-said/she-said”, “two-side” to the story today. No matter how stupid the idea, the talk shows can present one person for each side, making it look like genuine competing stories.
This is why more people today seem to firmly believe the truth of things that are absurdly false, even conservatives fall for it. Because we are NOT smart enough to be able to tell who can be trusted, and who can’t, we don’t have the time to thoroughly research a story, or the money to do it right, or the access we need to get all the details.
The internet provides easy access, but that’s only part — it’s WHAT we have easy access to that’s important.
Sure, if there is a film of something, we don’t need someone to tell us what we are looking at. But most of the time we need someone to do the grunt work and collect the facts on the ground, so we can use OUR time deciding what those facts MEAN.
Depth of understanding communicates itself — and not just one’s protestations that they are “objective” when they are obviously not.
In the new age of understanding, we have to look beyond what someone is telling us is the truth — into their understanding of what is the truth, as their basis of credibility and integrity, and then there is some validity in relying on that source for information. But if everything that person says is untrustworthy, we need to locate sources that are trustworthy — rather than engaging in futile and frustrating arguments about what is truth — when they obviously have no idea what that is about while their whole objective is to convince you of whatever they tell you — as their ego/power-trip in life.
That’s what is being taught in the media and journalism schools — just as the education schools teach how one is to “appear” credible rather than truly having a mastery of a subject matter, which is far more important than a person claiming to be fair and impartial while having no understanding of what they are really talking about. So one needs to have that depth of understanding and insight that communicates itself — rather than merely pretending to be a credible source — that is contradicted with everything they say, and everything they reveal, is arbitrary with no substantiation or connection to any other reality.
That is uniquely the problem of “mediated” reality — in a world of increasing authenticity.
I think that's why many people have adopted, to various degrees, the idea that "for each argument there is an equal and opposite argument," and why so many people can seemingly hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously, without any sign of mental discomfort.
This is one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern conception of objective journalism. Like public schooling, the content is worthless, but the methodology is even worse.
Jefferson particularly wanted government to be vulnerable in a public battle of ideas. He hoped that the attacks of a multitude of opinions would hone its operation, as well as clarify the public's will. In a letter to George Washington he said of government, "if virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth whether in religion, law, or politics."
America has strayed far from his vision for news. Jefferson might be puzzled by modern journalism's mandate to sanctify facts over opinion, when the formation of individual opinion was exactly what he believed was required in America's new form of government. In fact, to help mold public opinion in his own time, he and James Madison launched their own highly opinionated newspaper, critical of Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists. He would no doubt be discouraged by today's prevalence of a single national conversation, in which most outlets seem to present the same news stories and angles.