The Challenge of Objectivity

I took a 47-minute phone call this morning from a viewer who was irate about a program we were airing on the working conditions for California farm workers (California'sHarvest of Shame). The caller was furious that we were showing a program that was counter to his beliefs and thus not “objective”. I tried to explain to the gentleman that our goal was to educate viewers by presenting all sides of the debate, and to subsequently motivate them to get involved in the political process.

Unfortunately in this case we only had the one program on this issue, but at least the presentation seemed well balanced and was not advocating for one side or the other. The program simply showed what working conditions a former Assembly Speaker discovered while visiting farms around California. To me the program was objective – but to the caller it was not.

Being objective is far more difficult than it seems—especially in the political world where virtually everything is driven by conflicting partisan desires. In fact some believe that the idea of true objectivity is impossible. Any parent who has attended their child’s Little League game can attest to that.

Have you ever listened to two or more reporters covering the same story? Were you amazed at the differences in the “facts” as they were presented?

As a former broadcast journalist, I am aware of the ways in which even a single word in a sentence can completely change the perception it creates and the sentiment it evokes for a reader or viewer. As a journalist you must work with time constraints and deadlines that seriously limit your ability to completely cover a story and to present all the “facts.” What one reporter sees as a “fact” may be seen as unimportant by another.

Modern journalists claim news reporting without bias, but by watching any news program, you will likely notice a slant. This happens in several ways:

• The order in which news is prioritized – what the news director at one news station finds important, another news director may not.
• The way quotes are edited—clever editing can change the entire meaning of a statement or tone of a report, and quotes can be taken out of their true context to make it seem like something else is being said.
• The way stories are told—three different news programs may introduce and report the same story in three different ways.

Total objectivity is elusive. The mere choice of words a reporter uses to describe an event can reveal their emotional or real life experience as it relates to the story they are reporting. Their choice of words and method of delivery may then evoke meanings much different than the original intent and inadvertently cloud a viewer/reader’s ability to be totally objective about what they’ve been told. While objectivity is the goal of any good journalist, only a select few have earned strong public recognition of their objective integrity and unbiased reporting.

Visit my blog next week to learn why objectivity is important to preserve American principles.