Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 17
The Failure of
Objectivity in Journalism:
Intimations of a New Paradigm
Objectivity in the news media has created widespread interest
among researchers, who regularly try to discover what it means to
journalists and how they apply it to their work. The purpose of this
article is to identify and analyze the major perspectives taken by
critical scholars on the role of objectivity in journalism in an effort to
demonstrate that these scholars have reached a consensus that the
concept of objectivity has failed as a philosophical and practical
foundation for modem journalistic practice. I also hope to provide
suggestions for the future direction of research on this subject.
The historian Michael Schudson's simple description of the
belief in objectivity in journalism would probably satisfy most
journalists and researchers in communications:
. . . the belief that one can and should separate facts
from values. Facts, in this view, are assertions about
the world open to independent validation . . . .
Values, in this view, are an individual's conscious or
unconscious preferences for what the world should be
(5).
In this explanation, I take values to imply both opinions and
attitudes, because the words "conscious preferences" suggest opinions
while the words "unconscious preferences" suggest attitudes.
I will follow Schudson's description in this article. Objectivity
will represent the segregation of facts and values, a condition in
which facts are separated from opinions and attitudes (6).
Subjectivity will represent the integration of facts and values, a
contrasting condition in which opinions and attitudes are included
with facts. I am concerned with subjectivity in journalism here only as
it contrasts with objectivity. I will limit my discussion of subjectivity
to a recognition of its existence as the ever-present and much-feared
converse side of objectivity.