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.