(upbeat music)
- What’s up Wisecrack, Jared here. You might have noticed that nobody can agree on what
a reliable news source is. People have been accusing the news of getting worse. More partisan,
more divisive, more lurid. And as people accuse news outlets of slant, spin, bias, or outright
fake news, it’s worth asking: can the news ever be truly impartial? And where did the
idea of objective news even come from?
So today we’re going to see if we can answer these questions in this Wisecrack Edition
on "Can the news be Objective?"
It’s worth defining objectivity very quickly - so we’re going to use Merriam Webster’s
definition of objectivity which is the “lack of favoritism toward one side or another”
and “freedom from bias.” In other words, to report the news objectively means to recount
the goings-on of the world without a specific agenda to promote or a favorite politician
to support.
We also need to figure out where the idea of objective news comes from, because it’s
a fairly modern phenomenon. For most of Western history, print publications like pamphlets
were just another method of the king or landowner passing down whatever he wanted his subjects
to know or, a method for the church to communicate with the faithful. But this started changing
in the 18th century as the philosophies of the enlightenment worked their way into all
aspects of culture, including news publications. Just as artists and scientists used the enlightenment
principle of reason to explore the world untethered from God and the aristocracy, so too did news
publications that sprung up to offer accounts of social and political affairs.
And this offered a new perspective on the role of objectivity in the press, as the same
enlightenment principles that tried to understand the natural world without bias were used to
understand society.. Or so they thought.
Philosopher Terry Eagleton has discussed the complicated early days of the free press in
his book, ‘The Function of Criticism’, which begins with an account of two of the
earliest English papers, The Spectator and The Tatler. According to Eagleton, both of
these papers used “moral correction and satiric ridicule” to offer criticisms of
the aristocracy that would’ve previously gotten writers locked in a dungeon. At first
glance, it would seem like this new freedom would enable an objective type of journalism
that could inform regular citizens about current events.
But according to Eagleton, these publications were far from objective, and in fact, they
largely served the purpose of the emerging bourgeoisie while creating an “acceptable”
way to offer criticisms of the ruling class. What was even capable of being said, Eagleton
notes, was defined by England’s ruling bloc. The very ability to participate in the disinterested
debate of English newspapers usually meant that one had to be a landowner too, meaning
ironically that “only those with an interest can be disinterested.” In other words, the
debate, disagreements, and coverage of these papers were all predicated on people who were
“impartially” trying to grease the wheels of the society that kept them and their fellow
landowners on top.
While Eagleton was looking back in time at England’s press in the 1700s, philosopher
Søren Kierkegaard offered harsh criticism of Copenhagen’s press that emerged during
his lifetime, a hundred years later. But while Eagleton was critical of the European press
for failing to offer a truly objective perspective on current events, Kierkegaard was critical
of the papers in Copenhagen for being too objective. One of Kierkegaard’s key philosophical
tenets was that “truth is subjectivity”, which for him meant that for anything to be
true, it had to elicit passion and commitment. Now that might sound a little bit strange,
so follow with me for a bit.
In terms of journalism, Kierkegaard thought that the lack of subjectivity in the press
created a lack of passion and intensity in the public, and led to an age of passionless
reflection, where people would rather observe what was happening around them than take any
active role in it. One of the effects of the supposed objective press, according to Kierkegaard,
was that everyone reading the papers became one big anonymous group called “the public.”
The news just becomes a form of general entertainment describing the world in a pseudo-objective
way.
Now if this all sounds a little bit abstract, we can consider the work of Jon Stewart. As
the host of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart embodied the opposite of the press that Kierkegaard
hated so much precisely because he operated in a mode of subjectivity.
As writer Matt Taibbi put it in the New York Times:
“Some object to the characterization of Stewart as a journalist, because he “has
opinions” and “isn’t objective,” but those people aren’t to be taken seriously.
Opinion can’t be extracted from reporting. The only question is whether or not it’s
hidden.”
Taibbi points out that objectivity is a guise that the press can hide behind to avoid responsibility.
Unlike CNN’s marketing initiative to put “Facts first”, Stewart operated in a mode
of pure subjectivity, letting his audience know his biases upfront, and breaking from
the humor of his show to get passionate about issues he cared about like healthcare for
9/11 first responders. It’s not that facts don’t exist, but simply hiding behind “the
facts” to distance yourself from your own bias is, well, bad.
So if Kierkegaard pointed all of this out in the nineteenth century, and Eagleton expanded
on it over thirty-five years ago, why are we still so hung up on the promise of an objective
form of journalism?
The idea of objectivity in American journalism largely comes from the work of Walter Lippmann,
a twentieth-century journalist and media critic who thought that journalists needed to incorporate
the scientific method into their reporting. Lippmann thought that by presenting citizens
with this more impartial news that they would be better informed and the democratic process
would be strengthened.
While Lippmann seems to have been well-intentioned, the reason that objectivity in the news became
so popular in the twentieth century had little to do with democratic aspirations. Instead,
the real driving force behind the push towards objectivity in the American media was America’s
most famous past time . . . advertising. Because as the press grew into a fully-fledged industry,
advertising became the largest source of media revenue.
- Today's news today! Produced for Camel cigarettes by NBC!
- As a result, having a narrow audience with a specific political slant was a business
liability. If a newspaper only focused on offering a socialist perspective on political
events in some mid-sized city, advertisers weren’t interested. Or worse, a paper with
the opposite viewpoint might spring up and take away half of your market share.
Media scholar Gerald Baldasty notes that nineteenth century advertisers, “wanted less criticism
of public officials and reminded publishers that partisanship hurt circulation, and consequently,
advertising revenues.”
Even if you had a widely read paper with a specific political leaning, that leaning might
have also scared away advertisers, dooming your business from the get-go. As noted by
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book “Manufacturing Consent,” plenty of
papers throughout history were more widely read than their allegedly more objective competitors,
but a lack of advertising meant they were either put out of business or bought by their
rivals flush with ad-dollars. And once that happened, their coverage began to resemble
the ad-friendly coverage of their parent company.
So offering an “objective” perspective became code for keeping everything vanilla
for the widest audience possible. It’s much like Kierkegaard predicted, that the press
would turn individuals into one big anonymous public, and in this case, the anonymous public
is made up of consumers who can make money for both news sources and their advertisers.
This connection between journalism and commerce shouldn’t be surprising in light of our
twenty-four-hour news cycle where people like CNN head Jeff Zucker have no problem acknowledging
that the network is primarily offering entertainment, even comparing politics to sports. Things
are a little different than when Manufacturing Consent was written in 1988 - for one, mainstream
media has splintered into conservative outlets like Fox News and liberal outlets like CNN.
But the basic principles are still there: newspapers and media outlets are selling a
product to advertisers, and that product is you. So while Fox News is appealing to a conservative
base, they want to appeal to the widest conservative base they can, and hopefully attract high-earners
among that base who will drop money on their advertisers products. CNN similarly, wants
to attract a wide audience while not alienating their well-to-do viewers who are so lucrative
to their bottom line.
Manufacturing Consent argued a series of “filters” defined what kind of stories
corporate media could report on and how. One of those filters was simply corporate ownership.
For instance, The head of GE, which owned NBC at the time, told the news chief not to
use the term ‘Black Monday’ to describe the stock market crash of 1987, as it could
depress the value of GE stock. Another filter is simply advertising, which we’ve already
talked about. Broadcast historian Erik Barnouw recounts how a documentary series on environmental
problems was unable to find the sponsors necessary for its production because it was critical
of corporations. And if you think much has changed, consider the recent story that Bloomberg
killed a piece about China’s elite for fear that they’d be shut out of the Chinese market.
And who could forget Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming
for GE, Jack Donaghy. Ok, that one’s a joke.
Because the news media is dependent on advertising money to make profits, they directly benefit
by serving the political and financial interests of the TV networks and corporate entities
that pay their bills - even when covering less “hot-button” issues. If coverage
of a story will alienate the board of directors, or worse, the marketing department at Johnson
& Johnson, adjustments will be made. And according to Herman and Chomsky, much of what we are
served as objective news is just propaganda for the powerful.
- They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict, in order to serve
the interests of dominant elite groups in society.
- It’s not that journalists are bad, and plenty of journalists do amazing and important
work, but many of them have to work through the constraints of news-as-business. So do
we just forget objectivity? Brent Cunningham, the managing editor of the Columbia Journalism
Review, thinks that a reconsideration of the value of objectivity can, “provide a window
into a particular failure of the press: allowing the principle of objectivity to make us passive
recipients of the news, rather than aggressive analyzers and explainers of it.”
While we started with the question, “can the news be objective?”, it seems like the
better question might be, “do we actually want the news to be objective in the first
place?” To which we’d likely answer, probably not, at least not the way most people think
about it. Whether it’s the risk of ideology being smuggled into our news, or losing our
ability to critically look at information provided to us — it seems like facts alone
won’t save us..
It might be better, instead of feeling safe and secure with your news source of choice,
to ask: whose interests are they serving? How are they filtering their stories? What
kind of stories are they not reporting? Are they upfront about their own biases?
But what do you guys think? Let us know in the comments. Thanks to all of our amazing
patrons for supporting us - I’ll catch you next time.