Here's an idea.
"Serial" shows us how journalism might not be objective,
but maybe that's OK.
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Last time on "Ida Channel," we talked about objectivity,
the law, and the people who practice it.
This, I think, is what "Serial," and even sometimes "The Good
Wife" show us-- that though the law might
have some objective moral basis, it is still very much
open to interpretation.
So, objective?
Sure.
But maybe only to a point.
Objective, but complexly so.
And maybe that's something "Serial" shows us.
At the end of this video, we'll see
what you had to say about last week's video,
a video which you don't need to watch in order
to understand this one, but it probably wouldn't hurt.
Especially if you don't know much
about the podcast "Serial."
Because today, we're going to ask about the other side
of "Serial's" set-up.
Not the detectives, counsel, experts, or suspects,
but it's a host, journalist Sarah Koenig, and her team.
Were they, or was Sarah, too involved in Adnan's case?
Does "Serial" have some un-upheld responsibility
to be disinterested?
Did they transgress some set of journalistic ethics?
This has been a big criticism of Koenig
from the start, who-- at the beginning of the show--
is vocally pro-Adnan.
SARAH KOENIG: At this point, I'm going
to say flat-out that I don't buy the motive for this murder.
At least now how the State explained it.
I just don't see it.
As the show progresses, her skepticism
regarding the potentially lifelong inmate's innocence
ebbs and flows.
But overall, "Serial" never fully departs
from a narrative that seems to be searching
for the bit of evidence to exonerate Adnan
of his conviction of his girlfriend Hae Min Lee's murder
in 1999.
Koenig has said that this wasn't her intention,
that she was aware she might potentially uncover something
useful, but that the goal of "Serial"
was never explicitly to free Adnan.
Criticisms have continued regardless, even
after the finale.
The way Sarah treated Jay.
The fact that she didn't speak with Kevin Urick,
the prosecutor in Adnan's case-- a thing
which she and the "Serial" team have responded to publicly.
And other various and sundry actions
or inactions that raise the question of whether Koenig
and her producers were really letting all the facts
speak for themselves-- in other words, being objective.
I'm not sure they were.
I'm also not sure that that's a problem.
But before we talk about why, let's
talk for a second about journalistic objectivity.
In many Western countries, but particularly
in the United States, objectivity
is the cornerstone principle of journalism.
In a paper for "Journalist Studies,"
Juan Ramon Munoz-Torres paraphrases David Mindich,
who even suggests that without the concept of objectivity,
American journalism cannot be understood at all.
So let's make sure we understand objectivity.
We covered the high-level concepts last week
when we were talking about the law.
Objectivity is a framework for existence and knowledge
free from the knower's own biases.
And both of these are still very much at play in journalism,
as well.
But the concept of journalistic objectivity
tends to add one more dimension-- that of balance.
Often, our understanding of journalistic objectivity
assumes an almost ethical directive.
It's viewed as unfair or deceptive if reporting
doesn't give equal time to all sides of a story or debate.
This expectation is so pervasive that even
"Idea Channel" is often chided for not showing
both sides of the story.
Luckily, we're not the news or aiming
to be objective, even a little.
I can say one side of an argument like it's the truth
and move on with a totally clear conscience.
Relatedly, as Munoz-Torres points out,
this is all ostensibly in service of the truth.
The goal of journalism is to provide insight
and accountability where citizens, laws,
and politics cannot or do not.
And so it goes that the pursuit of that insight
or accountability should be neutral, impartial, fair,
balanced.
But what if the other side of a story
is considered marginal, at best, or dangerous, at worst?
The BBC, for instance, recently decided
to stop giving equal air time to those denying
the effects of climate change.
It's also arguable that objectivity
is something of a goose that journalists
are encouraged to chase.
As Glenn Greenwald puts it in "No Place to Hide,"
every news article is the product
of all sorts of highly subjective
cultural, nationalistic, and political assumptions.
Here on "Idea Channel," I've said something similar
in different terms, that media always
reflects the conditions of its production.
Or to look at this another way, our sense
of journalistic objectivity is one
built by applying some romantic, even vaguely scientific concept
of rational empiricism to reporting the news.
Unfortunately, in journalism, and even in a science,
a perfectly objective basis is untenable.
There's no foundation for gathering the facts which
does not rely, in some way, on the subjective judgments
of human beings.
None.
At all.
Sorry.
But OK.
Now we are briskly headed down a path
towards the unconcludable semantic argument
beginning with the question, "But what is truth anyway,
man?"
Glenn Greenwald, again, can provide a pertinent detour.
The relevant distinction, he writes,
is not between journalists who have
opinions and those who have none, a category which does not
exist.
It's between journalists who candidly reveal their opinions
and those who conceal them pretending they have none.
Media critic and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen
has rendered the same sentiment much more succinctly.
"Transparency," he said, "is the new objectivity."
For the longest time, objectivity
reigned supreme over journalistic practice.
But its throne is crumbling.
Studies in the US and Europe have
shown that practitioners see objectivity
as an ideal to strive for, but that there is just as much
of a sense that it is an impossible ideal.
This, I think, is an industry-wide almost-neurosis
that "Serial" wears on its sleeve.
There are many things that you can say "Serial"
did less than perfectly.
But I think, to its credit, I never
felt like Sarah Koenig or her producers
were any more or less sure or unsure about the story
than they clearly expressed.
To hear Koenig's description of the process of digging
through court documents and evidence,
tracking people down, talking to experts,
developing leads and testing them against the materials
at her disposal, alongside her various convictions, beliefs,
skepticisms, and intentions, I catch
glimpses of a journalistic process which, I think,
lets the facts and the reporter speak at the same time.
Of course, transparency is not a binary value, but a scalar one.
"Serial's" Transparent Knob might not
have been cranked all the way to 11,
but their efforts felt significant and honest.
But I don't know.
Maybe I'm just being naive.
Maybe journalism does have some impossible objective ideal.
But its base aims-- fairness, accountability, investigation,
communication-- are no less inherently subjective.
Meaning objective journalism-- like, I don't know,
plastic glasses, a small crowd, or things
that are pretty ugly-- can exist, but only
in spite of what it first appears to be.
What do you guys think?
Can and should journalism be objective?
Were Sarah and her team objective?
Let us know in the comments.
And it would be objectively nice of you
if you were to subscribe.
It is objectively very snowy in New York City right now.
Let's see what you guys had to say about objectivity,
"Serial," and the law.
As tends to be the case on "Idea Channel," when there
is some cataclysmic weather event like there is in New York
City right now, you get to see the inside of my apartment
a little bit more.
So that's why you are not looking
at the record wall or the "Idea Channel" set,
because I am stuck at home.
Anyways, it's not going to stop us from responding to comments.
But before we do, Office Hours is a thing that we figured out.
February 7 at the IBM Pavilion in midtown Manhattan.
I'm going to hang out for a couple hours.
There's no set plan.
Just come, hang out, chat with me,
talk with other "Idea Channel" viewers.
Just have fun.
We'll hang out.
Come for 10 minutes.
Come for a couple hours.
It will be nice to meet you.
OK, on to comments.
Erik Villas makes the really great point
that whether or not the law is based on objective
moral truths, what we're talking about here
is what objectively happened.
And it shouldn't factor in that people
are biased in some way when they're trying to figure out
just what happened, and that there is
some objective truth to that.
And that might be true.
But I think you see, especially in "Serial," that there's
no way to get to that objective truth
without passing through the conduit of very
subjective, biased, confused, forgetful people.
And yeah, I mean, that's right.
That is the whole tension here.
And the conversation that follows this comment
is so good.
I highly recommend checking it out.
Links to this comment and all the rest in the doobly-doo.
Binayaka Sahu talks about Michel Foucault and the idea
objectivity as it is sort of imposed or developed
by institutions, and also sort of offers advice
to the question of, you know, it might
be more worthwhile to ask whether or not
the idea of objectivity is important or worthwhile or
good.
And this made me think of a passage
that I have underlined in the "Michel Foucault Reader"
that, because I'm home, I could just pull off my bookshelf
and read.
It says, "The power of the norm"-- as in normality--
"appears through the disciplines."
Right, so these are the disciplines
of these institutions.
"Is this the new law of modern society?
Let us say, rather, that since the 18th century,
it has joined other powers-- the law,
the word, and the text-- tradition imposing
new delimitations on them."
And then a little bit further down, says,
"Like surveillance and with it, normalization
becomes one of the great instruments of power
at the end of the classical age."
And this is basically all about how
the normalization of culture and behavior
through the existence of institutions
is effectively law.
Which I think is a very important and great comment.
Thank you for this comment.
Earnest Pettie talks about how one
of the things that you could say is attractive about the law
is its sense of objectivity, that there
is this sense that it is not different for different people,
and that that can provide a sort of sense of justness,
or a basis for justice.
But that there are certain situations where
it becomes clear that maybe the law is
different for different people, and that those events
and situations are incredibly important,
because they might inspire us, in us,
an interest or a sense that we can and should try
to change the way things are.
And that maybe "Serial" factors into that in some way.
And I would say, yes, and yeah, I agree.
Laurel Teal brings up the idea of the social contract,
which I definitely should have mentioned by name.
It's the idea that there is sort of a contract
between all people in a society to behave in a certain way.
And talks about how that is maybe both expressive of,
and kind of upholding of, the ideas
that contribute to the existence of law,
but that also another thing worth considering is
that our ideas about how these things should be objective
probably say just as much about our culture and society
as what happens when we attempt that objectivity,
as the results tat we get from it.
And finally, and relatedly, Serah Wint
talks about how it is maybe the reaching for objectivity that
is the most important thing, that as the idea of what it
means to be human, what it means to be
a human around other humans, changes and progresses,
and we uncover more understanding about it,
our idea of what is right, what is objectively right,
will necessarily change.
And that this idea of objectivity in the law
is sort of like Utopia-- that it's a nice idea to reach for.
You probably are never going to get there,
but maybe it doesn't hurt to try.
Fair.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of, objectively, the best editing
team in New York City.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a subreddit-- links
in the doobly-doo.
And the Tweet of the Week comes from TJ Von P.,
who let me know that "Serial" is not an NPR show, which
I should have known, as someone who works in public media.
This is very embarrassing for me.
I will do penance.
10 Hail Terrys and one Our Lehrer.
How's that?
Does that sound good?
I think that's fair.
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