Final essays

Here we go!

1. Our textbook, The Big Picture, discusses the definition of objectivity in minute detail—all the while stating that it is impossible to obtain. While I agree that true objectivity is an impossibility for inherently biased humans, I also believe that it is a journalist’s responsibility to never stop striving to obtain it. In my opinion, and in simple terms, objectivity is the ability to see past one’s own prejudices and emotions. Journalists need to remain impartial, in order to be fair to all sides of a story, to all the people we are representing, to businesses, to politicians, to political and religious views. If journalism lacks objectivity it becomes nothing more than a means to advocate its advertisers, or a way to spread its journalists’ ideas and opinions, rather than the truth. Because the truth is, essentially, what we aim for. We can’t tell all of it sometimes, and other times we get it wrong, but our audience is expecting us to write honestly and fairly. And for the most part, that is what we do.
Opinion, however, does have a place in journalism. Otherwise, how could we have things like editorials, letters to the editor, analysis and “How-to” columns, and other staples of the sort? However, these sections of a paper are easy to identify, because they are labeled “Opinion” or “Editorial.” The transparency of bias makes it acceptable. As long as opinion is backed by fact, and isn’t vulgar or offensive, it has its place in the designated sections of newspapers.
However, journalists must take care that they do not confuse opinion articles with the feature articles and “hard news” that they cover. If an article is not explicitly stated as an opinion, and a reporter includes spin or covers one side more favorably than the other, or even omits key information, it is lying. And since the public needs to look to journalism as a source of honest information, spinning stories that are supposed to be unbiased crushes that trust.
Ultimately, the issue comes down to the fact that although journalism is a noble and trustworthy ideal, journalists are human, and are therefore prone to bias, error, and confusing fact with opinion. As reporters, we obviously have to be very interested in the politics and issues of our day, or we would get very bored covering the stories. We must care, or we wouldn’t have chosen the profession we are in. And since we are so invested in these issues, we cannot help but have strong opinions about them. However, that doesn’t mean the journalists need to despair of never being able to write a fair article. Journalists must just be aware of their own opinions and biases and compensate for them. If journalists feel too strongly, or if they find themselves too invested in a story, they may want to ask to be removed from the story.
I know that I have strong opinions on most of the issues of this day. However, because I know this, I hope to recognize my biases when they threaten to appear. If they do, I will make certain that I compensate for them by covering both sides equally, and by removing any speech in my article that could represent either side in a positive or negative light. And if I find that I feel too strongly about an issue to represent all sides, I would ask to be removed from the story.
2. The Big Picture defines journalistic excellence as having three basic components: truth, context, and independence. Truth must be present, obviously, because without it, journalism becomes gossip or other propaganda, and it loses the public’s trust. Truth must include not only what the facts are, but a comprehensive collection of facts. Journalistic excellence requires context, because without it, the truth just becomes a laundry list of facts. Context explains the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ to the audience. Why the readers should care, and the historical, political, or religious context the article should be read in are all explained through the context of an article. Finally, excellent journalism needs one more aspect that makes truth and context possible: independence. Independence from political structures, from candidates, from businesses, and the list goes on. Although as it states in our textbook, “Because the news is a social product, it can never be produced in a vacuum” (Scheuer 48). However, journalists must strive to remain independent of any propaganda or agenda.
These are the three basic concepts of excellence as outlined in our textbook, and I tend to agree. However, I also think that there are a few more aspects that can make journalism excellent. I believe that often, courage and determination are both necessary to uncover facts and discover stories. Journalists must constantly be watching for stories that could uncover scandal and help their readers, or even just articles that would be informative and important. I think that transparency of bias (if there is bias) is necessary, so the audience recognizes that it isn’t straight truth they are reading. And I also think that passion is necessary for great journalism. If we as journalists don’t care about what we’re writing about, we can hardly expect our audience to.
The newspaper I read online was The Bakersfield Californian, which is my hometown’s only paper. Overall, I thought their articles were mediocre. As far as I could tell, the newspaper followed the three basic aspects of journalism. They were truthful and independent, as near as I could tell. I also saw contextual articles in their paper—where they described the history or importance of an article. Everything basic was there; however, it lacked other, superior elements that would have made it a truly great newspaper. While the stories were honest, they were typical and, frankly, boring. Their journalists didn’t seem to be taking any risks, and if they had passion about their articles, it certainly didn’t show most of the time. Most of the time, the articles seemed free from bias, but I did notice that the number of favorably conservative editorials and opinion pieces were overwhelming. Many articles also seemed to have a somewhat conservative spin, especially in the way headlines were phrased. So while I think that it was a decent example of journalism, The Bakersfield Californian was by no means an example of excellent journalism.
3. “Factual truth, like anything else, can be overrated in some contexts—but journalism is not one of those contexts. [However] a strictly accurate but superficial account of an important event is not necessarily better, in terms of the overall public good, than one with greater explanatory power that contains some minor inaccuracies or even basic untruths.” –The Big Picture (62)
The above quote accurately describes both how important truth in journalism is, and how difficult it is to describe and obtain. Absolute truth is not obtainable in such a human pursuit as journalism. However, our textbook does a very good job exploring the aspects of journalistic truth. The first aspect is that journalistic truth is a pragmatic truth—as journalists, we ignore the fact that we all see different truths, even when witnessing the same incident, and that it is sometimes impossible to reconcile those differences (Scheuer 63). Otherwise, we’d constantly be caught up in retelling stories, rewriting articles, and otherwise revising and being uncertain because there is no Truth with a capital ‘T’ in journalism. Everything is relative, because everything is human.
Secondly, the truth must be accurate, but accuracy doesn’t necessarily equal truth. Accuracy means a list of factual events and quotes. The journalistic truth incorporates accurate aspects into its storytelling, so it is honest, but not boring. As Scheuer states, “We must collect the dots and connect the dots. . . Journalistic truth begins with accuracy, but quickly expands beyond (and with) the facts, in pursuit of vague and imperfectly obtainable goals as context, balance, proportion, and relevance” (67). Therefore journalism must be accurate, truthful, and factual, but it most ultimately strive for much more than that.
And the reason journalism must strive for these “vague and imperfectly obtainable goals” is so it can be of service to the public. A laundry list of facts would just be boring. Good storytelling without truth is propaganda or gossip. Therefore, the combination of fact and context contributes to citizens’ knowledge of issues like the workings of their government, or about companies, accidents, or anything that could be considered news.
4. Newspapers and television news operations are dwindling because of the explosion of electronic resources. Websites like Yahoo! and Google replaced the necessity of having to subscribe to a paper; and once papers realized that they were quickly losing clientele to these websites, newspapers put up sites of their own to compete. However, that meant that people needed to subscribe even less to the newspaper, since they could get nearly everything online. Not to mention websites like Twitter, Netvibes, and CraigsList, which group the news and allows people to communicate quickly were driving papers out of business quickly. These sites take away both subscription revenue and even advertisement revenue from newspapers and television news operations, so it is no wonder they are having a difficult time staying afloat.
While I think it is a shame that we seem to be losing the paper quality of news—and while I plan to subscribe to papers for as long as they are around in the tactile sense, I believe that eventually, everything will be paperless. Newspapers already have websites that either allow the public free access, or that require a subscription to access all of the site’s contents. I think that this is the future of newspapers, but I don’t think that the papers will ever get their subscription costs back, since it is too easy for customers to simply get their news elsewhere if they can’t find it for free on their favorite newspaper’s website. Newspapers can, however, still collect some advertisement revenue online.
I think that going into journalism right now is a risky endeavor; however, I also think that people are always going to need news, and they are always going to need honest reporters to gather it and write it down. So I think that, while this is a difficult and turbulent time for papers, they will not disappear entirely—and neither will my job. Five or ten years from now, I expect that reporting and writing the news is going to be very different, but I think that I will still be doing it. Perhaps I will have to include hyperlinks and video streams into my articles. Or perhaps my articles will have to be either very national, or very local. Either way, I do still think I will have a job as a reporter—otherwise, I wouldn’t be in this major.
5. When I read this question, the first aspect I think of to include in my personal code of conduct is humility. I think that if I, as a journalist, constantly keep in mind the fact that I writing and reporting to perform a service, not to show off how awesome I am, or how much I know, then many other aspects of my personal code will fall in place. If I have humility, I will be much less inclined to want to spin a story—because I will not have the arrogance to believe that my personal opinion has more value than the truth. If I have humility, I will strive for objectivity, even when I know that it is an ideal that cannot be reached. I will keep trying, because I will not consider myself to be greater than this ideal of unbiased reporting.
Accuracy and sensitivity to audience are two other aspects that I consider to be very important. Accuracy for obvious reasons—because I do believe that journalism is, in part, a public service, and so I will strive to tell the truth as accurately as possible. Sensitivity to audience is a little trickier, and at first seems to even conflict with the idea of truthful journalism. However, I think that journalists can still be honest, even while remembering whom they are writing to.
I also believe that journalists need to have passion, initiative, and courage, to do their job well. My personal code of conduct includes the persistence and initiative to find stories and the passion and courage to research them well, and to find the facts needed to make it valid and interesting to my readers.