Objectivity in Public Media

I've been busy elsewhere folks -- doing some interesting work for the Public Media Integrity Project. In the course of that, I've been actively engaged in myriad conversations about our changing ethics in this frothy digital age. Below is a work in progress I hope leads to submission to the Nieman Labs at Harvard. You might say I'm using the blog to sort my thoughts. -- MM

The O-Word

When Nieman Lab’s Andrew Phelps urged me to compose some thoughts on the topic of journalism objectivity, he and I found ourselves referring to it as "The O-Word." A mutual concession we were dealing with a touchy topic.

At least it’s darn touchy in public media these days. Elsewhere, I’m not so sure.

In the span of one year -- in an effort to defend public media integrity – NPR purged some talented people from its ranks: Juan Williams, Vivian Schiller, Ellen Weiss.

And the purge continues.

In the month of October, NPR reassigned ATC host Michele Norris, WNYC sacked reporter Caitlin Curran, and the documentary show Soundprint dismissed host Lisa Simeone.

Simeone and Curran are freelance journalists who lost their gigs for taking to the streets in the "Occupy" protests. Norris agreed to an in-house reassignment when her husband took paid work for the Obama campaign.

I've shared my opinions on these controversies via a "Public Media Group" on Facebook. The page has become a 24-hour trading post for many public broadcasters. And apparently that's where Andrew noticed I was beginning to look like a traditionalist on objectivity -- but with a pragmatic twist.

Objectivity Can Be Very Subjective

I think objectivity gets a bum rap because it requires so much nuance in understanding it.

The traditionalist in me, does say Simeone and Curran violated a public trust and got what's coming to them. I'm not happy about it. It's a loss of talent. It didn’t have to play out that way (had they considered their employers’ values too). But the message should be clear: NPR, PBS and the CPB-funded member stations – all enabled by public dollars -- take their mission of public service seriously.

I go so far as to say that objectivity and public media are bound together in a struggle to survive. It's as if each needs the other to validate and demonstrate their value in a chaotic age.

objectivity and public media are bound together in a struggle to survive

I’m also a pragmatic person. I’ve managed over 100 reporters in my 30 years of journalism. I don't think of objectivity in theoretical terms. It isn't about “pretending” to be opinion-free (the weak lob thrown by O-word critics). It's about noting one’s opinion as hypothesis to be proven wrong or proven validated. Any other opinions are irrelevant and serve no journalistic purpose unless you consider journalism a battle of opinions which some obviously do.

(This is not to suggest there's no room for opinion in journalism. Of course, there's plenty of room for it and it is absolutely needed. But it needs to be identified as such or clearly known by the context it is in. I also make a distinction between opinion and analysis - because analysis is highly informed opinion well-presented as a case for a conclusion.)

And objectivity certainly isn't about being some Neutered Nelly who flees from moral judgments about right and wrong. In real life, journalists bring many judgments to bear on their work and see their work as instrumental in conducting a good and just society. However, that does not include taking up protest signs on Wall Street because that is not journalism, that is activism. Activists have an imperative to cause change. Journalists have an imperative to find facts and tell truths to describe what underlies that change and what results from it.

One Facebook friend, Cheryl Dring, put this even more pointedly: “People want ‘someone’ to speak truth to power. It is the role of journalists to give people the information to do just that.”

The pragmatist in me also confesses that objectivity is useful in less lofty ways. This is where my old school journalism is most vulnerable to the attacks of new media pundits and “he said, she said” critics. Frankly, objectivity is sometimes a hedge against not knowing enough, not gathering enough, and slinging news against a deadline. In this sense, yeah, you’re getting “news from nowhere,” because your trusty reporter never fully got there! It wasn’t some fear of bias that left that story wanting for more of a pointed conclusion, it was the lack of completeness which is a common ailment.

yeah, you’re getting 'news from nowhere,' because your trusty reporter never fully got there!

Despite all that, I’m not a complete traditionalist when it comes to objectivity in journalism. In fact, I agree with many who see objectivity becoming (or long ago became) a quaint concept. Its idealism is drowned by cynicism. Its commercial underpinnings are corroded and giving out. And the onslaught of amateur and advocacy and public relations media are simply overpowering the practice of objectivity.

Objectivity: A Doomed Idea? Not in Public Media.

I concede the notion that objectivity has been more aspirational than actual. It really is difficult to carry out the diligent methodology that underlies the essence of objectivity – just as it is time-consuming and expensive to run double-blind experiments in laboratories – or just as it is time-consuming and expensive to judge legal cases in courtrooms. Not the bar is always so high. It doesn't take loads of due diligence to review your facts and ask an editor to review your work for fairness and accuracy. But it sure takes herculean effort when you're contradicting a president in a patriotic period following a terrorist attack whilst vetting the justication for a foreign invasion.

No – I’m even open to the idea that we’ll get our truth-telling through a muddy mess of crowd-sourcing, incremental fact gathering and via the process of argumentation. (Not that I look forward to it. Sounds like “news from everywhere.”)

Having said that, I also predict public media and a panoply of public service minded commercial sources will continue to do the right thing for them and hold true to the ethics of objective journalism.

Public media – by which I mean the ecosystem of mission-driven media with public broadcasters playing a central role – has everything to lose by caving to the growing crowd who would hasten the death of objectivity.

Public media... has everything to lose by caving to the growing crowd who would hasten the death of objectivity.

For one thing, it is actually written into the statute authorizing federal funding to public broadcasters through the CPB that programming not be unfair and skewed to an advocacy agenda. Not that I think "the law" is our primary motivation to seek objectivity in news. No, the law is just a reasonable piece of protection that federal investments will be used for the interests of the plurality.

And that's just it. In a high-minded way, public media’s existence is hinged to the best interests of a pluralistic democracy. Unlike commerical media which seek segmented service strategies and would exploit ideological/political frameworks toward that end, public media tries to uphold the big WE, all of US.

I know, some consider it ideological (i.e., liberal) to extend education to all, to strive for diverse viewpoints, to explore cultural contexts and all the “we the people” stuff that public media likes. Journalistically speaking, this translates into manning Swiss-style neutral turf, above the mud, extending a helpful hand and endeavoring to be fair and honest.

This talk of public media is not overly idealistic. It’s been working pretty well. Look at how one dollar in tax support is matched by six dollars in voluntary support. Look at the tripling of the public radio audience in less than two decades. Look at the expansion of the public media editorial ranks (a career life boat for many tossed overboard by newspapers and commercial broadcasting). Some observers think public media may be working so well that it now makes a better target for political enemies. But I digress.

Critics On and Off the Mark

Critics of public media objectivity (and often they are from within the ranks!) suggest it has a fairness fetish and that it fails call BS when it should. I disagree. Calling BS on a lying politician, for example, is great public service and I see it done frequently although it is rarely done by conducting a crusade or convening a shouting match. Rather it is done intelligently and civilly through fact-checking, post-debate analysis, and the like.

Similarly, I think there’s a hollow ring in the critical assertion that NPR and company do a public disservice by presenting a “false balance” in the name of objectivity. If that happened, it would be a disservice. The well-worn example is that reporters give equal weight to climate change scientists and skeptics as if they are evenly split. But if critics actually listened critically they would hear that this is not the case. Rather, through mindful reporting and editing, it is usually clear where the fulcrum lies in such cases.

Where I think the critics of NPR have made a contribution is in describing an overly reactive enforcement of the objectivity guidelines. Even former NPR VP of News Jeffrey Dvorkin, on the Norris reassignment, openly sighed on the Facebook group, “NPR now appears in a permanent defensive crouch. How did this happen?”

It’s true. Whether it is to mollify critics or send a stern message, the dismissal of young freelance reporters (or CEO’s for that matter), suggests a preference for self-flagellation over course correction. If public media are to take on a greater journalistic role in the United States, as many future-of-journalism observers have urged, they must summon the courage and the will to lead the way in a courageous manner. A good start would be louder affirmation of its strengths, its mission, its values, its track record… not an eager demonstration of penitence.

Objectivity is Dead. Long Live Objectivity.

At the end of the day, we all probably agree that it is the story that matters. Judge that, not the private leanings of the story teller. But, I think you would also agree that privacy is a fleeting concept in the Internet age. So it is not unreasonable to include an odor detector in your ethical guidelines to defend against the smell of personal bias. After all, given the scent, skeptical audiences or sensitive sources may jump to conclusions that an otherwise diligent reporter, perhaps because she waved a sign at a rally, can’t be trusted to keep her opinions to herself.

The broad notion of objectivity as an eminent value of journalism is surely dead. There are too many substitutes already on the scene. But I can say with great conviction that objectivity as a central tenet of public media is here to stay. The bigger question may be whether public media is.