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The Myth of Objective Journalism

Alex Priest — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:56:06 +0000

Yea, you read that right. The myth.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Dave Weigel is human, with thoughts, emotions, and feelings, like most of the rest of us.

Let me explain. Until yesterday, Dave Weigel was the Washington Post blogger covering the conservative movement. One caveat: he’s not all that conservative. Does that make him a bad blogger? A poor journalist? No. Does it mean he might not have been the best person for the job? Maybe. But that’s missing the larger point here.

The point is that our media is fundamentally flawed. Journalism in the 21st century is facing overwhelming forces, and yesterday’s fiasco at the Washington Post only underscores the futility of trying to fight them. The idea of objective journalism is a myth, for three reasons:

News moves faster than people.

“Unbiased journalism” is no longer a unique selling point, nor one that consumers are willing to pay for.

Journalists have opinions, and hiding them only misleads the public, preventing them from properly interpreting the news they read, hear, and watch.

News moves faster than people.

In the 1990s we saw the advent of the 24/7 news cycle, as dedicated cable news channels like CNN and Fox News Channel emerged on the scene. Little did they know, the media was only witnessing the beginning of a rapidly accelerating news cycle, one that has now accelerated far out of their control.

Today we have social media. Social media doesn’t drive the news cycle–events drive the news cycle. But social media has placed the control of the news cycle squarely in the hands of the information consumers themselves, leaving television and newspapers struggling to keep up.

Lost amidst the battle between corporate media conglomerates and the “little guy” citizen journalists, of course, are the paid, professional journalists. These journalists are overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and forced to hold themselves to outrageous and unrealistic standards of “objectivity”–standards that are simply impossible to live up to the 21st century hyper news cycle.

“Unbiased journalism” is no longer a unique selling point, nor one that consumers are willing to pay for.

In case you haven’t noticed, newspapers are dying. There’s lots of theories as to why they’re dying, and likely more than one accurate explanation. I tend to favor the Strategic Dissonance Model, created by former Intel CEO Andy Grove.

The model, above, basically states that at a recent point in history there was an inflection point in the business of information. As consumers of information and new media–i.e. blogs, social media, etc.–moved one direction, progressing towards an open, generally opinion-based, consumer-generated style of news, old media regressed toward a more closed, more staunchly “objective” style. This, in turn, created a dissonance gap between the two, resulting in old media’s decline and new media’s rapid success.

My point here is that consumer’s dont give a shit about objectivity. Not only do they not care, but they sure as hell don’t care enough to pay for it. The only people subscribing to old media today are people who either a) just like the feel of the newspaper, or b) rely on very factual, researched articles for research of their own.

Journalists have opinions, and hiding them only misleads the public, preventing them from properly interpreting the news they read, hear, and watch.

Finally, the obvious point. Journalists do have opinions. That is an obvious fact, and one that every single person on earth should know. If you think that journalists are robots and have no opinions, don’t agree or disagree with politicians, and don’t feel certain ways on certain issues, then you clearly don’t understand the way the world works.

So here’s the situation. We have a hyperspeed news cycle that is out of corporate media’s control, consumer’s that don’t care about unbiased journalism yet business models still founded on selling it, and journalists with opinions working for businesses that refuse to acknowledge their humanity.

See any problems there?

Not only is this a fundamentally flawed system, but this misleads news consumers. When you read an article on the Huffington Post, you know that it’s going to have a liberal bias. When you watch MSNBC you know it’s got a liberal slant. And when you watch Fox News they make no efforts to hide their conservative bias. These media organizations are some of the few in the world that are being (relatively) honest with their consumers.

The ones claiming objectivity are lying to you. I’m looking at you, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and, for that matter, the AP, NBC, ABC, CNN, and any number of other organizations. Each of these organizations has biased journalists, producing biased work, yet they insist over and over that they are objective and unbiased. When relatively uninformed readers and watchers consume this content, they interpret it as objective. Informed and experienced information consumers recognize the political bias inherent in these organizations and journalists and interpret it as such, taking in the actual facts and the rest with a grain of salt (as it should be).

In other words (and thanks for sticking around through this long entry), Dave Weigel should never have been fired, and journalists should never feel the need to keep their personal opinions and bias secret from the public.

Think about it. How can we change this? What will it take to convince traditional media that they are simply going about the business of news the wrong way?

Sound off in the comments or tweet at me. And don’t forget to retweet and “like” this post on Facebook using the links below.

Let ‘em Talk

Alex Priest — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:23:47 +0000

My latest column in my university’s newspaper is up today, here at The Eagle. This week, I’m focusing on the performance of Democrats in the media and how to handle (or not handle) their messaging alongside that coming from Republicans. With the way Republicans have handled their message–Tea Party and all–my advice is pretty simple. Let ‘em keep on talking, the only people they’re going to hurt is themselves.

The full column is below the cut. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Democrats aren’t doing half bad right now. So far 2010 actually isn’t looking nearly as dire as it was just after pseudo-Republican Scott Brown won the Kennedy seat in Massachusetts.

If Democrats keep up the hard work and continue to ignore tea partiers—radical conservatives and ultra-liberals like they have been—they might just survive this year. Nevertheless, here’s a little advice.

Dear Democratic Strategists,

You’re doing alright. Behind all the tea party crazy talk and “Washington is broken” nonsense, the news cycle seems to be trending your way.

Predicting the news cycle is a difficult thing to do. Sometimes it’s rough for Democrats, sometimes it hits the GOP where it really hurts.

This is supposed to be a rough year for Democrats. President Barack Obama’s policies haven’t sailed through as smoothly as we hoped. Hardly anyone’s happy with Congress, and it consists mostly of Democrats. So it’s all bad news for the Democratic Party, right?

I’m not so sure. Look at the news from Tuesday just this week, for example.

The leading headline in the Wall Street Journal was “Deal Near on Banking Rules,” one of the Democrats’ key policy items. Point for us.

Let’s look at others. “Tea Party Holds Risks for GOP.” Minus one for Republicans.

“Fed Void Clears Path for Obama,” “Manufacturing Shows Strength,” “Bailout Update: AIG’s repayment means U.S. is close to getting back half of its IOUs.” Point, point, point for Democrats.

And then there’s darling Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., holding up unemployment benefits for millions of Americans.

“One Senator Holds Up Bill, in New Level of Gridlock,” proclaims the WSJ. And then Tuesday evening: “Deal Reached to End Senator’s Holdout.” Point.

“Well that’s just one paper!” conservatives might protest (never mind the fact that the Wall Street Journal typically leans right). Sure, but The Washington Post’s headlines tell the same story.

Oh, and see that cover story in the Metro section? It exposes Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia as the hypocrite he is, lobbying for education funding from the Recovery Act he’s been lobbying against since last year. Point.

So the media momentum has shifted left a bit. But we can’t just sit back and be passive, can we? “We can’t let Republicans control the agenda and the message!” say paranoid political strategists on the left.

Well, maybe not completely. But lately they’ve done a good job digging themselves into a hole without your help, Democrats.

So, let ‘em talk.

The Tea Party is a joke. Every time Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck opens their mouth, people ridicule them across the political spectrum. Ron Paul? Not much of a threat when the Republican establishment still loathes him. Let them talk.

The “Party of No” is still just saying “no,” as evidenced by Bunning’s ignorant protest of the unemployment bill. If all the public hears is “no,” let ‘em talk.

Finally, the stimulus bill is working, the economy continues to improve and Obama is working hard to find solutions to our debt problem.

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to pan his economic proposals, as if they weren’t going home to hypocritically take credit for the stimulus. Let ‘em talk; it’s only hurting them.

So Democrats, for now I think you should just ride the wave. Let the Republicans screw up their own messaging—you just focus on getting things done. The people will notice. You act, let them talk.

Twitter on the Wire?

Alex Priest — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:30:27 +0000

Crossposted from shamable.com, here.

In case you didn’t hear, Twitter has signed a deal with Yahoo for a somewhat more advanced integration than it has with Google or Microsoft. A conversation I had just yesterday with a friend at Agence France-Press (AFP) got me to thinking, and now this announcement has started to confirm my theory:

Twitter is starting to sound an awful lot like a social wire service.

Check below the cut for the rest.

Here’s a passage from the LA Times story about the Yahoo deal:

The partnerships with Twitter and Facebook will roll out later this year. The deals will enable users to take material from both sites without having to leave either one, said Jim Stoneham, vice president of communities for Yahoo. Specifically, users will be able to access their Twitter feed on Yahoo’s sites. They will also be able to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo. And Yahoo search and media properties will include Twitter updates.

Look at it this way. Imagine a news-ticker, on all your news sites, that streams breaking news not just from the major news organizations (of your choosing, of course), but also from your friends, family, and professional contacts. Imagine a news article where the headline was pulled from Twitter, the content was a digitally combined series of blog posts by highly-ranked bloggers, and the images were pulled from Flickr, Twitpic, and yFrog. Just imagine the fundamental shift in news, business, advertising–you name it–that would come from this.

Sure, real journalism would still survive–in fact it would likely thrive as more and more people look for authentic, reputable news sources. But for breaking news stories and immediate analysis of the events you are most interested in, what better to give you the news then your favorite news sources and all your friends?

I know that nowadays, it’s rare for me not to hear a piece of breaking news on Twitter first. Most of the things on TV are at least 30 minutes old, and the newspapers? Ha, they couldn’t break news if their industry depended on it… well, I won’t go there.

But could this Twitter-Yahoo deal be edging towards something much, much larger? We’ve all heard that Twitter’s goal is to be the “pulse of the planet”, could this be the key to achieving that goal? How will news agencies react? How will wire services, the AP, AFP, Reuters, all of them, survive? If more people are breaking news faster, and providing free, high-quality photos, videos and audio for these events, what justifies the high cost?

There’s a lot to think about here, all of it purely conjecture. But it’s fun to imagine. What do you think about the Twitter-Yahoo deal? Is it just another deal like they’ve got with Microsoft and Google? Is it on the verge of something better, like I’m theorizing?