Leonard Downie (Washington Post, 1/30/23) quotes approvingly: “Decisions about which news to cover can reflect an organization’s values, whether or not these are stated publicly.” In fact, there’s no way that they can’t reflect such values.
Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor for the Washington Post from 1991 through 2008, last month published an article in the Post opinion section (1/30/23) headlined “Newsrooms That Move Beyond ‘Objectivity’ Can Build Trust.” He observed that “increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality.” He added that younger, more diverse reporters “believe that the concept of objectivity has prevented truly accurate reporting.”
Downie argued that news organizations should
strive not just for accuracy based on verifiable facts but also for truth—what Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward have called “the best obtainable version of the truth.” This means original journalism that includes investigating and reporting on all aspects of American life.
This doesn’t mean rejecting the idea that objective facts exist. Instead, it involves accepting that news organizations’ reporting on those objective facts cannot be done in a mechanically detached way. After all, key reporting decisions—what to cover, what information to present, how to present it—depend ultimately on subjective human judgments.
‘That’s dramatic’
Bret Stephens apparently could not wrap his head around this idea. During an appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher on February 3, the right-wing New York Times columnist responded to Downie’s piece:
If he were to get his way, that would be not just the end of any serious journalism in the United States, I think it would be the end of the United States.
Even Maher, who was setting Stephens up to tee off on what he saw as Downie’s loony ideas, was taken aback. “What? Wow. That’s dramatic,” Maher remarked, to the chuckling of the audience.
Stephens immediately strawmanned Downie’s argument:
I thought that was the battle we spent six years fighting the Trump administration about, that you just couldn’t say it was true that you had sold 90% of your condominiums in your fabulous new development even if it wasn’t true.
Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with Downie’s piece, which made the case for news organizations being more honest about the influence that their values inevitably have on their reporting, while sticking to factual accuracy in that reporting. Stephens apparently interpreted that as: Downie thinks the media should abandon factual accuracy.
‘View from nowhere’
Stephens (New York Times, 2/9/23) does not appreciate how much damage he personally does to corporate media’s credibility.
Unsurprisingly, Downie was not impressed by Stephens’ understanding of his position. According to Stephens, Downie asked him to actually read the report upon which the op-ed was based after his appearance on Maher’s show. Stephens then took to the opinion pages at the New York Times (2/9/23) to elaborate on his critique:
[Downie] even claims that objectivity was never a standard he upheld [at the Post], even though the principles he says were the goals he pursued as editor—“accuracy, fairness, nonpartisanship, accountability and the pursuit of truth”—are the same as those upheld by most objective journalists and little different from what he elsewhere says is the dictionary definition of objectivity—“using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice.”
Stephens’ column calls to mind a half-asleep high school student slogging through the reading section of the SAT. In Downie’s report—titled “Beyond Objectivity,” and co-written with former CBS News president Andrew Heyward—the authors are quite clear about the distinction between objectivity and the pursuit of truth: The former would require an impossible elimination of the influence of personal values on reporting, while the latter involves admitting that values influence reporting.
The report quotes several critics of the idea of objectivity, who collectively make the point that objectivity is simply unachievable in practice. For instance, it cites NYU professor Jay Rosen as disparaging the traditional notion of objectivity
as a form of persuasion in which journalists tried to get us to accept their account by saying something like, “I don’t have a point of view, I don’t have a starting point, I don’t have a philosophy, I don’t have an ideology. I’m just telling you the way it is. So believe it, because this is the way it is.” That’s the view from nowhere.
Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of ProPublica, adds: “Objectivity is not even possible…. I don’t even know what it means.” And Neil Barsky, founder of the Marshall Project, continues: “The journalist’s job is truth, not objectivity…. It is getting close to the reality, notwithstanding that we all have biases and passions.”
None of these quotes show up in Stephens’ op-ed. And for good reason: They completely undermine his interpretation of the report. In his crusade for “objectivity,” Stephens seems, ironically, to have thrown inconvenient evidence out the window.
Shortcomings and blinders
What’s remarkable is that Stephens, towards the end of his essay, himself concedes that objectivity is unattainable:
All journalists are subject to the personal shortcomings and cultural blinders that make all human enterprises imperfect. And there’s never a foolproof way of capturing reality and conveying information, particularly in a pluralistic and often polarized country.
This comes after he earlier wrote, “The fact that objectivity is hard to put into practice does nothing to invalidate it as a desirable goal.” But as he says, “All human enterprises [are] imperfect.” Objectivity is not difficult to achieve; it’s a fundamental impossibility.
And its pursuit is not as valiant as Stephens would have us believe. As Downie and Heyward point out, attempts to make reporting “objective” have all too often led to “bothsidesism,” in which the pursuit of truth is simply outsourced to outside parties, who make competing claims about reality as reporters throw their hands up and tell the reader, “You decide.” This “balancing” tends to result in outsized platforms for the powerful few.
Stephens nevertheless longs for the old days of “objective” reporting. In the final paragraph of his piece, he contends:
If you still believe that a healthy democracy depends on the quality and credibility of information with which our society makes its choices, then we have few better models than the kind of objective journalism that is now going out of fashion.
‘The most honest picture of reality’
An example of the downside of “objectivity,” which for Stephens means publishing things conservatives believe regardless of whether they are true or not: He declared (New York Times, 2/21/23), based on a meta-analysis, that “the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as ‘misinformers’ for opposing mandates were right.” In fact, the two studies (out of 78) in the meta-analysis that actually looked at Covid and mask mandates both concluded that they reduced infection (L.A. Times, 2/24/23).
But what did that model actually look like in practice? As one illustrative example, Downie and Heyward point to early coverage of climate change:
Early stories about scientific evidence of climate change and the role of human behavior were often “balanced” with the views of climate change deniers.
Downie and Heyward are highly critical of this style of reporting, and call for a different approach. In the final section of the report, in which they make six recommendations for how news organizations can update their approach to news coverage and move beyond the myth of objectivity, their first recommendation is: “Strive not just for accuracy, but for truth.” They write:
Accuracy starts with a commitment to verifiable facts, with no compromises. But facts, while true, aren’t necessarily the whole truth. Therefore, your journalists must consider multiple perspectives to provide context where needed.
That said, avoid lazy or mindless “balance” or “bothsidesism.” If your reporting combines accuracy and open-mindedness to multiple points of view, the result should still reflect the most honest picture of reality you can present—what Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein call “the best available version of the truth.”
Stephens’ true concern seems to be that news organizations will follow Downie and Heyward’s advice on exactly this point:
What Downie and Heyward dismiss in their report as “both-sides-ism” is, in reality, a crucial way to build trust with audiences, particularly in a country as diverse as America. It gives a platform to multiple views. And it shows faith that people can come to intelligent conclusions of their own.
This is perhaps the natural position for someone with as tenuous a grasp on reality as Stephens to take. Most obviously, he is well-known as a “climate change bullshitter” (Vox, 5/1/17) “whose very first article at the Times had to be corrected due to his misunderstanding of basic climate science” (FAIR.org, 6/30/17). Stephens pretends to think that journalists need to respect the facts, but when the claims his side is making are verifiably false, he wants media to publish them anyway; that’s what he means by “objectivity.”
‘Viewpoint diversity’
In the end, it turns out what Stephens is interested in is not a fair and accurate airing of the facts. His main gripe is rather a well-worn complaint of the right: The media have a liberal bias. How should we rectify this? More representation for conservatives.
He pronounces in the piece that “viewpoint diversity” is currently “the most glaring deficit in most of the American news media landscape.” And he later bemoans the media’s treatment of “religious conservatives, home-schoolers, gun owners and Trump supporters,” in particular the fact that reporters are willing to label people from these groups as “racist” or “misinformers” or “-phobic.” In other words, Stephens doesn’t want the facts in print when they reflect poorly on his side.
There are serious problems with US journalism. FAIR has decades of pieces documenting these problems. The pro-war and pro-corporate bias of prominent news outlets can be staggering. And, though Downie and Heyward’s report offers fairly moderate prescriptions for improving news coverage, the fact that mainstream voices are at least calling for a shift away from false balance in reporting is a welcome shift. That Stephens sees this as a threat says more about him than anything.
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Well, both views make mistakes. Sorry for the lengthy comment, and even this is only covering the surface, I am afraid.
The remark ” He added that younger, more diverse reporters “believe that the concept of objectivity has prevented truly accurate reporting.” is an example of this.
The “winning point” of this sentence is the usual one. “The old are wrong” “us, the new ones, are great”. This is a common idea since thousands of years. Often it shows that where ideas are not convincing, coolness has to win. Young is cool, since thousands of years, and in our capitalist societies more than ever.
But – it might be true in some cases, and wrong in others^^.
The background of this “new idea” is in fact very old. The “Frankfurt school” or “critical theory” fought a similar fight nearly 60 years ago.
On one side were the “critical rationalists” like Karl Popper. They fought – in their view – bad “not falsifiable” ideas like Marxism, or what Plato had taught, or psychoanalysis, which at the time was in parts a radical socialist, in parts only Left-from-Bernie-Sanders-and-Ilhan-Omar-social-democrat movement with Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and others in the USA.
On the other side were Adorno, or young Habermas. In fact Habermas’ book “Erkenntnis und Interesse” (1968) was speaking about the same we now are told was seen by younger, diverse reporters. Habermas’ book was translated as “knowledge and human interests”. This was, 55 years ago, quite the same fight now presented as “new”. It is not good that this is not even seen, I think.
But there is a trick. A problem. The “Popper side” was not entirely wrong. I must oversimplify here, but bear with me. Their idea of fighting – in their view – dangerous ideas “which cannot be proved”, which distort “the truth”, like Marxism, or psychoanalysis – also fought against real distortions. By admitting our bias – say for radical Left ideas against the mainstream – we still can make huge mistakes, and are not simply better because we are cool or young…
Let us take an example nearly nobody on our fragmented rest of the Left seems to want to think about, let alone change.
1. Our fight, a very old and new fight against racism of all kinds, picks out individuals and tries to harm them. Some people lose their jobs, are hunted in media and in “social” media, the reputation of single people is damaged. Here single people are seen as highly important. It matters much what single people do. And their racist bias has to be shown.
2 In our fights against climate destruction Left to Right constantly shout “let us stop talking about CO2 foot prints”. I admit I don’t even see a real fight. Even the far Left or Left is just talking endlessly, without admitting the truth – who are the many millions who kill the climate as we knew it. But this is a different topic. Important for our problem here is: concerning climate destruction, suddenly we are saying: hey, individuals do not count at all. In-scene yourself new! Lead your poly-local lifestyle, fly from New York to Berlin 12 times a year, enjoy your further luxury-holidays around the world, be cool! Single people do not count at all! This is just a negativity, hey, or as postmodern writer Hélène Cixous said in DIE ZEIT 2017: the talk about climate destruction is just the wish of masses for an apocalypse….
Since 3 decades this “single ones do not count” theory is used and repeated by even ‘green new deal’ advocates to hide the imperial, earth-endangering lifestyle of around – we do not count…. – 800 millions of people. All living in the USA, in Europe, Australia and some more countries. These 800 millions of people lead market-radical consumerist life-styles. Their horrible luxurious flying-tourism, cheap too, es not only endangering hot and hot-wet continents, the cheap luxuries also harm workers. A lot. The “let us stop talking about CO2 – and methane, etc – footprints” is told by the same people who, in our fights against racism, tell you the opposite. Do you see the problem? Leftists distort reality with bad standards, greenwashing themselves.
The truth would be: the Left of the USA, Europe, Australia etc. is not that great in fighting climate destruction. Both Left and Right in these rich capitalist countries are the main cause for global climate destruction. And nobody admits the bias in this.
This is a huge self contradiction. Nobody would be so stupid as to suggest while we hunt single people as racists – stopping this one or hundred single persons, calling bosses to fire him or her, would end the huge problem of racism.Every single racist is important and has to be stopped. Now concerning the devastation of hot and hot-wet continents, Africa, southern America, big parts of Asia – hey. Well. Here single people do not count. Stop annoying single people, is the common bias, from Left to Right. But we feel good because we see the bias of our adversaries…
But the “single people” are – if the figure is right – 800 millions. Or 1 billion, by now, I have no idea, we don’t talk about it.
This is a problem, is it? Neither Karl Popper nor Adorno/Habermas were right. Both sides have good ideas. But the huge problem is relativism.
If Fox news present distorted news our simplified version of Popper could say: science and research has it that you, Fox news, are wrong here. Because at heart Popper believed science could find a way. Habermas – also our simplified version^^, but this comment is getting lengthy already – would answer, say, in the lines of: even experiments with mice end different depending on the hidden or open wishes the researchers have. They would agree about the distortions done by Fox news, but fight in many, many other areas.
Now what? Sadly enough we are since 30 years beyond discussing, discussing Popper or Adorno/Habermas. Post-structuralism, the huge majority at our campuses in cultural sciences since 30 years at least, trickled down into our media as: “science is also just a social construction”. Let us accept our bias. And this can also be very dangerous.
The idea of “social construction” is often true of course. Mathematics, gender studies did not come from the heavens because Goddess X said “here are mathematics”. It was constructed and created. Another question was, important for our recent fights, if really every mathematician is so determined that her or his bias is wrong, or white science, or white supremacy (mathematics were invented by non-white people, as we know! But this “mathematics is white supremacy” is still floating around now. This is often a very low standard in our day…)
But the problem with “everything is just a text” or “everything is only a construction” in our media turned out to be: even clearly true science was shaken. So the Covid deniers, the climate-destruction deniers could argue with precisely what Leonard Downie jr now presented as “new”. And they do! By the way, climate destruction deniers are mostly from the Right. But the Left had also some Alexander Cockburns, who were climate-destruction-deniers. And there are many more.)
The “Covid is just a social construction” people (Agamben talked a bit like this) overdo the idea, yes. But – there are a lot of quotes from post-structuralists which trickled down as “well science is not more than another text in endless texts”. Michel Foucault, suffering from AIDS, said he did not believe AIDS existed. He said it was a power technique of the state to hurt people! Well it wasn’t.
This is a far deeper problem than the 2 you mention have it. But that mainstream media try to gloss over the fact that also they have a hidden or open bias – this is very, very old…I am sure Popper et al. versus Adorno and Habermas was not the first fight about this.
I think part of the fragmentation of the Left also comes from this problem. People who think “I have the objective truth” deny they also have a bias. People who criticize the “objectivity” which never existed deny that in reality not “truth” is what huge majorities want. But to fight their way through.
An especially sad example of this is: 30 years our post-structuralist or postmodern age praised – in the USA, Europe, etc – itself with: “we are only asking questions. we have no answers”.
But then the same people talking about the bias of others shout in 100/0 fashion that, say, Putin’s horrible aggressive war against Ukraine meets us, the 100% objective and right and good ones. And this ends all discussions about how to save lives in Ukraine… So after their fine sounding modest self-descriptions many Left and far Left people in reality act just like those they always criticize… And so all who just ask how to stop the killing are suddenly “100% bad, mad and pacifists”.
The first solution would be to at least remind all those “we only ask questions, we have no answers” people what they told us, while they are so 100% convinced that only they are right.
I would be happy if we would see the day when at least our biases would not be sold – like in the article you mention – with the old “young and diverse new people now”. In Germany the downfall of the unions was begun around 2000 by postmodern intellectuals declaring the pro union and worker’s rights people were “old”, or “so last century”. While the “young and new ones” were open to progress.
Instead of going the hard way to admit they wanted to hurt the workers, take rights already won, they used the “young and cool” mantra. The results are known and can be seen. With this cool talk millions of workers were hurt, deeply. Germany got the horrible low-wage sector in the name of “young progress” which caused and causes huge problems, and by the way led to a far right party, the AfD.
Please excuse the lengthy article, but this is an important problem.
Was Russiagate truth based reporting? Heaven help the troves of lost souls in journalism who thought, and still think, so.
There is a saying that to be neutral is to take the side of the oppressor. Call it be that mainstream media, in its assiduous pursuit of objectivity, has long been supporting imperialism and the colonial imagination? Perhaps the time has come for journalists to decide, as did war reporter Robert Fisk, to take the side of the victim. In this way they would have acknowledged the systemic racism and other isms of our capitalist system and would become a force for truth and justice rather than a means of maintaining the status quo.
In a society where Orwell’s description of the news is pretty much something two, three decades old at this point, wasting breath and ink about what’s the dif’ between a Time’s propagandist and a propaganda maestro from WAPO is kind of a big waste of our time and yours. They will most surely shut FAIR down soon so please put what time you have left to better use, Mike Liston