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News Media Innovation Reconsidered


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stories are interpretations and seek a way to test them. One way to test them, and only one, is whether a story fits the facts available. The story also has to cohere conceptually, logically, and be consistent with existing knowledge and theory. A story needs to be able to withstand strenuous public scrutiny and the questions raised by alternate perspectives. The criteria by which we evaluate stories are plural.

      There is perhaps no more succinct debunking of the idea that isolated facts have a special power by themselves than John Dewey’s introduction to The Public and Its Problems.27 In a few pages, Dewey throws cold water on the idea that facts “carry their meaning along on themselves on their face.” There can be disagreement on the facts or on what they mean. There may be insufficient facts to establish a claim. The same facts may support rival interpretations. Purported facts may be false or manipulated. Dewey points out that a few recalcitrant facts cannot force a person to accept or abandon a particular theory. Neo-pragmatist Willard V.O. Quine argued that facts never “prove” an empirical theory. There is always the possibility of an equally good, rival theory. Just as facts “under-determine” scientific theory, so they under-determine our news reports.28

      Yet, despite these cautions about a simplistic view of facts, pragmatic objectivity in journalism does not dismiss the importance of facts, properly understood. To the contrary, it recognizes, for instance, the importance of facts to investigative journalists in their efforts to expose government corruption. Pragmatic objectivity does not share the post-modern skepticism that there are no facts. Rather, it rejects the mythical idea of “pure” facts or a pure “given” in experience that is known without any interpretation, and the mythical idea that such facts are the sole and sufficient basis for evaluating the objectivity of reports. Pragmatic objectivity regards facts as creatures of interpretation and conceptual schemes. What we consider a fact depends on our belief systems, worldview, and epistemic norms.

      Timid Reporting or Biased Engagement

      With respect to timidity, the negative consequences of subscribing to a journalism ethics tethered to a strict neutrality that reports “just the facts” is clear from watching mainstream news organizations' attempt to deal with false or intolerant statements by leaders or groups. For example, since Donald Trump was elected president, American mainstream reporters, seeking to honor a traditional news objectivity, have twisted themselves into verbal pretzels trying not to call an outrageous statement by Trump racist, or hate speech, or misogynist. Better to see if someone else, like a liberal professor, will say so. At the same time, partisans use the media’s commitment to “balance” to create false moral equivalencies between racist and anti-racist groups.

      Trump, in July of 2019, told four Congresswomen of color that they should “go home” because they criticized US policy, even though all were American citizens. His storm of tweets against the women received much play. Rather than call his comments racist, CBS and the Times settled for a euphemism. It called them “racially charged” speech. Others said the comments might affect “racial divisions” but stopped short of saying they were racist. Other outlets fell back on the plaintive cry, “this is not who we are,” which only fails to come to grips with the depth of racism in the country. In this topsy-turvy world, Trump supporters then used the media’s notion of balance to get publicity for their accusation that it was the women who were racist.29 So, I ask: Whence this reticence to state the obvious, that such statements are racist, when the “go-back-where-you-came-from” slur is an age-old racist adage? It is a longstanding strategy of American white supremacists to paint people of color and non-Christians as unwelcome strangers in their own country. The answer is: a commitment to a narrow conception of good reporting as necessarily neutral and “facts only.” This conception makes it very difficult for reporters to call a president a liar or a racist, even if there is evidence for that charge.

      Values, Attachments, and Emotions

      How does objectivity co-exist with values, goals, attachments, and emotions? Are not these elements of human psychology subjective. Do they not bias inquiry?

      The answer is that emotions, values, and goals are necessary elements of thinking and inquiry. They can empower objective investigations, or they can lead to bias. It all depends on how we employ the volitional and emotional parts of our human nature.

      The importance of finding a way to mix value, emotion, and objectivity in journalism is clear. The daily news is full of implicit or explicit value judgments—tales of winners and losers, good guys and bad guys. Reporters cannot avoid evaluative language in reporting on unfair bosses, brutal massacres, vicious murders, notorious pedophiles, and dangerous terrorists. Journalists employ evaluations in selecting credible sources or displaying skepticism toward a new “scientific” theory. Journalists report on gruesome scenes of disaster, and can themselves be affected emotionally. To enter journalism is to enter an emotive, value-laden craft. New journalists learn more than the skills of writing news and gathering information. They acculturate into a realm of reporting routines, news values, and peer attitudes. Thus, a theory of objectivity should take into account these value-laden activities. Democratically engaged journalism starts from the premise that all journalists have values and goals. Therefore, the issue is not whether journalists have goals but what goals they seek and how they seek them.

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