Here’s a peculiar line I just read about objectivity in journalism (original here): “When White reporters cover issues involving race, they often fall back on traditional, passive practices of objectivity, such as deferring to official sources and remaining separate from communities.” That is just a complete distortion of what objectivity means. A reporter who defers to official sources is being nonobjective, not objective. Being objective entails actively going after the facts and cutting through the biases and often-self-serving rhetoric of official sources. So the remark reflects an important criticism of actual practices, it just has nothing to do with objectivity properly conceived.
Tags: objectivity