Should journalists be impartial?
Being objective and unbiased has always been key to journalism. But is it still true nowadays?
When I talk to my friends (most of them aren’t journalists, luckily), they often ask me why media are often very biased and don’t even feel ashamed of the trash they put online.
As I often say, I don’t have a silver bullet for big issues, but I also believe that a healthy discussion can help find the right path to follow.
Personally, I’d start by pointing out a difference between being objective and unbiased.
The objectivity norm.
Sooner or later, every journalism student has stumbled into the name of Michael Schudson. He is one of the world’s most important scholars in the field. In a very well-known publication, Schudson argues that the objectivity norm in America dates back to the eighteenth century, when conflicts with England became too big not to open up an ethic debate among journalists.
In his opinion, objectivity is key to understand the whole American journalistic culture.
Even though some countries do have different cultural backgrounds, what Schudson pinpoints is self-evident and fact-based. But then, why do media — including American ones — suffer from a clear lack of objectivity?
Surely, the ads-based business model most of the outlets rely on encourages journalists to feed social contrasts. It also relegates objectivity and fair reporting into a corner. I’ve already discussed this topic in depth, so I won’t discuss it more than this. But please be aware that rotten business models do play a crucial role in this story.
However, being objective is reporting an issue considering both sides of the problem. It means giving voice to different players, collecting multiple opinions and perspectives.
Exactly what a traditional journalist is supposed to do.
Biases and their consequences.
Mistrust in journalism has been a huge, problematic trend over the last decades. And guess what: data says it’s not gone at all.
A report released in September 2018 by Knight Foundation and Gallup found that most of Americans lost trust in media because of a lack of accuracy and bias. Political biases are literally killing our industry.
After all, in the digital era the world is less ideologically polarized and political opinions are more fluid than before. Thinking of a politically radical or stable audience that asks for politically oriented news on the Internet is just crazy. As simple as that.
Unfortunately, most of the biggest outlets in the world were born before the digital era, and that means they’re still today openly unbalanced in favour of a specific ideology.
Personally, I believe this is something we — as the new generation of journalists — have to struggle for and fight against.
If we really want to survive the digital era, media must stop being biased now. And honestly, we should also get rid of framing somehow, as I’ve already explained in a previous post on Medium.
I might sound radical, and probably I am, but regaining the trust of the public again is vital, and the Knight Foundation and Gallup analyses shows there’s room for it.
In my opinion, we literally can’t imagine a real future for journalism that is not people-centred and user-friendly in terms of both content and packaging.
What is impartiality?
I hope you’ll forgive me for writing a lot about objectivity and biases without even mentioning the word “impartiality”, central element of my headline. But I do believe impartiality is a mix of the two factors I wrote about.
When it comes to theory, impartiality is being both objective and unbiased. A deeply and fully impartial journalist, in fact, always covers all the sides of the problems, listens to a plurality of different sources and pushes his/her own political opinions on a side. Potentially, he/she also works for a perfectly fair and unbiased outlet.
Yeah, in theory.
Practically, being impartial means working without any opinion or without letting your opinion affect your job. Which is absolutely valuable and reputable, but my point here is: is this really possible? My own experience leads me to say that it is not.
Unless you truly live without any opinion on things around you, your ideas will sooner or later pop up and influence the questions you ask, the details you get or the people you talk to. Experts have a name for it: confirmation bias.
Alex Edmans says everything you need to know about it in a brilliant Ted talk, so I won’t deepen on this. Just be aware that it does exist and affects every human being including you, as well.
And — even in the great situation where you have no background opinion on the topic — you’ll end up building one while reporting. Guaranteed.
The 21st century journalist.
I said that biases are a huge problem, and also that objectivity is an ethical pillar to traditional journalists. But is this still true nowadays?
Last year a Dutch media start up called De Correspondent launched a crowdfunding campaign to create a global English-speaking website called The Correspondent. The campaign ended up breaking a world record with more than 2.5 million euros raised.
Among the innovative elements they presented to “unbreak the news”, as their motto repeats, there was a list of ten founding principles to base their journalistic narrative on.
One of the principles is “We don’t take the view from nowhere. We tell you where we’re coming from.”
As they explain, it means that in their view journalists shouldn’t pretend to be ‘neutral’ or ‘unbiased’. “Instead, our correspondents level with you about where they’re coming from, in the belief that transparency about point-of-view is better than claiming to have none.”
This really grabbed my attention. Why were they challenging the core aspect of this job? Why were they putting pressure on what we’ve always been told in journalism classes and courses?
Their official answer is that “facts need interpretation to have meaning”, and interpretation needs a standpoint.
I’ve been thinking a lot about it and I’ve also asked a number of well-esteemed colleagues for their opinions on the matter. Alberto Puliafito, editor-in-chief at Slow News, told me that “impartiality is a two-hedged sword. On the one hand it’s valuable, on the other hand I wonder whether being impartial in front of serious issues such as human rights, for instance, is fair or not.”
“We should let our obsession for impartiality fade away in favour of an obsession for transparency” he said, agreeing with The Correspondent. “Being transparent is all we can do as humans, while pretending to be fully impartial can be very dangerous.”
But somebody else doesn’t agree.
Last October, while I was attending Italy’s first Slow Journalism festival in Milan, I was so lucky to get the chance to publicly ask the same question to Helen Boaden, former BBC News director.
“I’m from a traditional path, and therefore believe that impartiality in journalism is out of the question. Openly taking a stance can only lead you to communicate with a small and niche audience that fundamentally already agrees with you, nothing more” she said.
I’ve been reflecting for months on the matter and I haven’t found an answer yet. But now I know that none of the old journalists would even consider putting impartiality away, while younger ones would and actually do.
All in all, I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong, but I understood that even the very basic aspects of this job should be rethought or at least challenged in the digital era we’re living in.
Honestly, I don’t think we can be fully impartial, but we can be fair and transparent to our readers and avoid biases. That’s for sure.
However, what is out of the question is that people are changing, global trends are changing, business opportunities are changing. And, in this fragile context, journalism needs to adapt in order to survive and preserve its societal relevance.
