Page 62 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

B as and Object v ty | 1

Finally, objectivity is an active ingredient in public discourse. It provides the
language for everyday assessments of journalistic performance. This language
includes synonyms, such as “fairness” and “balance,” which some people see as
more flexible and achievable substitutes for objectivity. Objectivity is often coun-
terposed to “bias,” most frequently partisan or political bias; arguments have
also been advanced that media representations embody technological, gender
or cultural biases.

hisToriCaL rooTs oF oBJECTiviTy
Just as trying to define objectivity is complicated, tracing its historical trajec-
tory is equally complex, and at times the subject of debate, especially with regard
to its emergence in American journalism. As an ideal, objectivity is neither uni-
versal nor timeless, and has emerged in specific historical, political and cultural
contexts.
Geopolitically, adherence to objectivity is more typical of journalism in the
United States, Britain, and Canada than in continental Europe, with its stronger
tradition of partisanship in the press, or in theocratic or authoritarian regimes,
where journalism is mandated to serve the state and/or an official ideology. In
the Middle East, Al-Jazeera, broadcasting out of Qatar, challenge traditional re-
porting from authoritarian regimes, but evoked the ire of the United States with
alternative representations of the war on terror. Even where it is most entrenched,
the objectivity regime is more characteristic of some news media (such as the
“quality” press, public service broadcasting, news reports) than others (such as
tabloid newspapers, entertainment-oriented television, opinion columns).
Historically, objectivity as a paradigm in Anglo-American journalism dis-
placed explicit partisanship during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Media scholar, Dan Schiller sees the roots of objectivity in the democratic dis-
course of universal natural rights in the nineteenth-century labor press. A more
conventional view links objectivity’s origins to the emergence of technology
(photography, the telegraph) and associated organizational forms (news wire
services, the “inverted pyramid” form of reporting) that appeared to capture
reality. The emergence of advertising for mass markets contributed greatly to
the decline of the partisan press; nonpartisan “objective” journalism enabled
newspapers to pursue the broadest possible readership, and thus advertising
revenue.
Cultural currents and historical events also contributed to the formulation of
objectivity as a value. Mitchell Stephens traces the roots of objectivity to “rever-
ence for facts,” and the development of the scientific method in the late nine-
teenth century. A significant turning point for journalism occurred after the First
World War. Modern war propaganda influenced public support for war, and the
carnage left in its wake compelled scholars, commentators, and social scientists
alike to reevaluate the role and practices of the press. The rise of the new public
relations industry, Freudian psychology, historically unprecedented totalitar-
ian regimes in Europe, and the Great Depression, all contributed by the 1930s
to a culture’s loss of confidence in the reliability of the press, the rationality of