Page 63 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| B as and Object v ty

citizens, and the viability of liberal-democratic capitalism. Objectivity in North
American journalism became more narrowly and technically defined as certain
types of “factual” statements, rather than a universalizing discourse of truth in
the public interest.
Over the next few decades other reporting approaches, such as interpretive
reporting, adversarial/critical journalism, and enterprise reporting have been
developed that sometimes questioned the values of objectivity. Those alterna-
tive models and competing styles that once seemed to directly challenge the
objectivity regime, however, have generally been contained or marginalized by
the regime.

DEBaTEs ovEr oBJECTiviTy: EPisTEmoLogiCaL
anD PoLiTiCaL CriTiquEs

Underlying various critiques and defenses of journalism objectivity are con-
tending epistemologies, or different models for understanding the relationship
between the texts of news reports, and the reality they seek to describe. Posi-
tivism, once a dominant position in Western thought, was firmly based in the
European Enlightenment’s confidence in scientific method, rationality and
progress. It asserts the possibility of accurate descriptions of the world-as-it-is,
through the careful observation of events, perceivable through the senses. Posi-
tivism underlies the commonsense criticism of news that it should be objective
and accurate, but often is not, due to various factors that introduce “bias” in
reporting. Often, conservative critics cite the presumed “left-liberal” politi-
cal views of journalists, an interpretation of news bias common in the United
States, but less so in other Western liberal democracies; it is a view that has in
turn been criticized for intellectual inconsistency and for its assumption that
journalists themselves are primarily responsible for news agendas. Others argue
that a variety of organizational and institutional factors, such as the demand
for ratings-boosting stories shape the news. Herman and Chomsky have coun-
tered the liberal bias model with a contrary view that sees news as failing to
obtain objectivity due to the “conservatizing” pressure of powerful elites, such
as media owners, advertisers, governments, and/or official sources. This view
has also been criticized as paying insufficient attention to the institutional au-
tonomy of journalism and the full range of external influences operating on the
news. Many point to the increasing influence of the public relations industry
that promotes stories for both private and commercial interests.
If these critiques rest on the epistemological assumptions of positivism, a
contrary epistemological position is evident in recent social theory, in trends
that emphasize the importance of language or “discourse” in shaping human
understanding of reality. Conventionalism holds that human perception of
the world is always mediated by our mental categories and our procedures of
knowledge production. In this view, news reporting is as much a construc-
tion of the social world, as a reflection of it; objective journalism cannot live
up to its ideal, because knowledge of the world independent from the stand-
point of the observer is impossible. Claims to achieving objectivity in the news,