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luigirovatti's avatar

Do you think journalists can be objective without expressing feelings, beliefs and/or opinions, even implicitly?

Asked by luigirovatti (2836points) March 4th, 2019

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12 Answers

elbanditoroso's avatar

No. Even the most honest journalist cannot escape putting some sort of spin on what he or she writes. It may be very subtle – the choice of words, the use of a phrase, perhaps the headline – but there will always be some subtle bias.

I don’t think there is any way around this. People reflect their education, training, and experience. Even the most objective person in the world is going to, by nature, be a product of these three.

As a media consumer, the best thing you can do is read news from multiple sources, because truth and objectivity will be somewhere in the middle.

kritiper's avatar

They can if they stick to the basics: who, what, when, where, why, and how.

ZEPHYRA's avatar

Yes, if your livelihood depends on it, I guess even if it hurts them, they can!

Inspired_2write's avatar

Yes as this is what Journalism was about “Just the Facts”.
I believe that they were supposed to show no bias in presenting the facts so that the reader/viewer could interpret objectively and not be influenced by the reporters thoughts on the subject.

stanleybmanly's avatar

I think they can be, but not always

Demosthenes's avatar

I think they can try harder than they do.

Bias can be unconscious and can seep its way into writing even if the author intends to be unbiased. But bias can be detected by people other than the author reading the article, so there can be more of an effort made to weed out bias before the article is published. Bias is often not weeded out effectively because readers who are biased themselves don’t detect the bias, so there’s little incentive to reduce it.

cookieman's avatar

Yes. That.

Sadly there is little incentive from the news consumers to stick to the facts and try harder to be objective. If fact-based objectivity “sold papers” and the majority of the audience wanted to make up their own minds after being presented the facts, then that’s what most journalists would strive for.

Sure, sensationalistic, tabloid “journalism” has always existed, but it’s audience was smaller. For many reasons I don’t completely understand, this has now shifted to the majority.

There are similar trends in sports and education too.

KNOWITALL's avatar

Absolutely! I did lots of journalism classes, newspaper, etc…in school and that’s part of the reason today’s politics in news disgusts me. That people believe it all without any evidence or facts is even more disgusting. That people spread it and share it as truth, is ignorant and a disservice to whomever you are sharing it with.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

If they are professionals they will.

kruger_d's avatar

Sometimes the bias is revealed in what is not reported.

noitall's avatar

There are all sorts of shades of fairness, objectivity, and bias out there in the mainstream press. If you’ve listened to the U.S.broadcast network nightly news, you know they show quite a lot of bias just in the way, including the tone and facial expressions in which they present what they consider to be news, presuming a lot of what I suppose they think Americans, of most political persuasions, think. Contrast, for example, even BBC news, in which the anchors are much less ‘involved’ in the stories, not expressing dismay, elation, or enthusiasm to anywhere near the degree of their colleagues across the Pond.

flutherother's avatar

All that is necessary to be a good journalist is to love the truth above everything else.

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