About Journalism and Objectivity

Journalism is vital for the development of societies. Journalism can be informative, balanced and well informed. It can often be a confused, unresearched, opinionated option. Journalism today with strong ethical values contributes to the up building of societies. In societies that are thirsty for authenticity, quality is if the essence. Journalists describe society in itself. They seek the truth. They convey information, ideas and opinions. They search, disclose, record, question, entertain and suggest. They inform citizens and animate democracy. They give practical form to freedom of expression. Many journalists work in private enterprises but all have public responsibility. They scrutinize power, but also exercise it. They should be accountable. Accountability engenders trust. Without trust, journalists do not fulfill their public responsibilities. A journalist that cannot be held accountable is dangerous. In certain situations, a journalist wields enormous power; the power to define truth, reality; the power to determine who is right and who is wrong. If this power is abused, the journalist becomes the servant of political, financial, or partisan groups. He/she renounces the right to be at the service of people for the building of a democratic society.

The myth of objectivity.

The journalist aims at being a witness to events, not a news creator. This requires both the journalist's closeness to the events and the ability of standing at a distance from a specific event. Many consider objectivity, the ability to report facts without influencing them or manipulating the public, as the main value of journalism. Objectivity has been the flag of good journalism in the Anglo-Saxon world for as long as journalism has existed. In reality, objectivity does not exist. A journalist is not a recording machine that catalogues facts, people's impressions, and documents and produces them for the public. A journalist is a person that reports on events. He/she will have to listen to many people, weigh each piece of information, and decide what to keep and what to discard. This process of evaluating information is done accordingly to the journalist's personal ability to interpret reality. Personal convictions, cultural background and religious beliefs influence this evaluation.

Claiming that objectivity does not exist is not to imply that the journalist is dishonest. Professional journalists report events as fairly as they can. This process requires the sifting of information, deciding what space to allot to diverging visions of an event, trying to give everybody a fair share of space and importance. If done with honesty, this is the closest a journalist comes to objectivity. Still he or she will be unable to assess the assembled material without a personal evaluation.