Juan Williams Case Confuses Objectivity with Fairness on Tendentious Television
When Spiro Agnew was compelled to resign the vice presidency after pleading no contest to tax evasion charges, I made the mistake of accepting an invitation to appear on David Susskind’s televised talk show. It was, I naively thought, an opportunity to discuss in detail how that complicated politician had gotten in trouble accepting cash and groceries while governor of Maryland and as vice president. But the 1973 Susskind program quickly devolved into a clash of loud opinions among William Rusher, Roy Cohn, Pete Hamill, Jules Witcover and Frank Van Der Linden, as I sat mostly mute. During a commercial break, a producer came to me and said, “Get in there and mix it up.”
Magazine - Table of Contents
The Thirteenth Amendment forbade slavery and involuntary servitude, “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Crops stretch to the horizon. Black bodies pepper the landscape, hunched over as they work the fields.
Code of Ethics
SPJ Code of Ethics Revised September 6, 2014 at 4:49 p.m. CT at SPJ’s National Convention in Nashville, Tenn. Download a printable copy [PDF]:8.5x11 flyer | 11x17 poster | Two-sided bookmark Preamble
Issue 5: Fame
Biology | Primatology On the Origin of Celebrity Why Julia Roberts rules our world. By Robert Sapolsky Culture | Urban Studies
The Voice of God Is Dead
It's past time for news outlets to lose the rigid, formulaic approach to newswriting. But figuring out the boundaries can be tricky. Wed., April 4, 2012. By Jena Heath Jena Heath (jenaheath@gmail.com) spent 17 years as a newspaper reporter and editor.
The American Interest Magazine - Policy, Politics & Culture
Screening for bias
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting angers critics with conservative programming. From the Summer 2005 issue of The News Media & The Law, page 36. By Tom Sullivan Not wanting a world without Big Bird or Clifford the Big Red Dog, congressional leaders this summer restored threatened funding cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Still lingering are questions about whether CPB is wielding funding power to interfere with the Public Broadcasting Service's public affairs programming. CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson and Bill Moyers, former host of the weekly PBS program "Now," exchanged heated rhetoric in the early summer over Tomlinson's allegations of liberal bias in PBS programming.
American Scientist Online
The Importance of Objectivity in Journalism
And Now a Word from the Other Side: As a journalist trained in action rather than via textbooks, I learned very early to consider viewpoints other than my own when composing articles for publication. I recently came across a headline accusing Democrats of "highjacking democracy" through election corruption. Well, you remember how the late ACORN lobbyists were "caught in the act" of registering hardly enough Mickey Mouses to change election results anywhere, least of all Disneyland. . . . However, I have it from a distinguished and esteemed Independent why and how Democrats steal elections beyond those ACORN employees who may have been paid per voter registered.
What is objectivity in journalism?
Objectivity is expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices or interpretations. Objectivity, as defined by the school of media ethics, means standing so far from the community that you see all events and all viewpoints as equally distant and important or unimportant for that matter. It is employed by giving equal weight to all viewpoints—or if not, giving all an interesting twists, within taste. The result is a presentation of facts in a true non-partisan manner, and then standing back to let the reader decide which view is true. By going about it this way, we are defining objectivity not by the way we go about gathering and interpreting the news, but by what we actually put in the paper.
An Argument Why Journalists Should Not Abandon Objectivity
In “Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy,” published by Oxford University Press, Alex S. Jones, a 1982 Nieman Fellow and director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, describes in its prologue his purpose and intent in writing about the “genuine crisis” in news. “It is not one of press bias, though that is how most people seem to view it,” he contends.
The Myth of Objectivity in Journalism
by This page has been accessed since 29 May 1996. The oft-stated and highly desired goal of modern journalism is objectivity, the detached and unprejudiced gathering and dissemination of news and information. Such objectivity can allow people to arrive at decisions about the world and events occurring in it without the journalist's subjective views influencing the acceptance or rejection of information. Few whose aim is a populace making decisions based on facts rather than prejudice or superstition would argue with such a goal.
Martha Raddatz and the faux objectivity of journalists
Numerous commentators (including me) were complimentary of the performance of Martha Raddatz as the moderator of Wednesday night's vice-presidential debate. She was assertive, asked mostly substantive questions, and covered substantial ground in 90 minutes. That's all true enough, but the questions she asked reveal something significant about American journalism in general and especially its pretense of objectivity. For establishment journalists like Raddatz, "objectivity" is the holy grail.
The Fairness Doctrine
A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a...frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others.... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.
