SHANNON KELLY
Perspectives Editor
Sometimes I have trouble understanding my taste for politics. The whole political bubble is obscure, a little chaotic and at many times disheartening. The liberal-conservative-at-each-others-throats, red says, blue says, jumble is becoming unbearable. The constant “Bush is an idiot” jabs at the president are tiring and worn out.
On top of that, there’s no excitement in politics unless certain vice presidents mix it up a little and go nuts on quail hunts, accidentally mistaking a 78-year-old man for a gang of birds. Cindy Sheehan’s antics are also fairly entertaining, but are, at the same time, painfully irritating.
I’ve been trying to pinpoint what inspires me to willingly watch “The O’Reilly Factor” while my friends sit next to me while sporting are-we-honestly-watching-this looks on their faces.
Luckily, I recently realized that I remain interested and involved in Sheehan’s latest protests and Ann Coulter’s uncouth comments because I’m an objectivist journalist in training. In order to learn how to be objective, I have to be aware of instances where objectivity is ignored. In political media especially, there are countless learning opportunities through witnessing nonobjective reporting, especially in political commentary.
The biggest problem in commentary is when reporters and viewers blur the line between news and entertainment.
Bill O’Reilly, for example, is entertaining to watch. He makes hysterical wisecracks and his sarcasm is plain brilliant. He uses facts and reports the news, usually in a way that portrays his beliefs as the truth. Even if the facts he uses are also true, the complete truth is ignored since he doesn’t address all facts, and he’s thus being subjective. The bottom line: Commentary or reporting sans objectivity is entertainment.
Watch and enjoy O’Reilly, I do. In order to get the truth about current events, however, it’s impossible to rely on one outlet or one person’s take on the news. Unfortunately, and especially in today’s media, it can take anywhere from three or four articles with 10 different sources before getting to the facts of one story.
The problem of non-objective journalism is equally as prevalent in op-ed outlets, which as an opinion writer, is important for me to notice. Like media commentators, op-ed writers often blur the same line between entertainment and news when they let emotional rambles drown out fact-based points and well-backed opinions.
Even though they’re allowed more emotional and personal freedom in their expression, editorial writers still must be held to the same standards of reporting the truth, even if their opinions are appropriately interwoven in the article.
I began understanding this problem even better after reading “Objectivity in Journalism,” where The New York Times columnist David Brooks outlines the mistakes journalists make when they discount objectivity.
He points out the vitality in suspending judgment when looking at facts.
“We like to chose the facts that make us feel good because it confirms our worldview,” Brooks wrote. “But if you’re going to be objective … surely the first stage is the ability to look at all the facts, whether they make you feel good or not.”
Easier said than done. But doing the right thing is usually the more difficult route to take. I know I have many past, and will have future, non-objective opinion journalism offenses, but I’ve never written anything I wouldn’t still stand by. I’d just point out the mistakes I made, suggest a place to go for the other side of the argument, and take note of another learning experience on my long, bumpy road toward objectivist journalist status.
Being objective when forming an argument is by no means limited to a journalistic setting. People should always strive for the most complete and unbiased truth as possible and take note of all the facts rather than tossing out those that don’t bode well with one’s familiar world view.
02-16-2006