The View from Somewhere
November 21, 2019 7:16 AM Subscribe
In 2017, just after covering the inauguration, journalist Lewis Wallace wrote a piece struggling with the election as someone who is transgender and anti-racist: Objectivity is dead, and I'm okay with it. In response, Marketplace fired him. Refusing to sign an NDA, Wallace instead took two years to dive deep into the history of "objective" journalism, activism, and what it means to do reporting during an age of rising fascism and white nationalism. The result is The View from Somewhere, and its companion podcast. Descriptions and links of the episodes so far behind the jump.
- The View From Somewhere - Wallace talks about being fired, and what he's learned since, setting up the rest of the podcast. MP3
- How Black Lives Matter Changed the News - Wes Lowery (Washington Post) and activist Johnetta Elzie look at how the media reacted post-Ferguson, and how the movement built there changed reporting. (This episode hit close for me, in my experience at a local paper during the period in question) MP3
- The Half Truth about Lynching - Nikole Hannah-Jones (of the NYT Magazine's 1619 Project, and previously) speaks about the work of Ida B. Wells (previously, previously), who deeply reported on lynching at a time when the white press refused to do so. MP3
- "Gay Reporter Wants to Be an Activist" - the story of Sandy Nelson, a lesbian socialist reporter at the Tacoma News Tribune, who fought a seven-year legal battle with her paper, and the ways objectivity was originally used for union-busting. MP3
Journalists should have a duty to lay out the facts and tell the truth as best they can, and to provide context and seek to make sure they're not distorting the truth by only giving voice to those who support a narrative they want to press. That doesn't mean that they need to give "equal" time to crackpots or people trying to create doubt where there is none.
It's sad to me that so many journalists and publications have pursued the "view from nowhere" right off a cliff and allowed themselves to be obviously gamed by people acting in bad faith.
Part of the SPJ's code of ethics is to minimize harm. This is couched in terms of harm to sources, subjects, and colleagues - but it needs to be extended to society at large. If you step back from a story and realize that the narrative is in and of itself harmful, maybe consider not publishing it or re-evaluating how it's covered.
I have too many books, but I'm buying Wallace's and will put it at the top of my list.
posted by jzb at 7:54 AM on November 21, 2019 [10 favorites]
It's sad to me that so many journalists and publications have pursued the "view from nowhere" right off a cliff and allowed themselves to be obviously gamed by people acting in bad faith.
Part of the SPJ's code of ethics is to minimize harm. This is couched in terms of harm to sources, subjects, and colleagues - but it needs to be extended to society at large. If you step back from a story and realize that the narrative is in and of itself harmful, maybe consider not publishing it or re-evaluating how it's covered.
I have too many books, but I'm buying Wallace's and will put it at the top of my list.
posted by jzb at 7:54 AM on November 21, 2019 [10 favorites]
the history of "objective" journalism
I heard a really interesting talk from the National Press Club about this once. I am sorry that I do not remember the speaker - it was at least 10 years ago. The gist was that it is a fairly new concept; in the 19th century to maybe mid-20th century, and before, people took it for granted that a newspaper has an agenda, often that of its publisher. But there was diversity - a dozen or so newspapers in major cities. There was a paper representing working people, one for capital, ones allied with the political parties, maybe a Catholic one, and so on. So if you wanted to read all of them, you could get a pretty good idea of what was going on by art of triangulating, ideally.
posted by thelonius at 8:01 AM on November 21, 2019 [14 favorites]
I heard a really interesting talk from the National Press Club about this once. I am sorry that I do not remember the speaker - it was at least 10 years ago. The gist was that it is a fairly new concept; in the 19th century to maybe mid-20th century, and before, people took it for granted that a newspaper has an agenda, often that of its publisher. But there was diversity - a dozen or so newspapers in major cities. There was a paper representing working people, one for capital, ones allied with the political parties, maybe a Catholic one, and so on. So if you wanted to read all of them, you could get a pretty good idea of what was going on by art of triangulating, ideally.
posted by thelonius at 8:01 AM on November 21, 2019 [14 favorites]
I think about Lewis Wallace a lot and just yesterday was wondering what he's got up to. Thank you for posting this. I can't wait to dig in.
posted by fiercecupcake at 8:36 AM on November 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by fiercecupcake at 8:36 AM on November 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
Seems like Wallace is on the money to me. I'm reminded of Hunter S. Thompson, who famously rejected objectivity in an age when it was much more the norm than now: "Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place".
I think objectivity in journalism has its place. But let's not fool ourselves. With the possible exception of the BBC, and a few principled proponents in the early 20th Century (cf. Lippmann) neutrality was as much a commercial decision as an ethical one. It's much easier to sell to advertisers when you are allergic to controversy.
I think I agree with that linked article when it says:
I think objectivity in journalism has its place. But let's not fool ourselves. With the possible exception of the BBC, and a few principled proponents in the early 20th Century (cf. Lippmann) neutrality was as much a commercial decision as an ethical one. It's much easier to sell to advertisers when you are allergic to controversy.
I think I agree with that linked article when it says:
"[...] the impartial voice employed by many news organizations – that familiar, supposedly neutral style of newswriting – is not a fundamental principle of journalism. Rather, it is an often helpful device news organizations use to highlight that they are trying to produce something obtained by objective methods.posted by Acey at 9:37 AM on November 21, 2019 [10 favorites]
"[...] this neutral voice, without a discipline of verification, creates a veneer covering something hollow. Journalists who select sources to express what is really their own point of view, and then use the neutral voice to make it seem objective, are engaged in a form of deception. This damages the credibility of the craft by making it seem unprincipled, dishonest, and biased."
Actually, to be more accurate I should say that "allergic to controversy" is really more a modern phenomenon - newspapers in the early 20th Century were anything but objective, and objectivity was really a response to the "yellow journalism" epidemic of the late 19th Century, which might be seen as a parallel to this "fake news" we see so much now. It was a commercial imperative for the agencies however, who to this day provide news for outlets of every political bent.
Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm trying so hard to be factual. I should probably get with the times.
posted by Acey at 10:06 AM on November 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm trying so hard to be factual. I should probably get with the times.
posted by Acey at 10:06 AM on November 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
the history of "objective" journalism
I heard a really interesting talk from the National Press Club about this once. I am sorry that I do not remember the speaker - it was at least 10 years ago. The gist was that it is a fairly new concept; in the 19th century to maybe mid-20th century, and before, people took it for granted that a newspaper has an agenda, often that of its publisher. But there was diversity - a dozen or so newspapers in major cities. There was a paper representing working people, one for capital, ones allied with the political parties, maybe a Catholic one, and so on. So if you wanted to read all of them, you could get a pretty good idea of what was going on by art of triangulating, ideally.
posted by thelonius at 8:01 AM on November 21 [5 favorites +] [!]
However, there are objective facts, and if catholics, capital and workers say that the sky is green, that. doesn't. make. it. so.
See clockzero's point AGAIN re "medians".
My GP said I have throat cancer, but my astrologer said it's just Mercury's ascendance. The truth is somewhere in the middle. One mechanic said my transmission is blown, another said I need new brakes. The truth must be somewhere in the middle. I can't remember if the capital of Nebraska is Lincoln or Omaha, but the truth is, as always, somewhere in the middle.
It is not a reliable principle that median points are inherently more correct or valid, not at all. There's no evidence of this and none that can be produced.
It's a commonly-promulgated principle because it gives the impression of considered impartiality while requiring no actual critical thought. Frankly, it's a very dumb and fallacious idea, and the fact that so many people lazily pass it off as wisdom reflects an inability or unwillingness on their part to engage meaningfully whatsoever with the subject. It's substantially more embarrassing than saying nothing at all about a subject one knows nothing about.
posted by clockzero at 4:23 PM on May 11, 2012
posted by lalochezia at 10:17 AM on November 21, 2019 [23 favorites]
One of my favorite forgot-who-said-it quotes is "Freedom of the Press only belongs to those who can afford to own one."
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:13 AM on November 21, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:13 AM on November 21, 2019 [7 favorites]
The truth must be somewhere in the middle.
Triangulation doesn't mean taking the average of what ten people say and believing that. It means listening to ten people and weighing their observations, arguments, and biases to try to figure out what is the most credible thing to believe.
posted by straight at 11:13 AM on November 21, 2019 [14 favorites]
Triangulation doesn't mean taking the average of what ten people say and believing that. It means listening to ten people and weighing their observations, arguments, and biases to try to figure out what is the most credible thing to believe.
posted by straight at 11:13 AM on November 21, 2019 [14 favorites]
There’s an interview with Wallace on the Gender Reveal podcast (episode 61).
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:15 AM on November 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:15 AM on November 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
However, there are objective facts, and if catholics, capital and workers say that the sky is green, that. doesn't. make. it. so.
I assure you, I am a friend of the reality based community, and I agree that a diversity of biases certainly does not necessarily add up to the truth. And the hope that the Internet would be our salvation from the increasingly monopolized media has not really worked out. I don't know what the answer is. But I do think we'd have been better off if, for example, in 2002, there had been a major media outlet, say a pro-labor one from my above example, that was anti-war, and was aggressively pushing stories about the various lies that the Bush cabal were promulgating, though,.
posted by thelonius at 11:29 AM on November 21, 2019 [5 favorites]
I assure you, I am a friend of the reality based community, and I agree that a diversity of biases certainly does not necessarily add up to the truth. And the hope that the Internet would be our salvation from the increasingly monopolized media has not really worked out. I don't know what the answer is. But I do think we'd have been better off if, for example, in 2002, there had been a major media outlet, say a pro-labor one from my above example, that was anti-war, and was aggressively pushing stories about the various lies that the Bush cabal were promulgating, though,.
posted by thelonius at 11:29 AM on November 21, 2019 [5 favorites]
Hello interwebs, looks like you caught me on a cranky day. I promise not to espouse burning it all the fuck down, if someone else would kindly, just burn it all the fuck down. The "it" in this case being corporate media. Fuck me, I'm so over this reality, and wouldn't you know it, the 12 steps I've subscribed to suggests that I do not find the answer in mood or mind altering substances.
Guess that leaves fiction.
posted by evilDoug at 11:42 AM on November 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
Guess that leaves fiction.
posted by evilDoug at 11:42 AM on November 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
This from the original Medium post jumped out at me:
The bolded bit there touches on the central problem of epistemology: there is no algorithmic procedure that can determine what is and is not a "fact." Distinguishing facts from not-facts is an activity that requires human judgement, and human judgement using the journalistic vision of "objectivity" or "neutrality" has proven unequal to the task of excluding not-facts from discussions that urgently need to be strictly fact-based to the greatest achievable extent. The argument for adopting some other notions of "objectivity" and "neutrality" is not that our minds are strong enough, it's that using the current ones is chasing a will-o-the-wisp and we have to stop. So that our discussions can be based more on facts.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 12:30 PM on November 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
One of the diciest issues as we reconsider our role as journalists in this moment is that of “objectivity.” Some argue that if we abandon our stance of journalistic neutrality, we let the “post-fact” camp win. I argue that our minds — and our listeners’ and readers minds — are stronger than that, strong enough to hold that we can both come from a particular perspective, and still tell the truth.(emphasis added).
The bolded bit there touches on the central problem of epistemology: there is no algorithmic procedure that can determine what is and is not a "fact." Distinguishing facts from not-facts is an activity that requires human judgement, and human judgement using the journalistic vision of "objectivity" or "neutrality" has proven unequal to the task of excluding not-facts from discussions that urgently need to be strictly fact-based to the greatest achievable extent. The argument for adopting some other notions of "objectivity" and "neutrality" is not that our minds are strong enough, it's that using the current ones is chasing a will-o-the-wisp and we have to stop. So that our discussions can be based more on facts.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 12:30 PM on November 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
People don't really care for the idea that facts, definitionally speaking, don't have to be true. (If I say 'there are 50,000 petrol stations in London', this is, definitionally, a fact. It's not an opinion. It is a testable statement about the world. I have no idea whether it's true, and have no way of knowing.)
People really don't like the idea that true facts aren't true. (Say I actually knew how many petrol stations there were in London, and then one closed down. The number I had is true. There were, in fact, that many petrol stations in London - but only as of counting, and now the number's different.)
This is why, in most countries, the structure of the atom is taught as we discovered it: not only does it help people understand the whizzing electron model if they've gone through the plum pudding first, but it also introduces students to the idea that we don't know how long what's true is going to be true for. Hell, the whizzing electron model isn't true either.
posted by Merus at 4:09 PM on November 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
People really don't like the idea that true facts aren't true. (Say I actually knew how many petrol stations there were in London, and then one closed down. The number I had is true. There were, in fact, that many petrol stations in London - but only as of counting, and now the number's different.)
This is why, in most countries, the structure of the atom is taught as we discovered it: not only does it help people understand the whizzing electron model if they've gone through the plum pudding first, but it also introduces students to the idea that we don't know how long what's true is going to be true for. Hell, the whizzing electron model isn't true either.
posted by Merus at 4:09 PM on November 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
Thank you SO much for this. It's this kind of thing that redeems humanity and allows me to hope that someone in the future will look back and see that, even now, some of us were really trying.
posted by allthinky at 5:55 PM on November 21, 2019
posted by allthinky at 5:55 PM on November 21, 2019
I tend to think of the idea of "objective journalism" in the same way as the idea of "speaking English without an accent". It's one of those things that a lot of people genuinely believe in and strive towards as if it were a laudable goal. But if you pause for even a minute to think about it, you have to realize that both of these are either non-sensical or, more realistically, denoting something else. Namely, "English without an accent" is most often actually "English with the accent of the accepted, dominant class"; similarly, "objective journalism" is not journalism with no viewpoint but rather a particular viewpoint that, incidentally, tries very hard to be invisible.
While individual facts may be considered "objective", one of the key aspects of journalism is to select exactly which facts to present in a story and, on a larger scale, which stories to present at all. Due to the finite nature of the human existence, we cannot report every single fact about a story nor every single story that could be reported, so some judgment is applied to determine which facts are relevant and which stories are newsworthy. And, these judgments cannot be eliminated or hand-waved away.
posted by mhum at 6:23 PM on November 21, 2019 [5 favorites]
While individual facts may be considered "objective", one of the key aspects of journalism is to select exactly which facts to present in a story and, on a larger scale, which stories to present at all. Due to the finite nature of the human existence, we cannot report every single fact about a story nor every single story that could be reported, so some judgment is applied to determine which facts are relevant and which stories are newsworthy. And, these judgments cannot be eliminated or hand-waved away.
posted by mhum at 6:23 PM on November 21, 2019 [5 favorites]
jzb: Part of the SPJ's code of ethics is to minimize harm. This is couched in terms of harm to sources, subjects, and colleagues - but it needs to be extended to society at large.
Interestingly enough, leading journalistic outlets have been doing this already, but not about politics. You may have noticed that the way that news media report on suicide (if at all). The notion of minimizing harm to the public is already out there and in practice, but the journalism ethics discourse hasn't yet recognized how "objectively" quoting propaganda without comment is still broadcasting propaganda. Without a layer of analysis and critique, the media only helps spread the political poison.
posted by LMGM at 10:16 PM on November 21, 2019 [7 favorites]
Interestingly enough, leading journalistic outlets have been doing this already, but not about politics. You may have noticed that the way that news media report on suicide (if at all). The notion of minimizing harm to the public is already out there and in practice, but the journalism ethics discourse hasn't yet recognized how "objectively" quoting propaganda without comment is still broadcasting propaganda. Without a layer of analysis and critique, the media only helps spread the political poison.
posted by LMGM at 10:16 PM on November 21, 2019 [7 favorites]
While there are certainly serious philosophical difficulties with demarcating a line between facts and evaluative judgements or interpretations, i think it is a fallacy to conclude from this that concept of factuality is useless. The existence of the platypus does not render the idea that a bear is a mammal incoherent. And I always think of the French statesman, asked what future historians will say of the Great War: "They will not say that Belgium invaded Germany".
posted by thelonius at 5:27 AM on November 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 5:27 AM on November 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
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