Objectivity and Bias

The desired goal of journalism is often stated to be objectivity, the unprejudiced gathering and dissemination of news and information. In theory, objectivity should allow people to make their own decisions about the events without any influence from the views of journalists. This is nearly impossible as the news processes, as discussed above, have some control over the news production. Hence, this discussion can also be understood at the individual

journalist level as an argument about the bias or subjectivity of the production of news.

Objectivity is a method of acquiring knowledge by reasoning solely based on the facts of reality and in accordance with the laws of logic (Rand 1990, p. 4).

Objectivism derives its name from its concept of knowledge and values as an

“objective”. According to Rand (1990), “neither concepts nor values are intrinsic to external reality, nor are they merely subjective”. Rather, valid concepts and values are “determined by the nature of reality but to be discovered by man’s mind”.

Given the organizational pressures, selection processes and source strategies which contribute to news production, news can never be “objective” in the sense of being uninfluenced by the processes that makes it (Manning 2001, p.

68). Hence, it is more appropriate to regard “objectivity” and “impartiality” as labels that journalists use to refer to the sets of rules which guide their professional practice (Golding & Elliott 1979, p. 208). In other words,

“objectivity” is not something that journalists can achieve in the sense of producing value-free and comprehensive accounts of “real” events; rather, the term, in this context, describes a set of practices that journalists can defend as objective.

This argument was first made by Gaye Tuchman in 1972 when she defined a ritual as “a routine procedure which has relatively little or only tangential relevance to the end sought” (1972, p. 661). She argues that journalistic rituals can never obtain objectivity, rather it just helps journalists to construct an account of reality that can be justified in the name of objectivity. Thus,

“rituals” or a set of techniques are employed by journalists to “guard” them against competing pressures – they have to work quickly to meet deadlines and concurrently they must produce excellent reports.

Tuchman (1972) suggests that in order to discuss objectivity comprehensively, three important factors have to be taken into consideration. These are the (i) news procedures as formal attributes of news stories and newspapers, (ii)

judgments based on interorganisational relationships and, (ii) common sense used to assess news content (p. 678). Her study concludes that there is no clear relationship between the aim (objectivity) and the method (news process). She states that:

Objectivity refers to routine procedures which may be exemplified as formal attributes…and which protect the professional from mistakes and from his critics…the word objectivity is being used defensively as a strategic ritual (Tuchman 1972, p. 678).

Soloski (1989) makes a similar point to Tuchman’s and adds that objectivity not only serves as a defense against anticipated external attacks but also helps news organizations to exercise “informal social control over” their own journalists. Similarly, Fiske (1987, p. 287) also argues that objectivity is impossible to achieve due to the fact that the news process itself is subjective and could place different meaning on the information causing its format to change and altering it so that it becomes, subjectively, an organized collection of facts.

This suggests some possible bias throughout the news gathering process. Bias is a term often associated with negative views of the news process because it implies a subversive role which the media plays to influence the audience ideologically. However, the bias which is implied in news reports is often unintentional and more often than not unavoidable (McQuail 1993, p. 185;

Fiske 1987, p. 289). Rather, it is a consequence or symptom of the news process itself. However, information is not only biased due to the process but also indicates and reinforces the idea that news is an extremely structured product which is assembled under the pressure of competition from other journalists and advertisers (McQuail 1993, p. 184). Information also has to be selected and presented to please consumers and to attract attention, thus emphasizing form more than content. The study of journalism, itself, as a profession, has always been founded on the fact that “information was produced; selected, organized, structured and, therefore, biased” (Collins 1990, p. 20). Furthermore, according to McQuail (1993, p. 185) there is an

enormous volume of potentially relevant information, requiring selection more than collection, which has to be processed under the pressure of time.

Therefore, it is not all about bias, but also a long and complicated news process which could influence the story selection. This results in a limited version of reality covered by news.

Therefore, bias exists in journalism and today’s journalism is unable to present the facts in an unbiased manner because it is often embedded in the very practice of objective news reporting, into the media’s information production and data retrieval techniques (McQuail 1993, p. 184; Koch 1991, p. 5). For instance, in dealing with news sources as Koch states:

For news to be “objective” it must treat all sources equally. To serve as an unbiased source of information, media outlets must be able consistently to describe events not as one or another specialist group wants them to be portrayed but rather in someway distanced from those partial, limited interpretations (Koch 1991, p. 5).

Litchenberg (1991, p. 230) however argues that most journalists use the same

“balanced” sources because of their inability to escape the pressures of the production process which encourage routine dependence upon the usual, routine voices within political elites. But Tuchman (1972) thinks the

“balance” that journalists offer as an implicit substitute for objectivity is important because it affords the access which news sources may seek to exploit in order to secure news media coverage. For example, journalists get some views from pressure groups to “balance” the claims of truth by official sources. However, not all sources are regarded as “authoritative” to be included in the news as journalists usually assume a hierarchy of credibility (Becker 1972) with sources close to government considered as more credible than the public.

The above argument is important to examine as reporting fair views from a wide range of sources is important in complex environmental stories. In 1987, Luke’s study on the Chernobyl tragedy (cited from Campbell 1999, p. 37) describes Soviet coverage of Chernobyl as biased because the news

information was selected by the government which had a hidden political agenda.

While objectivity is impossible, the attempt to be objective has important effects for the role the news plays in social values:

[Objectivity] plays an important role in the ideology of news and the reading relations that news attempts to set up with its audiences. The impossibility of objectivity and the irrelevance of notions of bias (based as they are upon an assumption that non-bias is possible) should be clear, but should not blind us to the ideological role that the concept of ‘objectivity’ plays (Fiske 1987, p. 288).

Fiske also thinks that “the notion of objectivity is impossible but the fact remains that news is ideological”. According to Hartley (1982) ideology is the belief systems perpetuated by the dominant social power groups, including the elites who form the government, thus the ideology is implicit in news discourse.

Implicit in this notion is the idea of the journalist/news relationship positioned between the two poles of

“objectivity” (mediated) reality and the ‘subjective’

(experienced) reality. This relationship determines what meanings will finally be produced. It follows that both poles have an influence in the ‘dialogic’

production of meanings and that is relevant for ideological meanings as much as for any others (Hartley 1982, p. 142).

Therefore, the ideological meaning implicit in news text emerges as a mixture of the mediated and experienced concepts of reality. The journalists add meanings to the issue due to the nature of the news process. In attempting to be objective, Campbell (1999, p. 162) argues within the news process a journalist with very little knowledge on an environmental issue has a tendency to compress long complicated environmental information to fit into a small space within a short period time, and it has to be written in layman’s terms to give readers a better understanding. This could lead to losing the meaning or creating a misleading story. In her study, Campbell (1999) found that the

environmental information on five different subjects - chemical pesticides, effect of air pollution on respiratory disease, a funicular railway through the Cairngorms, overfishing in the North Sea and oil pollution – was reduced to manageable segments, the meanings of which were radically simplified for audience consumption.

McNair (1994) believes that journalism is not and never can be a neutral, value free representation of reality (p. 31); also that the news and journalism professions are social constructions and that news is ideological and cannot, therefore, be value free as Fowler (1991), Fiske (1987) and, Hall (1970) argue.

He also believes that news has to be about conflict which generates negativity because this is more newsworthy and newsworthiness is linked to economic and organizational considerations.

This suggests some important implications for our understanding of the mass reporting process such as newsroom culture, source selection and “objective”

measures of reality applied by journalists.