Points Of Order
Perhaps predictably, my attempts to clarify the debate over objectivity succeeded only in confusing things so let's take another crack at trying to make the original point. First off, BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis is befuddled at being thrust into the debate over whether or not Rep. John Murtha's call for a pullout in Iraq was newsworthy, particularly since he had not weighed in on it.
Fair enough but allow me to explain. Jarvis is one of the leading advocates for scrapping the objective model of news and we have tangled over this before. I felt that the Murtha debate was a prime example of the need for commonality, at least in what we can agree on as elements for public discourse. Thus, the pairing.
Jarvis had a sharp take on my argument that, barring any common parameters of just what news is, we risk a future where even what should be discussed cannot be agreed upon:
"First, Vaughn misses the point on the objectivity debate. It isn't that with the death of the objectivity ideal — or the admission that it was a false idol — you must now slant every newscast. That's what he says and that's what is simplistic, in my view. Instead, I say that the ethic of transparency requires you reveal the biases you do have because your audience deserves to know them, so they can judge your judgments. Having done that, then, of course, you should still try to be accurate, truthful, fair, balanced, and all that. But to refuse to reveal a bias — or rather, call it a perspective — and to, indeed, hide it is a lie of omission. There's no agenda worse than a hidden agenda."It's not the first time I've been called simplistic but given my hyperbolic example, I'll take it and Jarvis is right that it was a little disingenuous to caricature his position as being tantamount to having openly slanted newscasts. However, Jarvis' argument that biases, or perspectives, are part of some magic elixir that would clarify the world if only they were revealed is equally simplistic. No argument here over the importance of "transparency" in the future of journalism (that's what PE is all about after all). But in practical terms, when does a journalist move from revealing "the biases you do have" to giving news that tries to be "accurate, truthful, fair, balanced, and all that?"
Take the war as just one example. Should someone be reporting on the war who is either totally opposed or totally supportive of every facet of it, then it makes sense to reveal that. In fact, it would make more sense to ensure that never occurs in the first place. But as we've seen over the course of this war, there are many, many "perspectives" in this debate, and few of them are either easily explained or understood. How does one reveal a perspective that is, at best, complicated? That holds true for a great many issues. We debate them over and over again exactly because they are not simple.
My overall point was not that we should hang on only to the traditional model of news at all costs, only that at some point, we need to have topics of discussion that are commonly agreed upon. My example in the case of the Murtha story was a wild exaggeration tailored to demonstrate where the current trend could lead. Does it serve anyone's purposes to talk past one another and create competing realities? Isn't it better to work within some type of framework that establishes commonality, at least in what we discuss? It may be simplistic, but it seems to me that if we can't agree that, for example, Murtha made some news, then we can't have much of a conversation. How is that good?
Another frequent contributor to this debate, PressThink's Jay Rosen, weighed in directly on PE to the post:
"Infuriating. I'm a reader, a supporter of Public Eye, and even an author. This is Vaughn's worst piece by far because it is, uncharacteristically for him, close-minded.Simplistic I can handle but closed-minded hurts. I would just respond that, by Jay's own admission, I'm not generally an apologist for the traditional "order." Nor was my argument a conscious attempt to do so in this case. Looking at the fierce debate over the newsworthiness of the Murtha story struck me as odd. You can argue over whether it should have led the news, whether it was blown out of proportion and how it was framed all day long. That's fine. But to somehow say that it deserved no attention, as some did, seemed nonsensical.You have fallen for your own deceptions, Vaughn, casting yourself as the defender of order and others as the bringers of chaos, instead of trying to describe two different ways of ordering the world, both of which have their chaotic contradictions.
I hope you keep writing about this, because if all you can hear is 'worldview uber alles,' and let's celebrate our subjectivity, and 'reveal your biases, man, because that's all there is anyway,' then you're caught in some Bizarro tape loop on the subject. You could write 1,000 columns and they would all come out the same way: me for the truth, dem for opinion."
I would ask Jay to explain exactly where my mind is closed here. Is it in thinking that there can be a shared understanding of what "newsworthy" is? Or did I in some way dismiss the notion that the better model is a bottom-up brew of facts, opinions and assertions to form a news conversation? And without some commonly accepted framework for discussion, exactly how does one get out of that "Bizarro tape loop?" Let's keep this conversation going, let me know what it is I'm not quite getting.