The gatekeeping process does not end with story selection. Reporters choose sources for their stories, choose what quotes and information from those sources to include (and exclude) and order the information based on their own judgments of what is most important for readers to know. As a result, reporters are often accused of compromising their objectivity—the practice of portraying news in a completely neutral, unbiased way.
Media scholars have declared the idea of objectivity to be flawed for decades. Researchers Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese12 argued that reporters’ individual influences—their gender, race, upbringing and a number of other factors—make it impossible for them not to have an opinion. They have a point. Consider this: Would a female journalist write and report a story on equal pay for women in sports differently than a man? Would a black journalist approach a story on racial discrimination in standardized testing differently than a white reporter? They almost certainly would, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Journalists with backgrounds similar to their sources might be able to provide unique insight into issues that others could not. But their experience could also result in bias. Other influences, such as the pressure to work under deadlines or cover certain areas, the priorities of the news organization and its owners and even the state of the nation and ideologies of its citizens, are factors that make true objectivity nearly impossible to achieve.
Many journalists are abandoning objectivity as their ideal because they feel it inhibits their ability to tell the truth. Revisions to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics in 2014 included the addition of transparency, a method of reporting in which journalists are up-front with audiences and volunteer information about their reporting process, revealing how and why they chose the sources they did, acknowledging issues they feel are important and disclosing any potential conflicts of interest in their reporting. Transparency is not an excuse for including opinion and bias; it simply means reporters need to evaluate stories on a more human level, acting critically and looking for misinformation or gaps in information that might exist. For example, if a source tells a lie, reporters should not be afraid to call attention to the lie and correct it with the truth.
Abandoning objectivity has its risks, which we will explore in greater depth in Chapter 5 on ethics. But journalists can use new feature storytelling methods that we will explore throughout this book to challenge sources, seek truth and tell relatable stories for their audiences.
Trust Me: I’m a Journalist
Trust in American Institutions 1993–2018
Americans’ trust in institutions tends to reflect the general mood of the country. Following the Watergate scandal in 1972, trust in government declined significantly as people became suspicious of their elected leaders. Fears after 9/11 lifted trust in religious organizations to an all-time high in 2001. And news organizations tend to experience dips in trust during presidential election years, which was especially true in 2004 and 2016, as demonstrated by a Gallup poll gauging media trust over the past three decades.13
Figure 1.1 Confidence in American Institutions 1993–2018
Source: Adapted from Gallup. (2019). “Confidence in Institutions.” Accessed at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
Trust in most major U.S. institutions has fallen steadily during the past four decades, with many experiencing record lows in recent years. Communication and marketing researcher Richard Edelman believes trust is eroding because Americans are having trouble distinguishing among objective facts, opinions and outright lies.14
The need for journalists to be transparent and receptive to audience needs is more important now than ever before. Journalists are called to serve the public by reporting the information citizens need to make decisions about their lives, but their jobs become more difficult when the public does not trust them. Media credibility has declined steadily in the U.S., and it reached an all-time low during the 2016 presidential election between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Errors by media outlets, attacks on the press and the changing nature of news online are contributing to historic declines in trust. The contentious election brought to light issues that severely damaged media credibility, including:
Fake news. Fabricated news stories circulating online via social media create confusion among news consumers. During the election, falsified stories were aimed mostly at Clinton, including reports that she was suffering from a serious illness and that she had approved weapons sales to Islamic jihadists. It was later revealed that Russian hackers attempting to sway election results in Trump’s favor were responsible for planting many of the false stories. The tactic appears to have worked, as studies have shown that fake news likely did play a role in Trump’s election.15 Media trust has also suffered in the wake of Trump’s election, with the president accusing mainstream news outlets, such as CNN and The New York Times, of producing “fake news” and calling the press “the enemy of the American people.”16
Infotainment and commentaries. Many Americans are not able to distinguish between news produced by journalists and “news” delivered by entertainers and advocates. Entertainers like John Oliver, Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah host late-night shows delivering information reported by journalists with their own humorous slants. Similarly, political commentators, including Fox News’s Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, deliver commentaries on-air, and viewers are unable to separate the facts from their opinions. The same is true with newspapers and online-only publications, as many readers do not understand how editorial and column writers giving their views differ from news reporters conveying unbiased information.
Journalists forgetting to be humans. In the pursuit of objectivity, journalists have been known to forget how to relate to human beings. Leading up to the 2016 election, journalists relied on polling and statistics confirming what they already believed to be true: Trump could not possibly win. But reporters and their audiences were stunned when Trump defied forecasts to clinch the presidency. Noting these miscalculations, audiences continued to lose trust in the media, arguing that reporters could have done more to connect with voters and capture their anger toward the government, which would have helped them make more accurate predictions.
From the Field
The Future of Journalism
Interview with Burt Herman, Director of Innovation Projects, The Lenfest Institute for Journalism
Courtesy of Burt Herman
Being a journalist in the Digital Age has its challenges. Our competition has expanded beyond other media to include everyone with a phone and a social media account. Newsrooms are shrinking as organizations lose ad revenues and subscribers. Trust in the media has decreased as a result of public attacks on our credibility.
Still, Burt Herman is optimistic. As the director of innovation projects at the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, it is his job to seek unique and impactful solutions to help preserve journalism onward through the Digital Age.
“How do we transition from print to online? How do we build digital audiences? What do products for digital audiences look like? What should new start-ups look like? We work with both larger and smaller newsrooms across the country to find out.”
The
