or leaders. Perhaps they might join protesters marching in the streets.
Adopting Either Option Would Be a Mistake
If journalists join the protesters, this engagement would erode media credibility and contribute to an already partisan-soaked media sphere. Yet a journalism of just the (alleged) facts, studiously balanced, is too passive and ripe for manipulation. In a partisan public sphere, what is a fact is up for debate. Democratically engaged journalism lays between partisan advocacy and mincing neutrality. It is not a neutral spectator or a channel of information that merely repeats people’s alleged facts or racist views. When important social and democratic issues are raised, democratically engaged journalism critically evaluates sources and claims, and operates with a clear notion of the goal of democratic media.
Journalism cannot avoid involvement in the political sphere. One reason is this: as the politics of a country goes, so goes the flourishing of its citizens. If a nation becomes a tyranny, the citizens suffer. So, journalists have a duty to critique and evaluate what happens in the political sphere. Another reason is this: As democracy goes, so goes journalism. Where democracy weakens, democratic protections of freedom of speech and publication weaken. Journalists have a vested interest in maintaining a free and democratic nation.
The Method
Democratically engaged journalism is distinct in its attachment to dialogic, egalitarian democracy. It is also distinct in combining that attachment with a commitment to objective methods in practice. Democratic journalists should guide their actions and work by the best standards of objective inquiry. They should be objectively engaged journalists.
This is not the narrow objectivity of the codes of professional journalism created a century ago. Objectivity is not the passive, un-interpreted observation of external facts. Humans possess no such capacity for observing pure facts. Moreover, neutrality is not the best stance for a social engaged practice like journalism. Any significant piece of journalism—in fact, any story—is an interpretation of some person, place, event, or issue. It mixes facts, perspective, judgments about credible sources, and the evaluation of rival opinions. It requires the selection of story “angle” and emphasis. The very language one uses to tell the story reflects perspective and judgment.
Moreover, the evaluation of interpretations is different from neutrally stripping stories down to bare facts. It requires a holistic set of criteria for evaluating to what degree a story (a) fits reality, (b) is coherent with existing knowledge, and (c) is able to withstand sustained public scrutiny. Criteria that assist judgments about (a) to (c) go beyond the criterion of expressing facts. They include norms of conceptual clarity, completeness of fact—the story contains the most important facts—a proper context for facts, and the logical coherence of statements within the story. This is the same type of objectivity that today guides scientific and other forms of active investigation into the world.
Moreover, this type of engaged objectivity is thwarted if one adopts a strict neutrality. The correct stance for democratically engaged journalism is impartiality, understood as not allowing one’s pre-existing partialities to prejudge the facts, angle, or conclusions of a story. Unlike neutrality, impartiality allows perspectives to be adopted and conclusions to be drawn, if they are informed by sufficient investigation.
In previous writings, I developed a detailed theory of this situated method of objectivity which I call “pragmatic objectivity” because it is designed for practices such as journalism.24 Condensed for this chapter, pragmatic objectivity can be described as the application of two things to practice: adopting an objective stance toward stories, and then testing stories by applying a set of evaluative norms. The objective stance is a willingness to adopt certain attitudes or “cognitive virtues” which allow us to step back from beliefs, claims, and theories. The cognitive virtues include a willingness to be impartial, and acceptance of the “burdens of judgment” when making public statements. The burdens include the need to verify facts and to provide good evidence for claims.25 The objective stance also requires inquirers to be passionately and genuinely interested in truth-seeking, which shows itself in a willingness to follow the facts where they lead and to alter one’s views as the evidence dictates.
However, adopting the objective stance is not sufficient for objectivity. The inquirer has to apply that stance to actual stories. That is, journalistic inquirers evaluate their interpretations by testing for accuracy, by seeking cross-verification from multiple sources, by questioning the origin of information, by providing fair representations of other people’s views, and so on. Journalists are objective if they adopt the objective stance and use objective norms to test interpretations.
Pragmatic objectivity suits today’s journalism because it is a flexible method that can be applied to different kinds of journalism, from reporting to analysis to civic engaged journalism. The norms of disengaged, neutral journalism apply only to fact-stating, straight reporting. Pragmatic objectivity works against dogmatism, sloppy reporting, entrenched biases, and a refusal to learn from other perspectives. Regrettably, we have too little pragmatic objectivity in the public sphere, among journalists and citizens.
Where Does It Fit?
Where does democratically engaged journalism fit on the continuum of Figure 2.1? The obvious answer is that it fits somewhere in the perspectival or active engagement divisions, perhaps the latter. However, I offer a different conception that can at first sound paradoxical: One can think of democratically engaged journalism as not on the continuum. Democratically engaged journalism is such a broad stance toward practice that we can think of many forms of journalism on the continuum, if practiced correctly, as contributing to the comprehensive goal of sustaining egalitarian democracy amid media corruption. Straight reporting in a neutral fashion does not violate the ethic of democratically engaged journalism; it simply is insufficient for democracy and it should not be the dominant approach to journalism.
A democratic public benefits from many forms of journalism: investigative journalism, interpretative journalism, community journalism, opinion journalism—all working under the umbrella stance of democratically engaged journalism. However, this “ecumenical” idea should not blind us to the fact that the moral ideology of democratically engaged journalism is calling for serious revision of how many people think about journalism. The change can be stated most provocatively by saying that, for democratically engaged journalism, journalists are, or should be, social advocates—social advocates of a special kind. They are advocates for egalitarian democracy at home and abroad. They practice an impartial journalism of method for partial ends—democratic goals. This conception is a long way from the original notion of news objectivity constructed a century ago.
Section 3: Objections
The moral ideology of democratically engaged journalism mixes terms that, traditionally, have been thought to be opposites or incompatible, such as “objectively engaged” or “factual interpretation” or “goal-driven objectivity.” The sense that such phrases are contradictory is due, in large part, to the dualistic way in which our culture has thought about knowledge and inquiry. Therefore, it is important to consider some objections to democratically engaged journalism, concerning the role of facts, neutrality, emotions, and attachments.
Accuracy, Neutrality, and Facts
When people consider how journalists should respond to a toxic public sphere, they sometimes suggest that the “answer” is that journalists should publish accurate reports, period; and not publish fake news or intolerant views. Unfortunately, the answer is not that simple. The problem goes beyond accuracy. One can accurately report fake claims by quoting officials. Also, fake news is produced by sources other than mainstream news media. Journalists
