Objectivity means the lack of bias, opinion, perspective, angle, etc. In the context of journalism, it means reporting without having your life experiences impact the message of your journalistic medium. For example, if I was pro-gun, I would have to report on school shootings without presenting a learning perspective in favor of gun rights. I do NOT think humans are able to be 100% objective! Last semester, in my Intro to Photography class, we discussed perspective at least every other class. In a photograph, what you choose to include and exclude from a frame, how to compose a picture to give more importance to one thing over another, and your point of view is everything. That is what makes a photograph meaningful, and although that class I took was an artistic class- not a photojournalism class- don’t the same rules apply to journalism? Can you write an article without choosing what to emphasize, choosing what to include and exclude? I don’t think it is possible, and that is where subjectivity is present in all of journalism.
Of course, we can try. We can shoot for objectivity as best we can, and something that I feel like I have gotten remarkably better at is not only asking open-ended questions, but asking perspective-neutral questions as to not sway the answers of my interviewees. For example, I’m never going to ask “Why are Trump’s policies bad?”, but “What are your thoughts on Trump’s policies?”. When you start with neutral questions, I think it is easier to create perspective-neutral journalism.
One of my favorite bits of comedy is by a comic on Netflix named Daniel Sloss. He is not the most clever comic in the world, but one of his better jokes is all about perspective. He was talking about Jackson Pollock, and he had this big important exhibit once, where the main piece was black paint smeared over a white canvas, with two red dots in the middle. An art critic perceived the white canvas to be Earth pre-humanity, vast, clean, pure, unending; while the black paint represented humanity, chaotic, messy, dirty. The two dots he perceived to be a self-portrait of Pollock- small, insignificant, yet standing out so brilliantly. The punchline of the joke was upon Pollock being asked what the two red dots represent, he is on record as walking up to his painting and saying, “Huh. The red must have splashed when I was painting something else”. The moral of the story is that just because you can find meaning in someone’s art does not mean that is the meaning the artist intended. I actually find this to be the opposite of most journalism. Rarely do we create journalism without meaning, or without hoping to make a particular impact, like people might do with abstract art. Although people may perceive our written and visual work differently than how we intend it to be perceived, in my experience, is usually always accompanied by a distinct purpose. This is why journalism is not ever truly objective, because it has purpose and intent behind it.
Going along with this is one of my favorite quotes, “the truth means nothing, perspective means everything”. A lot of people think this quote is a sort of defense for fake news, that anyone can say whatever they want if they perceive it to be true. There are indisputable facts, that are not up for debate, but how people perceive those facts is up for debate, so the fact itself loses meaning. For example, if it is 73 degrees out, and person A thinks it is cold, and person B thinks it is warm, it starts to matter less that it is 73 degrees. This doesn’t mean someone can get on a stage and say “I know temperatures. I have the best temperatures- ask anyone they’ll tell you I have the best ones. I love temperatures and they love me, it is not 73 degrees”. That is what fake news is, fake news is not reporting that 60% of people think is cold when it is 73 degrees out. As a journalist it is our job to report the temperature concretely, and stay away from the hot and cold of it all.