Objectivity now only a memory?
The news business is in the midst of great change. Objectivity, part of the dogma of journalism for years, is becoming a memory.
We all would like our news reports to be created by "objective" journalists. You would think that objectivity would call for reportorial invisibility. We want the news to be unsullied as it passes from the event through the journalist to us. We shouldn't care what they look like or even who they are. Bylines themselves are almost anti-objectivity.Regardless of whether it is real or unreal, a reachable goal or not, objectivity as a tenet of good journalism is quietly falling into disfavor in today's market-driven news organizations.
Let's be very clear about one thing from the beginning, the First Amendment to the Constitution notwithstanding: the first priority of news organizations is not public service, but it's delivering an audience – readers or viewers – to businesses. If they can't do that, they won't last.
Yes, even the news is packaged and sold and marketed, just like entertainment media."News is definitely a commodity today," said Marcia Ladendorff, a former broadcast journalist and now assistant director of the Honors Program at UNF. "The line between entertainment and journalism just doesn't exist any more. It's all the same."
Thus we now have infotainment, once thought the domain of only the tabloids, both in print and on the air. Sleaze TV. The Cult of Personality is moving into more and more newsrooms. And objectivity is taking a back seat.
With Jacksonville now being a metered market, and with local news divisions being able to check their overnight ratings immediately, the marketing of the profitable local news programs may well increase. Selling the personalities instead of focusing on professional qualities and objective reporting may become even more noticeable.
Just tonight during my normal news hour channel surfing, I saw a WTLV-12 promotional ad with only pictures of the news team and the line: "People You Know. News You Trust." My immediate reaction was: why? Why am I supposed to trust these people just because the incessant promotional pieces have made their faces more familiar to me than those of my next-door neighbors? The professionalism is not promoted; only the personalities.
Newspapers are not as guilty of promoting journalists as stars, but they are heading down the path. Local billboards promote local columnists such as Ron Littlepage, Nicole Gill, and Tonyaa Weathersbee. At least they don't hype the news reporters.
Despite the obvious hyping of the journalists as personalities, objectivity remains a stated goal for most journalists. Mike Stutz, news director at WJXT-4, in fact said that it is a primary goal in his newsroom.
"Our number one goal is objectivity," Stutz said. "We do that by fair and balanced reporting. The reason we do this is to present the facts. You know you've hit the mark when you get calls afterward from both sides."
Yet he bristled a bit when I brought up the promotional billboards. He admits that personality is a factor, although not a primary one.
"Objectivity is our primary goal," he reiterated. "[Personality] does become a factor, but I don't go after new hires because of their personality, but because I think they can do their job well."