Nowadays the newspapers read like People magazine.
Who is wearing what? Who is dating who? What’s liked, and what isn’t? Many articles I’ve read no longer report just the facts, but contain someone’s subjective take on the issue they’re reporting on.
It’s difficult to learn what is actually happening in the world without the propaganda that media outlets convey in journalistic practice. These points of view used to stay in their rightful place, safely guarded in the opinion/editorials sections of newspapers. Now they have found an escape passage into other areas of the newspaper — areas where they don’t belong.
David Brooks, New York Times columnist, said in a speech to college journalism students that objectivity is paramount to reporting.
“What are the stages of getting to objectivity? The first stage is what somebody called negative capacity — the ability to suspend judgment while you’re looking at the facts. Sometimes when we look at a set of facts, we like to choose the facts that make us feel good because it confirms our worldview. But if you’re going to be objective — and this is for journalists or anybody else — surely the first stage is the ability to look at all the facts, whether they make you feel good or not.”
That is what we’re reading in the news when we pick up the paper with our morning coffee: an issue that the writer feels good or bad about.
Philip Meyer, a professor in journalism and mass communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has a list of elements that he checks off when reading news articles. Meyer says that “A news medium should stay with a problem or issue — even at the risk of redundancy and … desire to foster deliberation. Expressing your views is a good thing. Making an earnest attempt to understand someone else’s views is equally important. Helping and encouraging members of a community to make that earnest attempt at reciprocal understanding is a key aspect of the public journalism we need.”
Does this mean that what we read in the news is boring unless the issue is explosive? I don’t think it does. I have read some great stories about mundane issues that effectively implemented objective writing. Objectivity is not synonymous with writing conservatively, and conservative objectivity doesn’t have to be boring or dry.
Just give us the facts, without the opinion spliced into every sentence, every paragraph, and do it in a way that lets newspaper lovers read with fervor.
Mark Twain was a pioneer at combining humor and objectivity in journalism, and he had certain expectations when he read news.
“Now that is the way to write — peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fantods.”
Newspapers have an opportunity to generate conversations on campuses, in communities, nationally and internationally.
So do readers. Let’s demand that they are colorful, clever, honest and objective conversation starters and that they give us the space to create our own opinions once we have read about the facts of an issue.
Readers are responsible for what they read and how they listen to the news, perhaps in many cases, more so than journalists. Why? Because we demand what a newspaper will supply. While the old adage — “If it bleeds, it leads” — may be true, it is only because that’s what sells newspapers, advertisement spots on television and in news programs. One of the greatest gifts readers are given is the ability to communicate through letters to the editor.
This not only generates a response to our inquiries, comments, or rants, but it also gives the source of our news a good idea of what readers are talking about and what they care about when it comes to news.
Arthur Miller said it best: “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.” If there is any truth to Miller’s words, then readers are responsible for speaking up about what they read and not simply thumbing through whatever is hot off the press.
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