Throughout Panievsky’s discussions of journalistic objectivity, I noticed that objectivity is frequently more of a performance than a truth-seeking method. I found it ironic that “objectivity” is often pursued by trying to mimic what journalists perceive the public’s interpretation of objectivity to be. The result is not less subjectivity, just subjectivity that goes unacknowledged.
Journalism holds on to norms like the “right to reply” even when those norms no longer serve their purpose (86), and it often treats balance as a substitute for truth (97-98). As Panievsky writes, “Journalists often avoid determining who is right, as each deviation from their neutral stance is considered unprofessional or partisan” (101). The problem is that this kind of neutrality is defined by the debate, not by facts. If one side shifts to the extreme, the “middle ground” moves with it, and a reporter standing there is no longer neutral in any useful sense. Panievsky also finds that the shift to the right was not a response to any real bias. Leaning right was meant “to perform a ‘correction’ to the supposed bias journalists believed their audience attributed to them” (109).
This reminded me of how anthropology wrestles with a similar problem. The standard of ethnography was once to observe other cultures from a neutral distance, with the implied authority and objectivity of an expert researcher. Now, the discipline has come to accept that observers do not stand fully inside or outside of their subject. Instead of claiming objectivity, ethnographers are trained to acknowledge their own position and explain how it shaped their work. Panievsky touches on the tensions between academic and journalistic objectivity (105). The two can’t be directly translated. A news story has no room for the kind of reflexive discussion an ethnography includes, and readers expect reporters to tell them what happened, not to write about themselves. But the underlying ideas may still be useful. A reporter who explains how they reached a conclusion or provides broader context on their process might be better protected against charges of bias than one who avoids reaching conclusions or acknowledging their process at all.
For me, these chapters show that objectivity, as often practiced by journalists, is aimed at the audience rather than the facts. That makes it easy to exploit. A party that complains loudly enough about bias can shift coverage without proving anything, because journalists are responding to how they think they are seen. Treating objectivity as a question of method rather than appearance seems like a steadier footing; as Panievsky observed, journalists can be called partisan or biased either way.
