I have thought for some years about whether the idea of journalistic impartiality even makes sense. Recently, a friend helped me see it in a new way.
0. Contents
1. The abstract problem
In the consideration of a subject which may be examined with impartiality, but cannot be viewed with indifference…
— Gibbon, Decline and Fall, §20
I had usually thought about journalistic impartiality as an abstract problem. It is difficult enough to define what it would even mean for a newspaper to be presented “objectively” or “impartially”, especially if this is meant to be attainable. Usually, no one cares enough to be rigorous, and people will simply state, without argument, that journalism either can or can’t be impartial, and that it either should or shouldn’t try to do so. I thought for a while that I had a pretty fair case for the conclusion that it is impossible, and this is what I will present next.
1.1. Item presentation
Though I could not always present it so concisely, I believe my argument went something like this:
- “Impartiality” should be defined as neutrality with respect to different possible worldviews.
- Every decision about how to write something is a human decision, and must have a reason, whether conscious or not.
- It is impossible for this reason to be perfectly neutral with respect to all worldviews.
- So, it is impossible for any decision about how to write something to be neutral and impartial.
I thought this argument was pretty good, but it nevertheless does inevitably seem that a lot of things are written without any partiality. Maybe the “trade jargon” of journalism prevents partiality somehow. Which is why the following was also important to me.
1.2. Item selection
Even if a news item can possibly be presented impartially, it is clear that a parallel argument can be made about how to select which news items to report, and what kind of emphasis to give them – as in deciding, for instance, whether an item is front page material or not. Given different newspapers with different items and emphases, someone would be hard pressed to claim that any one selection and ordering of items is “the objectively most important news to the public”. Clearly, then, the selection and ordering of items must reflect some point of view, even if the language inside reports somehow does not.
2. The concrete problem
Inner psychological states are never accessible to the historian.
— Bart Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery, §3
It turns out that the problem of journalistic partiality has quite a different nature when addressed concretely. My best friend, who does not usually look at cable news, ended up having to watch some recently, and she told me the problems she saw with it, which I thought was insightful.
2.1. Cable news
The problem is that networks such as Fox News habitually do the following:
- Impute motives to people that they have not actually stated (e.g., “X politician is trying to do XYZ”)
- Report events in a way that is obviously interpretive, regarding moral or aesthetic value (and often inflammatory, e.g. “X politician is using Y group as pawns”)
This is the typical way that they talk about anything, as opposed to there being a separation between “news”, where this is not done, and “commentary”, where this is done; even the running on-screen headlines will have statements of this sort.
2.2. Cable news watchers
In my experience, this actually makes it harder for habitual watchers of such sensationalist content – whether on Fox News or on certain YouTube channels – to see things from any other perspective than their own. Since this is the main way they hear about news, they have a harder time separating the facts from the values that come with them.
Since the content is often meant to arouse anger and other strong emotions, people who watch it often feel such emotions about the content, and have a harder time thinking and talking calmly about contemporary politics. They often fiercely hate their political opponents, and can sometimes find them unbearable.
Also, the habit of ascribing bad motives to political enemies seems to make some people really believe that a large proportion of people with opposing politics really do act with bad intentions a lot of the time. They are led to think that our opponents have no conscience, and are conspiring to destroy the things we hold dear; that they are evil, and are out to get us.
I have seen these effects in some other people, and also in myself. They are defects in thought.
3. Solutions
The solution, then, to the concrete problem, is simply to avoid such value and intention judgments in news reporting, as well as displays of emotion. It is much less difficult than the abstract problem, which is probably unsolvable. News publications can probably easily be impartial in the sense of only reporting observable things, and leave their particular interpretations to a dedicated editorial section.
There is, of course, no incentive for cable news networks or sensationalist YouTube channels to change their ways at all. I believe that the first to do so would simply lose its public to the remaining sensationalists. The public that watches these things is probably simply not interested in impartial reporting; for such people, I suppose the only hope is that some external reason will cause them to grow more mature, so that they will grow tired of such content and abandon it.
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