On Saturday, a common question about journalism came up at a friend’s birthday party as the last fingers of daylight tapered into night.
“Are journalists objective?” a man asked, his tone friendly.
A fellow journalist and I looked at each other, hesitated, then almost at the same time answered: No.
My response doesn’t reveal a journalistic character flaw so much as it is a comment on the human condition. Journalists are human beings. And human beings, by their nature, are incapable of objectivity. At least as I define objectivity, which, as Merriam-Webster describes it, means capable of “expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations.”
I do not know of a single person who is able to arrive at what they consider the “truth” without first considering the circumstances of their life that shape their assumptions. Let’s start with three: The era in which they live, where that is and the culture that molded them. For example, I think differently than a man or woman living in 18th century Mongolia where Tibetan Buddhism is the dominant belief system, not a certain version of Christianity.
These factors, and many others, shape how we come to understand what we believe is true.
My skepticism comes after decades working as a journalist and as a lover of great literature, a dabbler in philosophy and as a former seminarian who studied theology and ethics, which introduced me to philosophy of science and sociology of religion.
And, perhaps more importantly, just living life, which has meant moving around and meeting people of all kinds.
So, if there is no path of objectivity, what do we at New Mexico In Depth do to ensure our readers can trust our reporting?
It is laborious.
We vet our sources to make sure they are credible. In the vast majority of cases, we then identify them to our readers so they can decide for themselves whether it’s good information we’re passing along. Very rarely, someone will ask us to not reveal their name. Every time a request of that nature is made, we discuss it internally and decide whether to honor the request.
We also spend a lot of time relentlessly asking questions. For example, when I am editing a major story, usually something that has taken us weeks or months to produce, I read every sentence in the story with an eye on whether we can back up the sentence with documents, data or interviews with credible sources. Reporters are used to me asking “How do we know this?” which usually means “show me how you came to believe that what you have written is accurate” by walking me through the documents, the interviews or the data analysis the reporter is relying on.
What we do at New Mexico In Depth is similar to the scientific method, which is to test and verify what people and documents and data are telling us.
To be precise, it’s not the scientific method so much as a practice that belongs to a very old tradition thousands of years old.
Greek and Roman thinkers were warning their contemporaries about the dangers of falsehoods thousands of years before Jonathan Swift wrote this oft-quoted (and perhaps over-used in our current era) line:
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”
We view ourselves on the side of a slow, plodding process that requires vetting information so that we can say to readers with reasonable assurance that what we are reporting has been vetted, often by multiple people.
It is not the absolute truth we are presenting. It is information that has been vetted.
But perhaps you think I’m sidestepping criticizing journalism with this explanation.
Hardly.
Critics of journalism have every right to complain. Some of the fiercest critics of journalism are journalists themselves who dislike being lumped together with people who pass off rumor and gossip and unchecked information as journalism.
Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican. In 2012, he co-founded New Mexico In Depth, a nonpartisan, nonprofit media outlet that produces investigative, data-rich stories with an eye on solutions that can be a catalyst for change.
