TO WHAT EXTENT CAN MEDIA REPORTING BE OBJECTIVE?

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Diana Sokołowska LP 29

COMM 101

TO WHAT EXTENT CAN MEDIA REPORTING BE OBJECTIVE?

This essay will try to answer the question if objectivity in the media exists nowadays or not. It will start with analyzing the exact meaning of the adjective “objective” referencing to the media as well as comparing this meaning with a similar term. It will briefly cover the history of the idea of non-partisan press and broadcasters in order to show the process of evaluating objectivity in media. Then it will examine the concept of bias, the way it is created and reasons for doing it. The essay will also present the main factors and figures, which influence or want to influence the media as well as the way they try to do it. Finally, it will analyze several examples of event coverage by media, which should be beneficial in trying to settle if the cover was objective or not, making it easier to draw a significant conclusion.

To start with, the term “objective” should be explained. According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, “to be objective” means to “express or deal with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations” (). This should be understood as a word describing facts and information announced in a straight, truthful way, without any other influences such as an own point of view, opinion or emotions. Using this adjective with reference to the media, these influential factors may be for example the government, politicians or political parties trying to put their agenda behind the news, which have a very wide audience. Ken Newton (cited in Street, 2001, p.18) adds: “A neutral media will present a full and fair account of the facts.”

However, a difference between “objectivity” and “balance” should be noticed. According to Holli Semetko (cited in Street, 2001, p.19), “to be objective is to let news values determine the coverage an event receives”, while “to be balanced, by contrast, is to give equal coverage to all the parties to an event, irrespective of the news value of their contributions.”  In a first case, it is a journalist, who decides about the importance of individual facts, trying to present an event from every possible point of view. In the second, the character of the information is no so important, but the length of article or time in the news matters. John Street (2001) gives an example of the results of the research carried out by William Miller and his colleagues about British general election of 1987. Although the main three parties (Labour, Conservative and Alliance) got exactly the same quantity of time in a television, the impression was that the third one is not so important in a race for a power. This was achieved by the way, in which the Alliance was covered.

Still, the idea of “objective media” is quite young. It did not exist before 1920s, when the newspapers were the only source of information. Then, they were usually connected with a specific political party, so buying a paper, the reader knew, whose agenda was disseminated in it. When in the USA a radio appeared as a competition in informing, the leading ideology decided to introduce the system, in which the broadcasting became the public utilities. Having a monopoly in this kind of media, broadcast journalists could not allow themselves to be partisan any more and that was the moment, in which the idea of the objectivity in media was born. However, the longer system existed, the more troubles with the objectivity appeared. Firstly, more and more TV and radio stations arisen and repeating the same story in the same way by all of them made the information not interesting any more. This led to presenting events from different points of view by different programmes and loosing their objectivity this way ().

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Soon, people learnt to take advantage of this issue trying to influence the media to make them support the ideology presented by different groups. This is how the concept of  bias was born. John Street (2001, p.15) explains the bias as “the extant to which media content was systematically favourable to particular set of interests”. In practice, this means, that journalists or broadcasters in their articles and programmes provide a fuller cover of the one side of the event, simultaneously limiting the points on the other side. Their actions may be determinated by their editors, corporations they work for or ...

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