Truth and Objectivity

Truth and objectivity are important elements in the media and should be practiced by journalists and media corporations. Truth is important to the public. Tickle (2006, p. 90) states that ‘journalists face the task of truthfully representing in words, numbers, sound, and pictures, events that have occurred at a particular time and in a particular place.’

An example is the documentary ‘Out Foxed’ as a case study, which is about Rupert Murdoch’s company News Corporation. The documentary portrays how on a daily basis, the News Corporation journalists have to follow the agenda of Mr. Murdoch. This removed truth and objectivity from their reporting. Mr. Murdoch was asking his journalists to be subjective and ultimately bias. This creates problems for the journalists because journalists have a responsibility to communicate truth to the public. As a consequence of Mr. Murdoch having an agenda, the public does not receive an honest ‘truth’. As Tickle (2006, p. 91) argues ‘news media producers reject claims that they cannot represent the truth in their news stories, while the cultural theorists say that it is futile to try to represent the truth because it is a situational and subjective construction of reality.’

News Corporation is not the only media outlet guilty of blurring the ‘truth’. Photographs have been tampered with changing an image and distorting the truth. This is usually done to sensationalise a story often found in celebrity magazines. This is also the case with footage being edited to show a particular point of view. An example is that Bill O’Reilly.

Journalists decide what the ‘truth’ of a story is by selecting which facts to include and those which need to be left out. This process of reporting the important facts should not misrepresent what actually occurred; just provide the most vital information, as Tickle (2001, p. 95) argues ‘journalists must also exercise their judgement; that is, they must select from among many choices the crucial elements of the story and structure it appropriately.’ Journalists should ensure that all their stories have balance and fairness.

Using words such as ‘allegedly’ can also warp the ‘truth’ of a story and journalists may believe that using such words are a protection from defamation, etc. A journalist should be clear and concise and provide many points of view. Journalists should ensure that the three stages of enquiry are covered and these are reactive reporting, analytical reporting and reflective reporting.

Tickle discusses the post-modern view of journalism stating that ‘for the post-modernist, all truths and assumptions must be continually subjected to direct testing with the understanding that knowledge is relative and fallible, rather than absolute or certain’ (2001, p. 92). Another post-modern perspective is that audiences create their own truths through the material they are presented with. Creating a universal truth is hard because everyone lives in a different social and cultural context. What one person accepts as true is what another person questions.


How would you define truth?

Do you think that journalists are truthful?




Reference:
Tickle, S 2001, ‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but…’, in S Tapsall & C Varley (eds), Journalism: Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 89- 101.