Comments
by Donavan Hall, Ph. D.
The
Road to Objectivity
Through Skepticism in
the Spinocracy
The objectivity of the press
is a common myth concerning journalism. Somehow we developed the idea that
the press was supposed to be objective, that a journalist isn't supposed
to take sides. Who knows where this idea got started, but the origins probably
lie in someone's attempt to impart to the news some superior status. |
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Being a scientist, I don't
know too much about the subject of journalism or its history. I'm a consumer
of journalism and a sometimes participant when I write the odd letter to
the editor.
However, I do know something
about objectivity and how people have used the idea of objectivity for
the purpose of exempting their opinion from criticism. The last thing that
the news needs to be is objective. Now I will have to spend the rest of
the essay trying to explain what I mean. Of course, the news needs to get
its facts straight. Getting the facts wrong is no service to anyone; thus
I am not calling for a radical subjectivization factual interpretation
for the daily news.
What I mean primarily about
de-emphasizing objectivity as a characteristic of the news is that it need
not hold back from making recommendations. News that reports facts and
that does not advise is useless. A litany of facts is hardly more than
trivia unless it is accompanied by thoughtful analysis. Analysis is normally
what we call opinion or an editorial piece. The reporter is expected to
see, hear, and describe. They can report the opinions of others, but their
own opinions should not color their report.
The impossibility of this
separation should be obvious to anyone. We humans naturally filter whatever
information comes in front of us. We pick and choose what we will say about
an issue or an event. Not every fact or every view is recorded in a news
story. Items deemed irrelevant are censored out. Views, that don't fit
into the preconceived structure of what a "balance of opinion" would be,
are censored.
This self-censorship is not
insidious; it is a fact. We must be aware of this fact as we consume our
daily news. The Jesuit theologian and biologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
developed the concept of the noosphere. While our physical bodies live,
move, and breathe in a biosphere, the human lives in another sphere, the
sphere of ideas and concepts; it is this sphere that de Chardin christened
the noosphere.
Just as the biosphere is
something that we must share and protect, so the noosphere is common to
all of us and is in need of as much guardianship as the environment. The
noosphere is not our own. We share it. Because of this it is possible that
many of the ideas that we carry around and even articulate are not our
own.
For example, a reader pointed
out to me that a statement I made in another essay was not as self-evident
as I had made it out to be. Only when the reader confronted me with my
statement and offered a counter-example did I realize that the idea that
I thought was my own had its origins in the general culture. I discovered
that I was a victim of thought control.
This reader had caught me
recycling the common sense of the day; I had not even realized that it
was an idea that required critique. A better goal for the news than objectivity,
should be criticality. The news should be critical or skeptical. We scientists
know that objectivity is not always achieved by trying to be objective.
The surest way to achieve the right sort of objectivity is to be skeptical.
This should be the first rule of journalism: doubt and question everything.
To Protest or Not To Protest?
The recent political coup has progressives wondering just how to respond.
Clearly the democrats would like to protest the illegal take over of the
highest office in the land. However, the further left you go, you will
find that there is little enthusiasm for protest. The coup is not a proper
coup at all, merely the latest in a long line of violations committed by
the Empire against the People.
The left doesn't want to
protest because that would imply tacit support of Gore. Why should the
left even appear to support Gore when he is part of the elite, monied,
ruling structure? How would a counter-coup benefit the left? That action
would simply overthrow Satan for Beelzebub, when all they really wanted
was the hell out of here. --
Donavan Hall,
Ph. D. publisher and editor of DonavanHall.net
and "Donavan's
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