The view from nowhere

Developing objectivity when reporting a story is one of the most rudimentary lessons a trainee journalist is taught. Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU and a media critic, calls this the “view-from-nowhere’ theory—reporters strive to be completely impartial in their coverage. However, this insistence on objectivity has created a culture of detachment within the journalist fraternity. Reporting loses its fervor and reporters become, as the interview with Jay Rosen puts it, “disinterested observers.”

In his book “Breaking the news,” James Fallows examines a divide that exists between politicians and journalists. The latter go out of their way to prove their objectivity, as they fear that their readership will classify them as “ideologues” if they do not. The result, Fallows says, is “an arms race of attitude, in which reporters don’t explicitly argue or analyze what they dislike in a political program but instead sound sneering and supercilious about the whole idea of politics.”

Games of one-upmanship between political rivals find more coverage than the actual manifestos of their parties. Fallows recounts an episode from a talk show, where prominent journalists Peter Jennings from ABC and Mike Wallace from 60 Minutes are given a hypothetical war situation and made to choose between their country and their profession. The choices they make and the manner in which they arrive at them, Fallows points out, show a dilution of ethics among today’s journalists.

People across the world are beginning to slowly lose faith in the “fourth estate.” In India, the current generation is aware that no news is ever entirely impartial; if anything, it is most partial to the corporate interests that shape it. The recent ‘paid news’ scandal bears witness to this sad fact.

Jay Rosen proposes a solution: media organizations should abandon pseudo-neutrality and rather, wear their influences on their sleeves. He hopes it will be replaced by a “here’s where we’re coming from” attitude.