Just so it doesn't go unnoticed in these pages, I'll link Alan Sunderland's article http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-10/s ... ry/6764320.
It contains a link to Jonathan Holmes's article where Holmes says that biased journalism is what we get in our modern world, notwithstanding his experience of what "media consumers" say they want.
Sunderland seems to want to disagree, but doesn't, and ends up shoehorning the term "objective reporting" into a definition of journalism that involves the opinion of the journalist in the reporting. He decides that what Holmes says most people want is not what Sunderland (and apparently other serious journalists) thinks they should get.In last week's spray against Fairfax, Peter Dutton complained that its reporters "aren't supposed to be political players, they're supposed to be objective reporters of the news."
That's certainly a view that most media consumers still hold – or so our viewers told us time and again when I presented Media Watch. "The media should just give us the facts," they would complain. "We can form our own opinions."
...
But it's true that the days of "objective" reporting – cool, factual, impartial, unemotional, devoid of adjectives, or personality, or any trace of personal opinion – are well and truly over. It might be admirable in theory. In practice, unfortunately, it's too bloody dull.
Me: "I'd like to purchase the black one please".It has always been the case that reporters need to sift through facts, weigh them up, make editorial judgements about their relative strength and importance, and then present them in a way that illuminates the truth of a matter. It's not called 'editorial' content for nothing.
Alan Sunderland: "You'll have the white one and be thankful for it".
Centrelink clerk: "Hello Mr Sunderland, I'm afraid there's not much call for your opinions, how about a nice job cleaning the lobsters out of Jayne Mansfield's bum."
No wonder the "media" are an industry under pressure and the object of public disdain. It might be "dull" for the journalist, but they produce a product that I don't want, and it seems other people don't want it either. It just doesn't get any simpler than that.