A tweet from a panel discussion last night reignited the running debate over whether it’s OK for journalists to express opinions:
I was tweeting a comment from Associated Press race and ethnicity writer Jesse Holland, a panelist at Diversity 2016: Race and Gender on the Campaign Trail at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication.
As I expected, others reacted to Holland’s view:
I blogged my views on journalists expressing their opinions in 2012, and led a Digital First Media group that offered advice to our colleagues on expressing opinions, so I won’t repeat those views here. But a few updated thoughts:
I think journalism (and our readers/viewers/users/communities) is well served by a variety of approaches to expression of opinions. As critical as I have been about the notion of objectivity, I like that some journalism organizations practice neutral reporting, however flawed it might be. Neutrality is probably essential for the AP, which serves a wide range of clients and would lose much of its member and client base if it veered much from that approach.
I also don’t think that the only alternative to neutrality is advocacy. I think journalism organizations should remain independent of politicians and political organizations, even if they express opinions and endorse candidates. I think we should experiment with ways to practice neutral reporting while being more transparent about our opinions. I’d rather see analysis and commentary that share opinions and conclusions about the matters we cover without advocating for specific positions.
Update: Jay Rosen responded to this post with the tweets below. I agree. As noted in my 2012 post, David Broder was the Washington Post’s senior political reporter for many years, writing a weekly Sunday column that bolstered, rather than hurting, his credibility. I wrote a weekly column when I was a religion reporter for the Des Moines Register, and heard that it helped my credibility. People didn’t need to speculate about possible bias. They knew my opinions and saw that I provided fair and accurate news coverage of people with whom I had disagreements.
Journalism ethics codes call on us to seek and report the truth, and sometimes commentary (or even humor) can be the best way to do that. For instance, I don’t think any neutral reporters did a better job of covering Chris Christie’s awkward Super Tuesday appearance with Donald Trump than Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post or Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
The Buttry Diary 
Call me old-fashioned, but I continue to lobby for a return to the Fairness Doctrine. : )
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Great piece in this exchange between Bill Keller and Glenn Greenwald on this subject from a few years ago – http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html
I tend to agree with Greenwald when he says this:
“A journalist who is petrified of appearing to express any opinions will often steer clear of declarative sentences about what is true, opting instead for a cowardly and unhelpful ‘here’s-what-both-sides-say-and-I-won’t-resolve-the-conflicts’ formulation. That rewards dishonesty on the part of political and corporate officials who know they can rely on ‘objective’ reporters to amplify their falsehoods without challenge (i.e., reporting is reduced to ‘X says Y’ rather than ‘X says Y and that’s false’).”
…
“The relevant distinction is not between journalists who have opinions and those who do not, because the latter category is mythical. The relevant distinction is between journalists who honestly disclose their subjective assumptions and political values and those who dishonestly pretend they have none or conceal them from their readers.”
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If you take into account that 75% of news content is agency and PR-originated, then objective reporting suddenly acquires a completely different meaning. I am of the opinion that reporting is about informing and reporting facts, and opinion about influencing and informing the public about beliefs.
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