Journalism and the Issue of Objectivity

"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity..." - Gore Vidal



Whether or not it is clear to most people, America - just like any journalistic publication - is run as a business. When reading any sort of recent journalistic publication (or even watching the news on TV), it is not difficult to see that there is an agenda behind it, and the nature of that agenda is not neccessarily just to inform an audience. Truth no longer seems to be the ultimate goal of journalism in this country, but rather gaining a readership, swaying the opinions of the masses, etc. Apparently, objectivity and truth aren't entertaining enough to the American public; that's not what sells.


This past week, I looked at two different news sources from two different countries: CNN.com and BBC.com. Without even reading the stories, I noticed immediate differences in the same stories being covered (7/4/07):

"6 Canadian soldiers slain in Afghanistan (US)" vs. "Afghan bomb kills 6 Canadians (UK)"

"Missing lake was swallowed by crack (US)" vs. "Warming 'made lake vanish' (UK)"

...and so on.

The US news source dictates the facts to give emotional leverage, which in turn sways the audience's opinions and increases circulation (or the amount of "hits" on its website). Words like "slain" give emotional appeal to a headline; and if "global warming" wasn't an already benign enough term to describe what's happening to our fragile planet, how about denying it all together (a "CRACK?!")? And this is supposedly a more liberal and objective news source in this country.

But it's so easy to point fingers. Sometimes it seems like the liberals aren't any better than the conservatives.