Thursday, June 30, 2011

Week 8: Media objectivity

It is definitely every journalists' struggles to be as objective as possible in their news reporting. Telling the truth is often hard because as human, we tend to alter what we hear or see to suit our personal motives and agendas. Lets assume that I am a journalist and am a die-hard fan of Lady Gaga who at that point of time, just commited a crime and I have to interview her. In any normal situations, I can never have the chance to be within a 10-meter radius of the pop star, let alone, having the chance to even speak to her. And this is my chance. I would definitely be in a very compromising spot - interview her as a journalist and THEN switch to fan-mode and ask for her autograph. That is very unprofessional and having said that, of course it would be very hard for me, or even anyone at that, to be objective.

That isn't the only example of a case demonstrating the lack of media objectivity. There are a lot more different cases out there which most of the times, are not obvious to the public's eye. It is ironic that although journalism = truth, most of the times, it is everything but the truth. It is human nature to judge and get personal. I believe even professional journalists have a hard time trying to be objective but still end up with news reports and articles with subjectivity and personal opinions.

But assuming a journalist really did report the truth and managed to remain objective throughout the report, how can we tell? How can we even detect truth, lies, objectivity and subjectivity in a news report? Or do we actually just go "Hey, that's bias reporting!" just because we do not agree with his reports and have our own personal opinions on it? Well, this can go on and on and on.

So as future journalists, I say that, yes it is hard to be objective and if ever, you see yourself getting off course, be as convincing as possible. In today's world, media objectivity is an entity just like how unicorns also are (only the latter have been a myth for the longest time).


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