The False God of Reportorial Objectivity 0
Dick Polman comments on the media’s shibboleth of objectivity that manifests itself as dueling talking points. He points out that the storied reporters of the past did not refuse to take stands even as they tried to report the whole story, A nugget:
It was this moment, on camera, in 1954, during his special report on red-baiting smear artist Senator Joe McCarthy: “We will not walk in fear of one another, we will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. If we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular…”
In much reportage, truth lies, not in the facts as events, but in the picture which the facts paint. Those pictures are often abstract and want interpretation.
