{"id":107323,"date":"2016-09-20T12:21:16","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T20:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=107323"},"modified":"2016-09-20T12:21:16","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T20:21:16","slug":"illusions-of-objectivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=107323","title":{"rendered":"Illusions of Objectivity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Avi Shafran writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Some American journalists assigned to the political beat are having a hard time. Their dilemma is named Donald Trump, a man they don\u2019t feel they can cover objectively.<\/p>\n

Those troubled are reporters with a liberal bent, and that, of course, means most of the profession. The vast majority of mainstream print and electronic media personnel are well entrenched on the left end of the political spectrum. To be sure, one needn\u2019t be a social or political liberal to regard the Republican presidential candidate with concern \u2013 many in Mr. T.\u2019s own party are distancing themselves from him \u2013 but \u201cprogressive\u201d citizens have a particular revulsion for the controversial candidate.<\/p>\n

And so, while the intrepid reporters soldier on in the quest for fairness, impartiality and objectivity, they are finding it hard to maintain their professional standards, or even the fa\u00e7ade of neutrality.<\/p>\n

Jim Rutenberg, the New York Times\u2019 \u201cmedia columnist,\u201d lamented his and his colleagues\u2019 predicament.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a working journalist,\u201d he wrote, \u201cand you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation\u2019s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes\u2026 you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you\u2019ve never approached anything in your career.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would move closer,\u201d he continued, \u201cthan you\u2019ve ever been to being oppositional. That\u2019s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I\u2019ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Rutenberg\u2019s honest confession of discomfort is commendable. But it\u2019s also somewhat amusing, because, while Mr. Trump may be an outsize (one might even say yuuuge!) challenge to the media\u2019s objectivity, the notion itself of journalistic impartiality is more veneer than substance. There are other fairness challenges that reporters routinely face and fail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Avi Shafran writes: Some American journalists assigned to the political beat are having a hard time. Their dilemma is named Donald Trump, a man they don\u2019t feel they can cover objectively. Those troubled are reporters with a liberal bent, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107324,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107323\/revisions\/107324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}