The myth of objectivity in war reporting
The myth of objectivity in war reporting
As a journalist, one must uphold an ethic entailing the establishment of truth and objectivity. One needs to look at an event and record the facts in an un-biased manner. The issue in question is maintaining objectivity when reporting on a conflict that your country is involved in.
Journalism has many goals, and it has many standards that it is expected to live up to. Perhaps the most desired goal of journalism, is objectivity. The ability to be detached and unprejudiced while gathering and then disseminating information. The idea being that such objectivity will allow people to arrive at decisions without the journalists personal views clouding his or her judgement.
And when we say here, “covering a conflict”, there are two ways that is done, one is by reporting as an embedded journalist, and the other is by reporting on the conflict from a distance.
When a reporter is on the front lines with military personnel, constantly in touch and developing relationships, it becomes difficult to report objectively. And confounding all of that is the fact that certain information that is more than newsworthy cannot be reported due risking national security. But war reporting is clearly the great exception from the cult of objectivity—if only because a reporter who disengaged himself emotionally from a skirmish's outcome would be inviting death. And who can say that that any reporter that goes out into a combat situation will eventually not become sympathetic with the guys they're travelling with. In addition, how can it be possible for such a journalist to maintain total objectivity or true balance? In Iraq for example, can we expect a journalist travelling with a marine patrol to get comments from Iraqi fighters?
This actually raises another question, one that plagues those on the front lines or those reporting from their pressrooms alike. Who is a freedom fighter, who is a terrorist, who is a separatist and who is an insurgent? Just because a military handout uses those terms, are we as journalists supposed to parrot them? Are the Tamil Tigers terrorists when those in East Timor were not? Are the Chechens terrorists when the Basque are separatists? Should journalists make these decisions, or use terms coined by politicians and war-mongers with vested interests?
There also gives rise to the question whether coverage should be objective, or balanced, or both? And how are the two different? For example few would argue that the famous Vietnam-era footage of the young girl running for her life while on fire from a napalm strike had a strong effect on anti-war sentiment. No one can deny that it was factual, but was it balanced? There were other sides to that war that were perhaps not highlighted to the same degree. And can objectivity be maintained without maintaining balance? Or can a report that reported the facts, but just one side of the story be termed objective and unbalanced, or simply not objective?
I personally think that objectivity cannot come without balance, for a journalist to be able to say that his story is objective, it has to be balanced, and that means all the facts, to the best of his ability, from both sides, as they were seen or heard. Perhaps the term resistance is best when a journalist is unsure of terrorist, freedom fighter or insurgents. We should not be the ones deciding that. However balance can be taken too far and I will come to that later.
Given that, we have to keep in mind that every reporter’s perception of what is true, or likely to be true, or what is good or bad differs. Each person's world conforms to its own set of culturally defined expectations and in such a way as to appear satisfyingly real in total to its creator. The definition of feminine or masculine beauty depends on if the viewer is European or an Australian bushman. Preconceptions, prejudices, biases, cultural norms and mores, education, superstition, peer opinion, all play their role in people creating their own realities. This also changes levels of acceptable objectivity for that person
Until ESP becomes a viable form of communication, descriptions must be in words. However, words are notoriously slippery things: no word means the same thing to everybody or even anybody.
Journalism requires making a series of decisions, the first and most important is deciding just what is news. Then there is the necessity to determine what events constitute news: disasters, either natural or man-made, economics, politics, religion, people interacting with each other or animals or nature or whatever is of interest? Of course, the decision maker receives that power based on years of experience in determining what is news. However, that merely proves the above point that experience is a basis of a person's reality.
And then comes the actual reporting. As in selecting which events are news, someone must decide which words best describe the event. These decisions are based on the reporter's world as he or she examines the facts gathered and decides what words those receiving the report will best understand.
Television, using pictures in reporting the news, might allow the argument that pictures don't lie. Since people can actually see what is occurring or has occurred, the event is reported objectively. Nonetheless, the pictures are as subjective as words. Again decisions based on a world view are made: at the bottom the reporter or camera operator decide where to aim the camera, at what focus, at what distance, using a close-up, a medium or long shot, and at what angle. A great example is the Iran Hostage Crisis in which the mobs would sit around basically picnicking until the cameras appeared. The mob would then stand, chant and wave banners. A close-up camera shot can make ten people look like a mob; a long-shot can make thousands look like a local dispute. An example would be the bringing down of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad. There are no long shots of that event.
If war makes objectivity impossible, or at least very difficult, why do we pay so much lip service to it? Perhaps because journalists think the myth of objectivity will help keep them safe - even when they have declared sides.
Take the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, for example. After allied troops toppled the Taliban regime, Wall Street Journal reporter Alan Cullison purchased a used laptop and hard drive in Kabul on which he found al-Qaida correspondence and terrorist plans. Included in the 1,750 files recovered was information on the movements of an al-Qaida operative whose itinerary paralleled that of Richard C. Reid, the now-convicted shoe bomber of American Airlines Flight 63 - information that would help the military or CIA further its anti-terrorist initiative. On Dec. 31, 2001, his paper published the first of its stories based on its computer finding. Before publication, it shared the information on the computer and hard drive with the U.S. military. And I quote here the Journal’s Managing Editor Paul E. Steiger telling the New York Times on Jan. 21, 2002, "We decided that this was the right thing to do in moral terms and reporting terms,". Again I quote. "In moral terms, we would have been devastated if we had withheld information that could have saved the lives of our servicemen [emphasis added] or of civilians. In reporting terms, we wanted to verify what we had." Most of us would cringe at asking the military to verify or look at information and then telling us what we can print or not. However, the patriotic duty is something that most of us would also give in to. However, as it can be seen, sides were being taken. The information was not shared with the public beforehand, but the other way around.
Coverage of war has never been objective. And to expect it of embedded journalists would be a bit naïve. The embedded journalists might tell us who's gaining territory, who's retreating, who's on fire. Hazy truths, at best. And nothing approaching a complete account of any battle will be feasible until long after war's end, when reporters interview soldiers from both sides. Citing security reasons, the forces accompanying the journalists will control the big picture as rigorously.
Why should we expect it to be any other way? No government has ever endorsed the notion that the press should have unfettered access to the battlefield. Even the pretence that war correspondents should be objective is a recent development. Until the early 20th century, war writers routinely wore the uniforms of the army they covered and carried arms against "the enemy." Their dispatches openly (and honestly) rooted for the home team. While covering the Spanish-American War as a journalist, Stephen Crane aggressively maneuvered his way ahead of U.S. troops so that he could accept a Puerto Rican village's surrender on behalf of the soldiers, Phillip Knightley writes in his history of war reporting, ‘The First Casualty’.
Objectivity needs a method to integrate new information with existing knowledge. Until new information can be incorporated into what one already knows, it is useless. When confronted with new information one must effectively ask oneself, "How does this add to my understanding of reality?" That information must be interpreted by, and tested against, what one already knows. I cannot emphasise this enough.
When a reporter is embedded with US troops and witnesses the destruction of Iraqi resistance, he or she has obtained new information. If this reporter is committed as a matter of principle to objectivity, he or she has by now a lot of knowledge pertaining to what was witnessed. The reporter needn't, and shouldn't, constantly be a cheer-leader for America in this case. They needn't say "it was a great achievement for freedom-loving people," but that fact should prevent them from reporting a falsehood. For example, because of their knowledge, they should not report the "other side" with equal credibility, e.g., "the Iraqis, on the other hand, consider themselves victims of imperialist aggression." The sum of knowledge the reporter possesses (or should possess) disproves the Iraqi claim and should be presented as being false.
At the same time, reporters who present "both sides" equally are not thinking objectively, or at least they are not communicating objective knowledge. Objectivity requires integration with all knowledge one possesses and not merely the unintegrated information at hand. Whether one likes it or not, the reporter will have to, has to, and always will have to make judgements on the credibility of information, and not just report everything he happens to lay his hands on. Objectivity comes when a reporter presents information, and seeks to verify that from sources other than the originating point of the information, and then presents those facts as well. An objective report presents the story being released by the official authority, and then shows all the evidence that such claims are false. If the case may be. At that point, it's perfectly objective for the reporter to draw the conclusion that someone is covering up the truth, because such a conclusion is warranted by the evidence. Being objective means recognizing that not everybody's point of view is equally valid or deserves equal respect. That is how I see objectivity differing from balance.
I think a concerted effort should be made to suspend the race to be first, offering less trivial coverage and replacing the reporter's instant insights and speculation with the honesty and simple humility of an occasional, "We don't know."
As a journalist, one must uphold an ethic entailing the establishment of truth and objectivity. One needs to look at an event and record the facts in an un-biased manner. The issue in question is maintaining objectivity when reporting on a conflict that your country is involved in.
Journalism has many goals, and it has many standards that it is expected to live up to. Perhaps the most desired goal of journalism, is objectivity. The ability to be detached and unprejudiced while gathering and then disseminating information. The idea being that such objectivity will allow people to arrive at decisions without the journalists personal views clouding his or her judgement.
And when we say here, “covering a conflict”, there are two ways that is done, one is by reporting as an embedded journalist, and the other is by reporting on the conflict from a distance.
When a reporter is on the front lines with military personnel, constantly in touch and developing relationships, it becomes difficult to report objectively. And confounding all of that is the fact that certain information that is more than newsworthy cannot be reported due risking national security. But war reporting is clearly the great exception from the cult of objectivity—if only because a reporter who disengaged himself emotionally from a skirmish's outcome would be inviting death. And who can say that that any reporter that goes out into a combat situation will eventually not become sympathetic with the guys they're travelling with. In addition, how can it be possible for such a journalist to maintain total objectivity or true balance? In Iraq for example, can we expect a journalist travelling with a marine patrol to get comments from Iraqi fighters?
This actually raises another question, one that plagues those on the front lines or those reporting from their pressrooms alike. Who is a freedom fighter, who is a terrorist, who is a separatist and who is an insurgent? Just because a military handout uses those terms, are we as journalists supposed to parrot them? Are the Tamil Tigers terrorists when those in East Timor were not? Are the Chechens terrorists when the Basque are separatists? Should journalists make these decisions, or use terms coined by politicians and war-mongers with vested interests?
There also gives rise to the question whether coverage should be objective, or balanced, or both? And how are the two different? For example few would argue that the famous Vietnam-era footage of the young girl running for her life while on fire from a napalm strike had a strong effect on anti-war sentiment. No one can deny that it was factual, but was it balanced? There were other sides to that war that were perhaps not highlighted to the same degree. And can objectivity be maintained without maintaining balance? Or can a report that reported the facts, but just one side of the story be termed objective and unbalanced, or simply not objective?
I personally think that objectivity cannot come without balance, for a journalist to be able to say that his story is objective, it has to be balanced, and that means all the facts, to the best of his ability, from both sides, as they were seen or heard. Perhaps the term resistance is best when a journalist is unsure of terrorist, freedom fighter or insurgents. We should not be the ones deciding that. However balance can be taken too far and I will come to that later.
Given that, we have to keep in mind that every reporter’s perception of what is true, or likely to be true, or what is good or bad differs. Each person's world conforms to its own set of culturally defined expectations and in such a way as to appear satisfyingly real in total to its creator. The definition of feminine or masculine beauty depends on if the viewer is European or an Australian bushman. Preconceptions, prejudices, biases, cultural norms and mores, education, superstition, peer opinion, all play their role in people creating their own realities. This also changes levels of acceptable objectivity for that person
Until ESP becomes a viable form of communication, descriptions must be in words. However, words are notoriously slippery things: no word means the same thing to everybody or even anybody.
Journalism requires making a series of decisions, the first and most important is deciding just what is news. Then there is the necessity to determine what events constitute news: disasters, either natural or man-made, economics, politics, religion, people interacting with each other or animals or nature or whatever is of interest? Of course, the decision maker receives that power based on years of experience in determining what is news. However, that merely proves the above point that experience is a basis of a person's reality.
And then comes the actual reporting. As in selecting which events are news, someone must decide which words best describe the event. These decisions are based on the reporter's world as he or she examines the facts gathered and decides what words those receiving the report will best understand.
Television, using pictures in reporting the news, might allow the argument that pictures don't lie. Since people can actually see what is occurring or has occurred, the event is reported objectively. Nonetheless, the pictures are as subjective as words. Again decisions based on a world view are made: at the bottom the reporter or camera operator decide where to aim the camera, at what focus, at what distance, using a close-up, a medium or long shot, and at what angle. A great example is the Iran Hostage Crisis in which the mobs would sit around basically picnicking until the cameras appeared. The mob would then stand, chant and wave banners. A close-up camera shot can make ten people look like a mob; a long-shot can make thousands look like a local dispute. An example would be the bringing down of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad. There are no long shots of that event.
If war makes objectivity impossible, or at least very difficult, why do we pay so much lip service to it? Perhaps because journalists think the myth of objectivity will help keep them safe - even when they have declared sides.
Take the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, for example. After allied troops toppled the Taliban regime, Wall Street Journal reporter Alan Cullison purchased a used laptop and hard drive in Kabul on which he found al-Qaida correspondence and terrorist plans. Included in the 1,750 files recovered was information on the movements of an al-Qaida operative whose itinerary paralleled that of Richard C. Reid, the now-convicted shoe bomber of American Airlines Flight 63 - information that would help the military or CIA further its anti-terrorist initiative. On Dec. 31, 2001, his paper published the first of its stories based on its computer finding. Before publication, it shared the information on the computer and hard drive with the U.S. military. And I quote here the Journal’s Managing Editor Paul E. Steiger telling the New York Times on Jan. 21, 2002, "We decided that this was the right thing to do in moral terms and reporting terms,". Again I quote. "In moral terms, we would have been devastated if we had withheld information that could have saved the lives of our servicemen [emphasis added] or of civilians. In reporting terms, we wanted to verify what we had." Most of us would cringe at asking the military to verify or look at information and then telling us what we can print or not. However, the patriotic duty is something that most of us would also give in to. However, as it can be seen, sides were being taken. The information was not shared with the public beforehand, but the other way around.
Coverage of war has never been objective. And to expect it of embedded journalists would be a bit naïve. The embedded journalists might tell us who's gaining territory, who's retreating, who's on fire. Hazy truths, at best. And nothing approaching a complete account of any battle will be feasible until long after war's end, when reporters interview soldiers from both sides. Citing security reasons, the forces accompanying the journalists will control the big picture as rigorously.
Why should we expect it to be any other way? No government has ever endorsed the notion that the press should have unfettered access to the battlefield. Even the pretence that war correspondents should be objective is a recent development. Until the early 20th century, war writers routinely wore the uniforms of the army they covered and carried arms against "the enemy." Their dispatches openly (and honestly) rooted for the home team. While covering the Spanish-American War as a journalist, Stephen Crane aggressively maneuvered his way ahead of U.S. troops so that he could accept a Puerto Rican village's surrender on behalf of the soldiers, Phillip Knightley writes in his history of war reporting, ‘The First Casualty’.
Objectivity needs a method to integrate new information with existing knowledge. Until new information can be incorporated into what one already knows, it is useless. When confronted with new information one must effectively ask oneself, "How does this add to my understanding of reality?" That information must be interpreted by, and tested against, what one already knows. I cannot emphasise this enough.
When a reporter is embedded with US troops and witnesses the destruction of Iraqi resistance, he or she has obtained new information. If this reporter is committed as a matter of principle to objectivity, he or she has by now a lot of knowledge pertaining to what was witnessed. The reporter needn't, and shouldn't, constantly be a cheer-leader for America in this case. They needn't say "it was a great achievement for freedom-loving people," but that fact should prevent them from reporting a falsehood. For example, because of their knowledge, they should not report the "other side" with equal credibility, e.g., "the Iraqis, on the other hand, consider themselves victims of imperialist aggression." The sum of knowledge the reporter possesses (or should possess) disproves the Iraqi claim and should be presented as being false.
At the same time, reporters who present "both sides" equally are not thinking objectively, or at least they are not communicating objective knowledge. Objectivity requires integration with all knowledge one possesses and not merely the unintegrated information at hand. Whether one likes it or not, the reporter will have to, has to, and always will have to make judgements on the credibility of information, and not just report everything he happens to lay his hands on. Objectivity comes when a reporter presents information, and seeks to verify that from sources other than the originating point of the information, and then presents those facts as well. An objective report presents the story being released by the official authority, and then shows all the evidence that such claims are false. If the case may be. At that point, it's perfectly objective for the reporter to draw the conclusion that someone is covering up the truth, because such a conclusion is warranted by the evidence. Being objective means recognizing that not everybody's point of view is equally valid or deserves equal respect. That is how I see objectivity differing from balance.
I think a concerted effort should be made to suspend the race to be first, offering less trivial coverage and replacing the reporter's instant insights and speculation with the honesty and simple humility of an occasional, "We don't know."
posted by lone-ranger at 6:19 PM
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