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17 June 2013

Objectivity and Journalism

There can never be something called objectivity in journalism. Each of us, including Christiane Amanpour, will always be tied to our personal backgrounds and predilections. She was wrong to claim otherwise recently at the Murrow Forum. What passes for objectivity is the judgment of editors and publishers, whose assessments are based on the preferences of their clienteles. Whoever can pay for spreading the words of a journalist determines whether to consider his or her expressed interpretation of events to be unbiased. That goes for Fox News as well as for PBS or CNN.

There may have been a time when academic disinterestedness set the standard for journalistic excellence. Many of us think that such a standard should be aspired to. That is the sentiment that underlies the Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy at the Fletcher School. However, it is not clear that even Murrow achieved that goal. Ultimately, in this age dominated by supremacy of financial market success, Ms. Amanpour should acknowledge her luck in finding a sponsor for her well-grounded and well-argued reports regardless of their “objectivity.”

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