Speaking Objectively?

[As one trained in philosophy, I have to be skeptical of 'objectivity' proposed as an ideal in reporting anything -- journalistic or other. We know as philosophers that facts about the world are at best highly probable -- we do our best to track them down. Such facts are set in contexts -- theses, theories, or other interpretive frames. These should be a coherent as possible, although some of our central ones have contained conflicting elements, e.g. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (wave/particle accounts of electrons):

http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/

Furthermore, important human facts are not infrequently embedded in what A.N. Whitehead called "generic" ideas:

http://www.alfred.north.whitehead.com/ANW/WitWisdom/witwis1.htm

which particular cultures take for granted as the basic foundations of things, e.g. the existence of a particular type of G-d which frames the creationist's understanding of reality and which was largely unquestioned in Western culture until the scientific revolution.

The upshot here is that one is constantly obliged to tease facts loose from distorting frameworks and driven to a consciousness both of one's own 'bliks' (perspectives) on things and those of others. 'Blik', was a term invented by a British 20th century philosopher (I forget at this early hour amidst a miserable cold -- both mine and that of the weather outside my dark pre-dawn window -- which one).

Hopefully our dialogues lead us at least to understand each other's bliks, if not necessarily to the absolute certainties about facts that we all crave, but which philosophy has taught us are only available for our definitions of things, which in turn may have little or nothing directly to do with an elusive, but probably there somewhere objective reality. Particularly Latin with its abstract nouns has led us repeatedly to assume the 'thinghood' (hypostatization) of much more fluid and elusive realities, perhaps better expressed through Greek roots, e.g. the contrast between the "essence" of something versus "that which it is in itself".

Aristotle proposed that there was no such thing as "space" conceived as an 'infinite' stretch out there because we could not conceive of infinity. Newton contradicted him. But along came Einstein who suggested that Newton had been applying the wrong (Euclidean) geometry and that with a shift to an alternative Riemannian interpretation (a straight line is NOT the shortest distance between two points) it became clear that space, as it were, turns in upon itself so that theoretically, if one sets out anywhere on a straight line, one could conceivably end up where one started ---> space is finite after all -- but with no outer boundaries or limits! Wow! Aristotle was on the right track after all. EAK]

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> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-
> gitlin17jan17,1,2275668.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
>
> COMMENTARY
>
> Objectively Speaking
> By Todd Gitlin
> Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia
> University.
>
> January 17, 2005
>
> The press is under fire — again (and again). Last week, CBS News was
> officially chastised by former Associated Press chief Louis Boccardi
> and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Richard Thornburgh for shoddy reporting
> followed by "rigid and blind" stonewalling on George W. Bush's Air
> National Guard record, and several executives and producers were
> defenestrated accordingly. In 2003 and 2004, respectively, the New
> York Times' top editors, Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd, and USA
> Today's Karen Jurgenson bit the dust for overlooking (rather than
> overseeing) the serial lies of their employees, Jayson Blair and Jack
> Kelley.
>
> Meanwhile, the left thinks that top media pumped up the story of Iraqi
> weapons and Swift boat deceptions — even the New York Times' editor
> copped to the first charge — and the right thinks that the press
> plumped for John Kerry in last year's election. Virtually no one on
> any side can be found to defend commentator Armstrong Williams for
> taking $240,000 from the Department of Education to promote the
> administration's No Child Left Behind program.
>
> Meanwhile, newspaper circulation slumps year after year, and so does
> the aging audience for network news. It would seem that the public is
> voting no-confidence in the old-fogy news institutions — that's
> certainly what Fox News would have you believe.
>
> Some go so far as to suggest that the very ideal of fair-minded,
> intelligent and comprehensive news is and ought to be junked.
>
> But rumors of the death of truth — at least the death of aspirations
> for truth — in favor of mere "opinion" or "perspective" or "take" are
> greatly exaggerated.
>
> The crowning ideal of the American news business — that there is such
> a thing as objective journalism — persists amid the terrible pressures
> to cut corners in the shortsighted lust for competitive advantage.
> Despite the evident frailties of mainstream journalism, even those who
> operate around its margins — bloggers, Op-Ed writers, even some of the
> more opinionated sectors of cable — are still completely dependent on
> it and still believe they're getting some truth there. (Where would
> Bill O'Reilly or Al Franken be without a daily newspaper?)
>
> And so it is even for the reporting of news scandal. If you are one of
> the many who, for one reason or another, doubt that CBS News, say, is
> objective, or go so far as to argue that there's no such thing as
> objectivity in the first place, don't turn to the Boccardi-Thornburgh
> report for confirmation.
>
> In fact, the report illustrates the opposite. Boccardi, Thornburgh and
> their lawyer collaborators relied on journalistic fundamentals to try
> to get to the bottom of what went wrong at CBS News. They interviewed
> sources, assessed their motives, canvassed experts, tried to resolve
> discrepancies. They made factual claims, asking why as well as who,
> what, where and when. They didn't pop off — they investigated. They
> were not guilty of the "myopic zeal" for a scoop of which they
> convincingly accused the program's producers. They pursued not
> attitude but truth.
>
> In one of their least-noticed assertions, they also admitted some of
> what they didn't know. They were "not able to reach a definitive
> conclusion as to the authenticity of the Killian documents" — the
> much-disputed basis for the bulk of the notorious "60 Minutes
> Wednesday" report. They can also be fairly criticized — like much
> other journalism — for refusing to go beyond the immediate story to
> connect dots. In the furor surrounding the Killian documents, they
> skirted a mountain of other evidence about the irregularities of
> Bush's Air National Guard record.
>
> Still, within their limited franchise, they honored the journalistic
> faith that more comprehensive reports are preferable to less
> comprehensive ones; skeptical scrutiny of sources to credulity;
> context to sound bites.
>
> These ideals of truthfulness, which are at the heart of journalism as
> we've known it in this country for a long time, persist, even among a
> population said to have become ragingly cynical or indifferent.
> Broadcast network news, which still aspires to objectivity (while
> usually trapped in the shallows), still collects roughly 30 million
> viewers each night, as against Fox's prime-time average of less than 2
> million for its rampantly more opinionated shows.
>
> In other words, as with hypocrisy, vice and virtue, the recent
> controversies are the tributes that the exposure of bad reporting pays
> to the merit and possibility of good reporting. The belief in
> objectivity (however convoluted a sharp definition may be) persists —
> even, perversely, in that disingenuous Fox News slogan, "Fair and
> Balanced." Beat up on CBS News all you like — but in the name of
> better journalism, not shout-fests.
>
> Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times