The three readings I chose for this week deal with getting at the truth, even if that means abandoning journalistic notions of objectivity. This is something Jon Stewart does very well. His show does not pretend to be objective, or even credible, yet as Rachel Smolkin writes, many students rely on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” as a reliable news source. In “What the Mainstream Media Can Learn from Jon Stuart,” Smolkin details the ways in which the show abandons several standards often required of journalism.
A parody show does not have to report both sides of a story and give the wrong side the same weight as the right side. More importantly, a show like Stuart’s can identify who is right and who is wrong in a way that journalist’s concerned with accuracy and objectivity cannot. Sometimes politicians say and do things that are simply wrong. I think poking fun at such politicians is in a way holding them accountable.
The fact that Smolkin is writing for the American Journalism Review seems to answer the question of whether “The Daily Show” is journalism. Jon Stewart is revered by the media he blasts. More news programs are trying to emulate his style with a looser, more sarcastic tone. Jon Stuart is a good person for the media to look up to, but he is no Edward R. Murrow. The mainstream media will never be able to completely abandon objectivity in search of the truth. However, reporters can learn to cut through spin, to take a stand and to not simply regurgitate officialdom while still holding true to basic journalistic values.
The second reading, “How the press can prevent another Iraq,” advises journalists to be more skeptical the next time there is a “march to war.” Dan Froomkin writes that the press should be skeptical of authority. Just because an official says something, doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because something is secret, doesn’t mean the public isn’t better off knowing about it.
I think the months leading to the Iraq War provide a prime example of why the press should always try to cut through officialdom. Not many reporters asked the right questions, and if so, the answers weren’t printed. This is a time when media objectivity was needed. Only one side of the call-to-war debate was extensively covered—that of the Bush administration.
Brent Cunningham, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review in “Re-thinking Objectivity,” blames a devotion to the wrong kind of objectivity as the main reason for holes in coverage. According to Cunningham, objectivity should make journalists aggressive analyzers of the news. Instead, the principle has lately had the opposite effect. Journalists are “passive recipients” of the news.
No one questioned the Iraq-al Qaeda connection or the Iraq-9/11 connection because journalists “received” this information from the White House. Journalists have been dealing with White House spin for decades. It’s nothing new. Perhaps journalists really have gotten lazy and are using objectivity as an excuse. So far, it’s the best explanation for the media’s failure to deal with wartime propaganda effectively.
