We have discussed the rise of advocacy journalism where objectivity and neutrality are discarded in favor of social justice. Despite public trust (and profits) crashing in the media, faculty members are plowing ahead with the new model of journalism to the peril of their profession. The latest such example is found in the “Solidarity Journalism Initiative” at the University of Texas at Austin.According to its website, the new initiative is being financed by tech companies and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations to help “journalists, journalism educators, and journalism students improve coverage of marginalized communities.”The College Fix reports that the program was brought over from Santa Clara University after UT hired Professor Anita Varma. The school is pushing students to use their “lived expertise” and to “leave[] neutrality behind.” Instead, of neutrality, they are pushing “solidarity [as] ‘a commitment to social justice that translates into action.’”
In 2021, Varma wrote an article titled, “Solidarity Eclipses Objectivity as Journalism’s Dominant Ideal” in which she explained:
“objectivity as an aspirational ideal ends up encouraging journalists to avoid addressing what matters. . . . In coverage of issues like immigration, Covid-19, police brutality, and housing instability, the idea that observations will objectively speak for themselves is quickly off the table.”
That view has been in vogue within the mainstream media for years. We have often discussed the increasing bias and advocacy in major media in the United States.
What is most striking about this universal shift toward advocacy journalism (including at journalism schools) is that there is no evidence that it is a sustainable approach for the media as an industry. While outfits like NPR allow reporters to actually participate in protests and the New York Times sheds conservative opinions, the new polling shows a sharp and worrisome division in trust in the media. Not surprisingly, given the heavy slant of American media, Democrats are largely happy with and trusting of the media. Conversely, Republicans and independents are not. The question is whether the mainstream media can survive and flourish by writing off over half of the country.
A 2021 study from the non-partisan Pew Research Center showed a massive decline in trust among Republicans. Five years ago, 70 percent of Republicans said they had at least some trust in national news organizations. In 2021, that trust was down to just 35 percent. Conversely, and not surprisingly, 78 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying they have “a lot” or “some” trust in the media. When you just ask liberal Democrats, it jumps to 83 percent.
This latest polling shows that the problem is only getting more acute for the media. Yet, publishers and editors are still pandering to the mob in calling for more advocacy and less objectivity.
For example, we previously discussed the release of the results of interviews with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Saying that “Objectivity has got to go” is, of course, liberating. You can dispense with the necessities of neutrality and balance. You can cater to your “base” like columnists and opinion writers. Sharing the opposing view is now dismissed as “bothsidesism.” Done. No need to give credence to opposing views. It is a familiar reality for those of us in higher education, which has been increasingly intolerant of opposing or dissenting views.
Downie recounted how news leaders today
“believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”
There was a time when all journalists shared a common “identity” as professionals who were able to separate their own bias and values from the reporting of the news.
Now, objectivity is virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”
In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”
Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”
Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism.
Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.” Her 1619 Project has been challenged as deeply flawed and she has a long record as a journalist of intolerance, controversial positions on rioting, and fostering conspiracy theories. Hannah-Jones would later help lead the effort at the Times to get rid of an editor and apologize for publishing a column from Sen. Tom Cotton as inaccurate and inflammatory.
All of these voices show a complete disconnect from readers and viewers who do not want advocacy journalism and no longer trust what they are reading in the media. Yet, these calls remain personally popular for writers and editors alike. It is reminiscent of how executives at companies like Disney have pursued woke policies to the detriment of their shareholders and the alienation of many of their customers. The same is true for the push for censorship on social media despite the clear preference of users for more free speech and fewer speech controls.
As with brands like BudLight, the abandonment of actual consumers will not deter media executive in pushing this “new journalism.” As Downie explained “objectivity” is “keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.” So they will do their jobs even when viewers and readers no longer are interested in their work. While this type of vanity press can count on subsidies from billionaires like Jeff Bezos and George Soros, the public may balk at a media that is increasingly writing for itself.
“The school is pushing students to use their “lived expertise” and to “leave[] neutrality behind.”
Anecdotes will rule the world, including statistics. Remove statistical analysis because it is racist and created by a colonial privileged class. If you are a black scholar, STOP, don’t act white. Doing so is racist. That is the world these foolish people live in.
If we had objectivity Climate Change and the Covid-19 vaccine would wither as well the open border and all the negatives it brings not to mention why are we sending billions to Ukraine while our major cities are crumbling under crime and corruption
I’d like to know just when journalists were “objective.” The answer – NEVER! The reason for the phrase about the press in the First Amendment is to protect the press from being charged for UN-objectivity in the first place. Until they were bought up by mergers, there were newspapers that came right out in their masthead and showed their party identify. Horace Greely, the famous New York publisher who founded the Republican Party, was an unabashed socialist and abolitionist and he pushed those two philosophies in his paper. He even published Karl Marx. The idea that “neutrality” has ever been a trait of journalism is a myth.
“Until they were bought up by mergers, there were newspapers that came right out in their masthead and showed their party identify.” And that is specifically the problem. It is one thing to have a position, another to lie about it.
While is it true journalism has never been neutral, there was a time when some tried to give some the appearance of it while being upfront about their own political stand due to the fairness doctrine. In the late 1980’s, well before WAPO’s infamous Democracy Dies in Darkness masthead, the push was increaslingly to thrill the audience by using inflammatory rhetoric, edited news clips and such because the fairness doctrine was ended. It’s always about following the money. Long ago media organizations stopped allowing their news groups to be losses and supported by other programming.
I am not for the fairness doctrine. Journalism, especially investigative, is now mainly in published books and a few independent sites. That the mainstream media is dying is just alright with me. They killed their own selves by taking it too far.
“Journalism” has been pretty much killed off our the new crop of leaders not willing to “put it the work” of gathering facts, verifying facts, then writing a coherent report. More and more “new hires” want to get the pay, but not dig for a story. They just want to shoot their mouths off like in the comments section of a news blog.
Tl;dr: I don’t care what you think. I want you to provide a true and honest fact pattern so I can decide for myself. To do otherwise hides the incompetence of these who are making the decisions that affect our lives.
“Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”
It’s hard….
Well, if something is hard why try doing it, right? Journalism (and journalists) have always been progressive ALWAYS — think of Gene Kelly’s character in Inherit The Wind. The trick of journalism has always been to advocate for your cause while still appearing objective and giving voice to the opposing view. It gives your work credibility with the reader, but of course it relies on the righteousness of the cause and your subtle power of persuasion. Through this subtle art, the journalist can convince the reluctant reader and change society for the good. However, that is the problem now. The progressive cause is no longer righteous. They are now advocates for “social justice” – not justice, but social justice – which of course is actually injustice to further someone’s social objective. It is HARD to argue for injustice if you are objective and give voice to the other side, e.g., affirmative action’s impact on Asian students. Progressivism has finally outstripped journalists’ power of persuasion. So, instead of considering moderation, we change the historical tenets of journalism and engage in wholesale censorship. But of course, being an advocate of social injustice is hard. So, the art of journalism, and the concepts of a free press and freedom of speech, will need to be discarded.
B.A. University of Texas, School of Communication, 1987.
Excellent, tommylotto!
Austin is the last place I would look for sanity as it is so populated by transplants at this point it may as well not be a part of Texas.
Having said that, the only people that feel objectivity is a burden do not understand *real* liberation. This s pretty much just an extension of snowflakism to me – they have perverted the meaning of ‘solidarity’ which should be replaced in these excerpts with ‘conformity’ – they’d rather accept the shackles of conformity than muster up the effort to coexist and thrive in autonomy.
I have never seen such sheep-like behavior on such a broad scale in America in my lifetime. This is absolutely how dictators of the past rose to power. That these fools honestly believe they are somehow engaged in something novel, subversive or enlightened, says it all. All they do is manufacture crises to protect their deficiencies or attempt to solve problems that are long ago resolved to hide their very apparent mediocrity – anything but think, try, or risk, let alone love or live and let live. Even without a civil war, this will not end well.
Austin is an open-air insane asylum. Everybody knows it is a San Francisco wannabe. Even Austin knows it.
Journalists used to be blue collar. They hated communists and were funny as hell. And no, they weren’t “Progressive”! They were too cynical to get sucked into that kind of hypocrisy. University of Florida School of Communications–1969.
Diogenes……..Twenty-five years ago, Austin declared that Portland, Oregon had been chosen to be their “Sister City”.
As we watched Austin slowly morph into Portland, we left and never regretted it.
(we had lived there since the late 1970’s……..raised our daughter, and enjoyed a great life there)
The Halls of the 4th estate can burn just as brightly as any institution in government, religion, Magnificent mansions, politicians homes, Houses of learning. The people usually want truth and they know they are not getting it. Disney, Abc, cbs, nbc and the great liberal papers are losing markets, viewers and readers, while others gain. Hollywood continues to deliver bomb after bomb. Target and Anheuser Busch and others lose billions because people are not buying what they are selling. Businesses and state governments are rebelling against ESG. Will the people be satisfied with that or will they take more direct action. There are scattered signs of people, even in the big cities, starting to say enough! Will those currently in power listen or will they disappear like Louis 16th and the Stuart Kings.
I think we need an Andrew Jackson like figure. His time was basically very much like our present. Or worse could come to pass.
GEB,
Well said.
There is a large but silent majority of Americans who are rejecting what the Democrats are offering. Even Democrats who have not lost their minds agree.
What the democrats are doing to Trump is similar to a Soviet show trial. Everyone is in on the act, including some members of the free press (oh, the irony that the free press can function like the press of a totalitarian state against political enemies). A widespread Soviet-style abuse of government power is certainly “worse than Watergate” (a phrase that has become cliche), deserving of an investigation. Where is Bob Woodward?
Ah yes. The University of Texas is proudly leading the charge to indoctrinate the next generation of official truthers. Joe Stalin would be so proud. Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.
NPR, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NYTs, WAPO are evil. They are Anti-American. Advocate all you want, but don’t pretend you are presenting the NEWS. Include in your headlines, “We hate Trump/ We have no intention of presenting both sides of a story. We seek to destroy The Donald, which is the reason we exist and (for major profits).”
Dave Skylark’sfirst rule of journalism, “Give the people what they want.”
One can only hope, in time, that the political activists cults will crumble under the weight of their absurdity. I would love to watch one of them seek out the payroll accountant, after they were underpaid, and be be told, “I can’t help you, objectivity has to go!”
There used to be a sign in the accounting department at one of the well-known business schools that joked, “There are three kinds of accountants, those who can count and those who can’t.”
I would say that applies to many in our current media. One then has to ask if this is the activist’s goal? To demolish credibility in news outlets so that they can move forward their agenda of bringing down this nation?
Are they that clever or are we witnessing the fulfillment of Mike Judge’s 2006 “Idiocracy” prediction?
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
― George Orwell, 1984
German newspapers, at least those not having to stay underground, in the 1930s advocated for the Nazi party. They advocated for official truths which is just another name for propaganda. So do/did Pravda and Izvestia. I say do/did because Pravda and Izvestia have had to switch which official truths to advocate. Actual truth might appear from time to time but just accidentally. North Korean newspapers just write complete fantasy, but it advocates for Dear Leader. Do our journalists, editors, newpaper owners, and professors of journalism recognize what they have in common with this brand of journalism by pursuing “their personal truth?”
The problem is not advocacy. I am fine with advocacy. The problem comes from “official truths”. Official truths are very useful to the elite but never moreso than when they dovetail with cognitive biases involved in most people’s thinking. That is where we are.
Not only is ‘Greed good’ but so is telling constant and consistent lies to buttress your privately he’d biases, hurts, and sexual fantasies. It destroyed my profession of counseling and teaching while eating away at jurisprudence.
But it also allows the other sides to be as vociferously illogical and venal.
Such ideas rarely count the cost to their ideals but the lies boomerang to illustrate their absurdity.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. I guess.
Take heart. The news iusn’t all bad. Here’s news that should warm the hearts of all right-wingers:
“Chesapeake OKs plan to cut 2 early voting locations, despite concerns about impact on minority communities”
in today’s Virginian-Pilot
I am concerned about that. The cost of ballot harvesting will likely rise faster than inflation there, now.
LOL. Minorities love early.
Oh yeah, why’d you try to change the topic?
Yeah, they went from 7 early voting spots to 5, eliminating two that didn’t have enough voters to justify the expense. But sure, “voter suppression”. You really ought to read the article before jumping to the racism card.
She is programmed for stupid: Her dissertation was: Solidarity in Action: A Case Study of Journalistic Humanizing Techniques in the San Francisco Homeless Project and it won an award.
She is a propagandist by education and trade.
The professors watched The Interview and adopted Dave Skylark’sfirst rule of journalism, “Give the people what they want.”
Just watch any press “briefing” to see the results of our so-called Journalism Schools. Other than the person from Fox News, Doocey or Heinrich, there is never a serious question, never a follow-up or push back and never a true attempt to get at the truth.
Now think back only 2 years to how these same children treated a Republican president and you see the results of our J schools.
They have ruined journalism, they are ruining Law Schools, they are “changing” Med Schools, they are taking over school committees to do the same to high schools, middle schools and even elementary schools. They are not just winning, they have won. People, smart people that are friends of mine, still think that Joe Biden is a “good man”, that Hunter’s corruption has nothing to do with Joe, that Biden isn’t compromised and that the economy AND GAS PRICES aren’t his fault.
If Trump was president right now, or any Republican for that matter, Hawaii would be Katrina and it would be the end of their administration. Any think bad that occurs under a Democrat gets no traction and it makes it so hard for Republicans to hang on.
Try to imagine a world where someone on the right would be considered a news person the way that Andrea Mitchell or Chuck Todd are. These aren’t opinion shows these are “NEWS” shows, with lightweight liberal partisans Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd anchoring them???
The only thing currently saving us, as it ironically destroys us, is that inflation and food and gas prices are so empirical that the press lying about them doesn’t save Biden, it just ruins their own reputations. When Biden is out bragging about Bidenomics and the press agrees it ruins them both. WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DEALING WITH AND NO AMOUNT OF LYING CAN CHANGE THAT.
Fortunately, Chuckles is going bye-bye.
HullBobby,
Outstanding comment!
To add concerning about the tragedy in Maui, appears it was not climate change but poor management and some leftist, go-green flunky who would not release the water to allow fire fighters to fill reservoirs and citizens to water their property to prevent the spread.
Will he get charged?
The reason the MSM is ignoring economic data is it all bad news for Bidenonmics. They are grateful to include the Biden admin for the distraction.
Amen, Hullbobby
Well stated.
Many years ago I resolved not to watch any more press briefings as the questions were just too painfully stupid or loaded with unsupported presumptions. (Yes there are stupid questions!)
Striving for objectivity in journalism is difficult. It requires a fair amount of research and background knowledge. It so much simpler to wing it. It would be easier to tolerate advocacy journalism if it were well researched and frankly admitted at the outset. So called objective journalism can also be lazy. During the cold war, what was passed off as objective was a “balanced” presentation of the Soviet or Chinese version of events with that of the U.S.- quite lazy in the effort at getting at a more credible objective truth.
time to end all federal aid/loans to colleges…and cities and states!
TAKE AWAY THE MONEY!
cut 50% of Fed spending…move 75% of gov out of DC
guyventner,
There is a movement to call a convention of the states. It takes 34 to call the event and 38 to ratify. If this could occur, then the present model of federal bureaucracy could be amended, tossed out, redesigned or structured in a manner so as to prevent what we are witnessing now, the unbridled power grab in the hands of unelected individuals, robber barons and activist organizations.
We definitely need a constitutional convential.
I bet the thought of that scares the hell out of the left.