Objectivity (journalism)

Journalistic objectivity is a significant principle of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity can refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities.

Most newspapers and TV stations depend upon news agencies for their material, and each of the four major global agencies (Agence France-Presse (formerly the Havas agency), Associated Press, Reuters and Agencia EFE) began with and continue to operate on a basic philosophy of providing a single objective news feed to all subscribers. That is, they do not provide separate feeds for conservative or liberal newspapers. Journalist Jonathan Fenby has explained the philosophy:

Journalism needs to be more objective, accurate and investigative in the way it presents information and relays facts to the public. This objectivity in journalism helps the audience to make up their own mind about a story and decide what they want to believe. There is a necessity for reporters to present the honesty regarding the facts instead of always reporting information in an honest format (Clark). In addition, to maintain objectivity in journalism, journalists need to present the facts whether or not they like or agree with those facts. Objective journalism needs to remain neutral and unbiased regardless of the writers opinion or personal beliefs.

The modern notion of objectivity in journalism is largely due to the work of Walter Lippmann. Lippmann was the first to widely call for journalists to use the scientific method for gathering information.

Lippmann called for journalistic objectivity after the excesses of Yellow journalism. He noted that the yellows at the time had served their purpose, but that the people needed to receive the actual news, and not a "romanticized version of it".

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