The case for journalistic objectivity

(First published in The Dominion Post, January 25.)

JOHN CAMPBELL is a very talented broadcaster and a likeable man. But I believe he is dangerously wrong when he pooh-poohs the idea of objectivity in journalism, as he did in a recent interview with this paper’s Your Weekend magazine.

“I’ve never met a journalist who didn’t want to change the world and make it a better place,” the TV3 current affairs host was quoted as saying. “Without exception that’s why they get into journalism. And yet when they get there they are asked to be dispassionate and objective.

“Who came up with that rule? It’s stupid.”

In fact that “stupid” rule, which requires that journalists try to remain impartial, present facts and opinions in a balanced way and keep their own views to themselves, has underpinned good journalism in Western democracies for decades.

The importance of objectivity is recognised, if not always followed to the letter, by virtually all the world’s great news organisations, including the BBC. It’s also upheld by the bodies that adjudicate on journalism standards, including our own Broadcasting Standards Authority and Press Council.

There’s a very good reason for this. The requirement for balance is a vital check on the potential abuse of media power. If it were abandoned, journalists would be free to spin the news however it suited them – in other words, to exclude any inconvenient fact or opinion that didn’t align with their own world view.

It’s a curious fact that those who argue that journalistic objectivity should be discarded – a view now routinely promoted in journalism schools – are almost invariably from the Left of the political spectrum. Yet the same people are the first to condemn right-wing news outlets, such as the notorious Fox News, for making little or no attempt at journalistic balance.

It doesn’t seem to occur to them that objectivity, or more precisely the absence of it, can cut both ways.

Being objective doesn’t mean, as is sometimes dishonestly argued, that journalists have to be timid or defer to those in power. Neither does it prevent them expressing shock and outrage when faced with obvious atrocities. But it does require reporters to acknowledge that in most situations there’s more than one side to the story, and that things are often more complex than they seem on the surface.

There is still a place for impassioned advocacy journalism of the type Campbell practices, as long as it’s clear to the viewer or reader that that’s what it is. But as a general proposition, the abandonment of journalistic objectivity would be disastrous.

* * *

DISILLUSIONED fans who endlessly criticise the Black Caps and the Phoenix miss the point.

We tend to think of soap opera as a form of television entertainment, but the human need for melodrama is played out as much on the sports pages as it is on the television screen.

Just as viewers are addicted to the nightly cliff-hangers so cleverly devised by the scriptwriters for Coronation Street and Home and Away, sports fans too must have their daily fix of shock, disbelief, relief and elation.

This is the real reason why teams such as the Black Caps and the Phoenix exist: to inject an element of nail-biting uncertainty into humdrum suburban lives.

The All Blacks fall miserably short in this regard by consistently winning (although when they do lose, the country makes the most of it by sinking into bouts of anguished introspection and recrimination that can last for weeks).

But the Black Caps and the Phoenix intuitively understand that sport fulfils a much bigger purpose than simply satisfying the urge to win. That is their unacknowledged brilliance.

They realise their function is to give meaning to sports fans’ dreary existence by taking them on a roller-coaster emotional ride, plunging them into the depths of despair with a run of humiliating losses and then, just when all seems lost, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and restoring hope.

Ridiculed as no-hopers one day, they always retain the potential to win the next and be hailed as heroes. People who condemn them for inconsistency fail to appreciate how dull life would seem if they won all the time.

In any case, their erratic performance merely mirrors the fickle emotions of their followers, who can be transformed in the space of a few hours from howling, vengeful mob to fawning admirers.

This is what sport is really about. Far from ridiculing the Black Caps and the Phoenix, we should salute them for having such a clear-eyed view of their real purpose.

* * *

WATCHING TV One’s Breakfast programme this week (not a habit of mine, but I was on holiday), I noticed a promotional caption underneath that read: “Rawdon [host Rawdon Christie] share’s some of his summer holiday antics.”

Surely that should have read “Rawdon share’s some of his summer holiday antic’s”.  I trust the caption writer has been disciplined.

One in the eye for the neo-wowsers

(First published in the Dominion Post, September 7.)

PARLIAMENT’S decision to keep the liquor purchasing age at 18 was not only enlightened but courageous, given the deafening barrage of anti-liquor propaganda to which politicians have been subjected.

The vote was a resounding defeat for a determined neo-wowser coalition whose motivations range from legitimate concerns about health to a consuming hostility toward business.

The immediate reaction of Professor Doug Sellman, the most vocal of the neo-wowsers, was telling. “The people who are making money out of the heavy-drinking culture will be celebrating,” he said. Prof Sellman seems determined to view alcohol as a rapacious capitalist plot against the helpless and gullible.

Yes, New Zealand has a binge-drinking problem. But overall, our alcohol consumption remains modest by world standards (lower than Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia), and Parliament is right not to be panicked into adopting the “we know best” solutions advocated by control freaks in the universities.

It’s easy to understand the disappointment of people who are on the front line in dealing with alcohol abuse, but their perspective may be distorted because they see all the negative consequences close up.

Politicians are able to take a more balanced view, recognising that most people enjoy alcohol in moderation and with no harmful effects. The crucial issue is whether responsible drinkers should be penalised because of the misbehaviour of the minority.

* * *

NOW THAT the dust has settled over Stewart Murray Wilson’s relocation, what has been achieved?

Wanganui has revealed itself as fearful, insular and vengeful. Is this really what the mayor, Annette Main, and her council wanted? The hysterical over-reaction is likely to be far more damaging to the city’s image than any association with Wilson. In fact it had the bizarre effect of making some people start to feel sympathetic towards him.

What Wilson did 20 years ago was despicable, but he has paid the penalty imposed by the law. It’s ironic that in wanting to hound him out of town (to where, for heaven’s sake?), the outraged citizens of Wanganui exposed their own dark side.

That’s the disconcerting thing about mobs: they seem to rejoice in the discovery that there’s someone even lower than they are.

* * *

TWO RECENT events show how entrenched the welfarist mindset has become.

Labour leader David Shearer was pilloried in the left-wing blogosphere for making a speech in which he made it clear he disapproved of people claiming a benefit when they were fit to work. Yet his attitude is entirely in line with the views of the Labour politicians who created the social welfare system in the 1930s.

They were harshly intolerant of welfare “loafers”. The colourful public works minister Bob Semple, a former union leader, is said to have once thundered in biblical tones: “He who shall not work, neither shall he eat.”

That Mr Shearer was condemned within his own party shows how the entitlement mindset has distorted attitudes to the point where dependency on the taxpayer is viewed as a valid lifestyle choice.

More recently, the government’s proposal to drug-test beneficiaries has been condemned, predictably, as beneficiary-bashing. But if the state is going to pay people the unemployment benefit, it’s only fair that the recipients demonstrate good faith by being ready and available for work. In many industries, that requires them to be drug-free.

There’s a moral dimension here too. Why should law-abiding taxpayers subsidise the illegal drug habits of the unemployed?

The government’s advisers did their best to find reasons why drug-testing shouldn’t be mandatory, but the public is capable of cutting through all the equivocation. When a poll on TVNZ’s CloseUp asked whether beneficiaries who refuse a drug test should have their benefit cut, 90 per cent of the 16,000 respondents voted yes.

* * *

I AM NOT a cricket fan, but I find the never-ending melodrama around the Black Caps hugely entertaining.

They partly redeemed themselves this week, but the question remains: has there ever been another sports team so psychologically fragile, or whose failures were so painfully analysed over and over again?

Come to that, has there ever been another cricket team that needed to be constantly reminded that the purpose of its batsmen was to score runs, the purpose of its bowlers was to get the other side out and the purpose of its fieldsmen was to catch the ball?

These are things that even I know. So why does it often seem, when the Black Caps and their ever-changing retinue of minders publicly agonise over their erratic performance, that they’ve forgotten what the game is about? Has the psychological self-absorption become so all-consuming that the basics have been lost from view?

The endless self-analysis would be excruciating if it weren’t so comical. If words won test matches, the Black Caps would be world-beaters.