by Erik Uebelacker

I was the opinions editor for The DePaulia for the entirety of my senior year. I have dozens of op-eds published under my name, available for the whole world to see with a simple Google search. As a result, my personal beliefs on politics, social issues, world events, etc. can be easily discovered by anybody who is curious.

It’s disheartening that the very stories that it was once my job to write could prevent me from future employment opportunities within the journalism industry.

This certainly isn’t a given. But due to the constantly debated and ever-changing definition of journalistic objectivity, I know I have to prepare myself for this possibility. All journalists should, not necessarily because of a readily available library of opinion stories published under their name, but because of a near-unanimous growth of individuals’ digital footprints that makes it harder to keep their true beliefs secret.

In theory, preferring unbiased journalists to produce objective reporting makes sense. These journalists don’t exist, however. It’s not a profound epiphany to discover that nobody is without personal biases or beliefs, even reporters. In fact, journalists may have even stronger opinions on their areas of coverage than non-reporters, due to the fact that they are constantly speaking to sources and engrossing themselves in their beat.

Walter Lippmann admitted this as far back as 1919 in his famed writing about journalistic objectivity. The American Press Institute later summarized Lippmann’s findings, stating in their objectivity guide that, “The method is objective, not the journalist.”

Under this century-old explanation, my op-eds shouldn’t come back to bite me. If the journalist can’t be truly objective, then having my personal beliefs so easily accessible shouldn’t hinder my reporting potential, so long as the reporting itself is done objectively and truthfully.

That’s still not the reality, though. I’ve heard stories from friends and colleagues about hiring managers scouring their social media accounts and general web presence, making employment decisions based on how much opinion they express online. The New York Times discourages their journalists from sharing beliefs on social media. I can only assume they wouldn’t be happy if their reporters had columns or op-eds out there as well.

These industry leaders know that all reporters, and all people, have biases. I’ve read The American Press Institute’s “The lost meaning of ‘objectivity’” countless times in numerous journalism classes at DePaul. I’m sure other journalism schools require the same. Even so, many in the public and in the industry still expect reporters to operate under this veil of true objectivity that prohibits them from expressing how they truly feel outside of a story.

In this process, I can’t help but feel that some transparency is lost. The American Press Institute calls for “a transparent approach to evidence” in the reporting process. As a young reporter, I’d like to know the beliefs of the journalists behind a story. Shielding those from the public, when we all know that they are there, is not in the best interest of preserving that transparency. This is even more applicable today, as the spread of misinformation is rampant in the world of politics and media, with much of it done anonymously.

After all, it’s not a journalist’s job to be an unbiased person. Their job is to separate those biases from the reporting they do and the stories they share.

 

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