By Jackie Cardenas
As journalists, we are frequently told to remain objective. To draw a thick line between your opinions and the cold facts. To never let your own desires seep into the story you’re telling. And if you have strong beliefs to share, you can head your merry way to the opinions section of the paper.
It’s a thin rope I’ve walked as a journalist and the more I develop my own ethical compass, the more I believe objectivity bars us from igniting systemic change that would truly benefit us all.
The knowledge that journalists acquire from rigorous reporting places us in a unique position to not only understand the complexity of societal issues, but to pose viable solutions that dare to reimagine the world as it stands with the interest of people at heart.
When we take a stance, we can propose solutions that put asylum-seekers on the path to citizenship instead of them sleeping on police station floors. We can propose solutions that restore a woman’s right to be free, to have autonomy over her own body. We can propose solutions that trek us closer to ending the hyper policing of Black and Brown bodies, a construct that is deeply rooted in slavery.
It doesn’t mean that every story we write will lead to monumental change, but we should be uplifting the voices of those who are on the front lines fighting for these causes, in hopes that we can all edge closer to a liberated world.
Just as we would consider cancer solutions from a doctor with years of expertise in the field, why shouldn’t we consider the solutions a journalist suggests who has covered the abuse of workers’ rights? The power of the press is invaluable and should be used to propel reform.
Moreover, objectivity is the distance from a story only afforded to White journalists.
As Washington Post reporters Brie Thompson-Bristol and Kathy Roberts Forde put it, “The White press in America has a history of playing fast and loose with its ethics and disguising racism behind the veil of objectivity.”
When George Floyd was brutally killed in 2020, many journalists of color could not distance themselves from the story because it was far too personal, because it is our communities who are too frequently brutalized. We needed to take a stance.
As anti-apartheid and human rights activist Desmond Tutu once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
The Black Lives Matter Movement grew, leading Black reporters to speak out against traditional journalistic standards because they felt it restrained who could report on the protests and whose views were truly considered “neutral.”
In newsrooms that remain 76% White, 8% Hispanic, 6% Black and only 3% Asian according to Pew Research Center, people questioned, for whom were these journalistic standards originally intended to serve?
Everybody has a bias but if we acknowledge them and we are transparent with our readers about them, it doesn’t have to diminish our fairness. I argue it makes us even more credible when we own up to where we stand.
There are harmful sides to issues and if we don’t let the public clearly know that, then we lose touch of our moral responsibility.
It doesn’t mean we let go of the practice of telling all sides to a story, it means we are taking the knowledge we acquire and proposing solutions.
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