Reformulating "Objectivity": Charting the Possibilities for Proactive Journalism in the Modern Era

Discussions of journalists' coverage of events since September 11, 2001 resonate with 1970s criticisms that journalists' professional orientation to the concepts of "objectivity" and "neutrality" ignore an independent pursuit of the public interest, and instead reflect the interests of the status quo. The sociologist Tuchman (1978) concluded that journalistic inquiry methods represented nave empiricism; an "essentialist" technique that favoured the "status quo". In the field of cultural studies, Hall et al. (1978) concluded that journalists adopt professional practices necessarily derivative of "authoritative" positions. This paper argues that journalists can challenge authorities through techniques that distance from a "personal" claim to the truth about an issue. It argues that journalists can pursue an independent judgment concerning the relative importance of particular understandings of an issue that challenges the "authoritative" position of the "status quo".