Framing the news: Socialism as deviance

Abstract

“Objectivity”; has been a traditional ideal for American journalism despite recent characterizations of the principle as “biased toward the status quo, against independent thinking, and against countenancing questions of morality and responsibility.”; This article explores the role of traditional objectivity in newspaper coverage of the nomination in Alaska of a socialist commissioner of environmental conservation and the subsequent “framing”; of public discussion. The human qualities of sensitivity to history, to civil liberties, and to questions of morality appeared in editorials, but professional norms of objectivity denied reporters the right to exercise their creativity and public responsibility. Reportorial sensitivity to diverse sources is necessary, supplemented by a fundamental and far‐reaching examination of how reportorial language encodes public and private questions in ways that further established positions of power and privilege.