“I can’t be neutral or centrist in a debate over my own humanity”: A Study of Disagreements Between Journalists and Editors, and What They Tell Us About Objectivity

ABSTRACT

Journalistic objectivity has long been in flux. This paper examines cases in which we see journalists aiming to subvert norms, and managers pushing back, reprimanding the journalists and removing them from coverage or firing them. Understanding what’s happening at these edges of acceptable journalistic practice can offer clarity about the nature of change in the field. We find journalists arguing that objectivity works differently when reporting on minority groups—so much so that they suggest focusing instead on context and truth in these cases, while managers counter that objectivity is universal. We note that scholars offer alternatives—Ward’s “pragmatic objectivity,” which recommends taking the perspective of the community, and Durham’s “strong objectivity”, which suggests embodying the most marginalized groups in a discussion. This examination offers insight into how journalism is evolving, in particular in a moment of racial reckoning.

KEYWORDS:

• Objectivity
• neutrality
• discourse analysis
• pragmatic objectivity
• minority journalists
• advocacy

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the term “minority reporters” to refer to those journalists whose identities are underrepresented in newsrooms, using demographic data collected by Pew as a guide (Grieco 2018). That includes journalists of color, women, and transgender reporters. We realize that in doing so, we are collapsing the experiences of diverse groups of people into one term, and that we are referring to a group of people who, taken together, constitute the majority, across society if not in newsrooms. Still, as our analysis shows, there is a commonality across these journalists’ experiences. Thus, we use the term “minority reporters,” in the absence of a better term, and acknowledge the drawbacks.

2 In June 2022, after the period of our study, Sonmez was fired for “insubordination, maligning your co-workers online and violating the publication’s standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity” (Tani 2022), after publicly accusing Post writers and leaders of creating a toxic environment for women.