(snip)
It is the Bush administration that rejects the idea of objectivity in the news. Bush's is the moral relativism of the absolutist. All news is either pro-Bush or false. This attitude has justified every misleading argument about Iraq, every twisted use of budget numbers, every deceptive effort to create a "crisis." The truth of Bush's agenda justifies all of these falsehoods. Bush is known to view the press as a "filter" that prevents the truth of his message from getting to the public. It is a view that rejects the idea that the press has a role as an objective reporter of reality. Like the liberal moral relativist, the Bush moral absolutist does not recognize objective truth.
Is objective journalism possible? Journalists are prone to self-examination verging on self-flagellation, and they are quick to acknowledge that they have to be on guard against personal bias. But the recognition that personal bias exists has metastasized in some quarters into the idea that bias makes objectivity impossible.
Perfect objectivity is impossible, of course, but striving toward objectivity is possible, essential, and not as hard as it might seem. Journalists (those who haven't been bribed) generally look at the society around them and wonder: What is happening? What is interesting? What is important? Answers to these questions need not be shaped by what one wants the answer to be. The answer can come from looking.
(snip)
Amid the din of these attacks, it is possible to continue to seek objective truth. There is a term that describes the discussion that ensues: democratic dialogue. The objectivity of the media will always be in doubt until people believe objectivity is possible. And that belief will languish unless people are willing to step up from the troughs of relativism and down from the ramparts of absolutism.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050212/NEWS/502120304/1038
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