The term ‘objectivity’ began to appear as part of journalism in the 1920s, out of a growing recognition that journalists were full of bias, often unconscious. Reporters and editors became more aware of the rise of propaganda and the role of press agents. Objectivity called for journalists to develop a consistent method of testing information-a transparent approach to evidence - precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work. At a time when Freud was developing his theories of the unconscious and painters like Picasso were experimenting with Cubism, journalists were also developing a greater recognition of human subjectivity. In 1919, Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz, an associate editor for the New York World, wrote an influential and scathing account of how cultural blinders had distorted the New York Times coverage of the Russian Revolution. "In the large, the news about Russia is a case of seeing not what was, but what men wished to see," they wrote. Lippmann and others began to look for ways for the individual journalist "to remain clear and free of his irrational, his unexamined, his unacknowledged prejudgments in observing, understanding and presenting the new....
TO GET ACCESS TO ALL THE AVAILABLE CONTENT ON THE ISSUES, YOU MUST BE A REGISTERED USER. PLEASE REGISTER NOW. |
