This week should put the nail in the coffin for ‘both sides’ journalism

[Commentary] “The whole doctrine of objectivity in journalism has become part of the [media’s] problem,” Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, said in a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York. He believes that journalists must state their biases up front and not pretend to be magically free of the beliefs or assumptions that everyone has. If objectivity is a “view from nowhere,” it may be out of date. What’s never out of date, though, is clear truth-telling. Journalists should indeed stand for some things. They should stand for factual reality. For insistence on what actually happened, not revisionism. For getting answers to questions that politicians don’t want to answer. Can journalism be both impartial and forceful? That’s not only a possibility but, more than ever, a necessity. In dealing with the false-equivalency president they helped to get elected, the news media may have learned something. The best way to be fair is not to be falsely evenhanded, giving equal weight to unequal sides. It’s to push for the truth, and tell it both accurately and powerfully.