Balance and objectivity
are key to reporting QT6
Balance and objectivity don’t mean isolation and a lack of care about people and their stories.
They do mean trying to report all points of view as best you can and providing background and context for the story.
Today’s student journalists, just like their commercial counterparts, should care about people and issues, and should strive show solutions to those issues when and where they exist.
Students can best do that using a representative range of sources presented objectively. Objectivity is hardly dead in reporting; it exists thorough complete and cohesive reporting.
Hard to define but impossible to have good journalism without it: Balance and objectivity are essential to media reporting.
Guideline: Journalists should prioritize balance and objectivity as a staff philosophy and content standard. Staff members can help achieve this by increasing staff diversity and seeking multiple perspectives. Balance and objectivity suggest a concern for issues surrounding the content of the story, types of sources and overall content student media covers in the span of a year.
Stance: Balance and objectivity mean the media cover multiple sides of an issue without favoring any viewpoint. They continuously seek ways to be representative and complete. It’s almost impossible to be completely objective, but, through seeking staff diversity and assessing sources carefully, staffs can approach that goal.
Reasoning/suggestions: As bloggers, tweeters and other citizen journalism media have become more pervasive, trained journalists — and that includes student journalists — begin to realize they need to fill the holes where some citizen journalism and social media information fails to be balanced, complete and objective.
Resources:
Audio: Balance and Objectivity, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
The lost meaning of objectivity, Walter Dean and Tom Rosenstiel, American Press Institute
Balance and objectivity, JEASPRC.org
Tools to manage bias, American Press Institute