JAN 21 — A while back, I wrote a piece on how I thought objective journalism had become passé in this day and age and that we need to have our biases.
The response I got was varied. Some people agreed with me and said that objectivity has always just been an ideology only and never practical.
Some disagreed and said that journalists should always strive to be objective as much as possible because this is their responsibility to the public.
Well, I do agree that journalists do have a responsibility to the public. But what exactly is that responsibility? Is it really objectivity?
I would have to say that the main concern journalists should have, whenever they are reporting, is honesty and not necessarily objectivity.
Okay. Let me state my case. To be objective means you would have to give both sides of the story whenever you are reporting on an issue.
As I stated in my previous article about objectivity, I feel that it just makes news and current affairs boring these days.
Why? Well, because with New Media, anyone can go anywhere to look for different sides of any story. They don’t have to rely on just one source.
So that throws the need for objectivity in journalism out the window instantly. Wouldn’t you agree? Sitting on the fence just tears a hole in your pants.
As far as I am concerned, journalists can be as biased as they want to be. They can be for a particular government or against. They can support a cause or not.
It doesn’t matter which side a journalist wants to align himself or herself with. The important thing is that he or she be honest in the reporting.
Unfortunately, many people, including political parties and other journalists, tend to think that if you aren’t objective, then you really aren’t honest either.
Many of them think that if you’re biased, you need to state how holy and sacred whatever idea it is you’re being biased about. It’s as if your idea can do no wrong.
In the last general elections, I had the opportunity to shadow Jeff Ooi as he campaigned (and won the Parliamentary seat he was contesting) in Penang.
Jeff Ooi is with the DAP, and on one of the nights, I followed him to a massive DAP ceramah at the Han Chiang School grounds.
The crowd that attended was massive and it was estimated that almost 60,000 people were in attendance. They were spilling out onto the main road.
It was definitely the most popular ceramah of that general election and I was certain that it would receive massive media coverage.
The next day, two leading mainstream newspapers did cover the ceramah. But it was buried in the back pages. That’s fine since objective journalism is passé anyway.
But what shocked me was that one newspaper reported the turnout as being around 5,000. The other newspaper didn’t even mention the crowd.
Once you go to the extent of masking facts and creating lies, that just becomes pathetic. Yes, that’s obviously biased, but obviously dishonest too.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
