Subjective objectivity. How journalists in four countries define a key term of their profession

TLDR

Objectivity is a core professional value in journalism, yet its definitions vary across time, cultures, and political contexts. This paper compares how journalists in four democratic countries define objectivity, investigates factors shaping attitudes within a country, and explores the implications for audience perception and media influence. The authors conducted an international survey of representative samples of reporters and editors in democracies, administering a standardized questionnaire to capture their conceptions of objectivity. Results reveal that journalists differ in their notions of objectivity and in the subjective importance they assign to it, with country- and within-country factors contributing to these variations.

Abstract

'Objectivity' is one of the core professional values of journalism. However, there are many different definitions and interpretations of the term in the profession. These notions have changed over time in one country, and they differ between journalists in different cultural and political settings. In this paper we present comparative results of how journalists in different countries look at the term objectivity. The data are gathered from an international study of news journalists in democracies. In this survey, representative samples of reporters and editors who are involved in daily news decisions were interviewed with the same questionnaire. We show how journalists differ in their notion of objectivity and in the subjective importance which the professional value of objectivity has for them. Besides showing country-to-country differences, we try to assess what factors contribute to different professional attitudes towards objectivity within a single country. In a final part, the paper discusses the consequences of the different notions of objectivity for the audience's perception of reality and for the influence of the news media on public opinion.