Paul Bradshaw: Objectivity has changed – why hasn’t journalism?

Paul Bradshaw has blogged ahead of his forthcoming City University inaugural lecture, which is due to take place tomorrow, with thoughts about objectivism in journalism.

As journalists, however, we still argue that we are being objective by merely providing ‘both sides of the story’.

When stories were limited to 300 words or 30 seconds, there was justification for that version of objectivity: we did not have the luxury of thousands of words to expound upon why this source was selected for interview, the limitations of this dataset, or our own conception of the field under investigation.

Now those limits on space and time are removed by the web – but there are still limits on our own time, and the need to engage with our users: we cannot waste their time and ours on explaining methodology.

Bradshaw’s full post on Wannabe Hacks is at this link.

 


 

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