‘Objective’ journalism is glorified PR

Between 1882 and 1968, there were an estimated 3.446 lynchings of African-Americans across the United States. In the 1890s, the New York Times adopted a neutral stance on reporting this mob violence, which included immolation, mutilation, and hanging. Keen to uphold the journalistic convention of balance, the Times recounted the alleged provocations of victims which led to these attacks. According to media historian David Mindich’s account of the origins of objectivity in US journalism, this “objective” coverage concealed the truth of African-Americans as victims of nationwide terror. The creed of objectivity, conceived as a kind of neutrality, has since been responsible for countless distortions of immense political significance. In 1952, “objective” coverage of McCarthyism led an editorial writer at The Washington Post to tell a gathering of the Association for Education in Journalism “There can be little doubt that the way [Senator McCarthy’s charges] have been reported in most papers serves Senator McCarthy’s partisan political purposes much more than it serves the purposes of the press, the interest of truth.