[OPINION | Newspoint] The irrelevance of objectivity

In a discussion on Friday (January 8) of the state of the news media, objectivity came up as a dominant issue. I wish now to recount the views I expressed there specific to the Philippine practice and also to expand on them.

As all journalists ought to know, objectivity is a cardinal principle in their profession – not to say an exalted human virtue all around. But, being precisely as human as the next person, yet expected to be purely impersonal in their pursuits, and having to deal with people who throw the principle at them in reflex response to unwanted press (“bad press,” in their certainly unobjective stock terminology), journalists may require no less than superhuman fortitude to be able measure up.

Time magazine founder Henry Luce tried 50 years ago to depreciate the principle in order, I presume, to spare himself and the rest of the press being further called out on it – unless he was simply being facetious to be quotably cute. “Objectivity is a myth,” Luce said, and proceeded to hold himself up as his own argument: “. . . a Protestant, a Republican, and a free enterpriser,” as such “biased in favor of God, [US President Dwight] Eisenhower, and the stockholders of Time, Inc.”

Obviously, toward that presumed end, he had no success. If, for Filipino journalists, objectivity is the least of their worries, it is not necessarily because they take it lightly, as Luce did, or inadequately understand it, but because it has lost much of its relevance amid the all-consuming, and definitely far graver, crisis into which their nation has been plunged by an extremist regime.

It’s a regime that moves the limits of rights and freedoms conveniently, even whimsically. It has divided the society right down the middle of the ideological spectrum and hijacked the entire conservative camp, leaving the staunchly liberal little protected, if at all, by democratic law and tradition.

In this division, the news media have found themselves, if not exactly taking sides, taking up unfamiliar positions and roles. Some have allowed themselves to be coopted, others have been cowed into timidity or silence, and the fewer remaining ones driven to cause-oriented practice.

What place is there, really, for an objective press in a society where it is denied the only biases it is allowed to keep – where freedom, its very lifeline, is suppressed, where truth, its sacred business, is killed under a constant and methodical bombardment of falsehoods, and where justice, the one great hope that sustains it, is perverted?

The situation is being enabled by a certified narcissist president, a subservient military and police, a militarized bureaucratic leadership, and a largely acquiescent legislature and judiciary. Draconian policies and laws provide the pretexts for police and court action, among these a law that defines the crime it punishes (terrorism) so broadly and abstractly it opens wide latitudes of excuses for arrests and detention and seizures.

In such a situation, the press invariably becomes one of the first targets and casualties. Rappler’s Maria Ressa is in court answering multiple implausible accusations, and ABS-CBN, the oldest and widest-reaching broadcast network, was stripped of its franchise without any citation under the franchise law.

And the situation shows no prospect of easing – not under a President coming to the end of his term leaving a trail of murder, corruption, and treason that, despite all his regime’s effort at cover-up and dissembling, has come to some light, thanks largely to a press that refuses to be intimidated.

It cannot be repeated enough: That President will want to escape accountability, which is possible only by perpetuating himself in power or making sure a surrogate succeeds him.– Rappler.com

The discussion in which the writer took part and from which he takes off for this commentary was organized by the international news service Reuters for “Reuters Next,” a running virtual (for now) forum on global issues.