Objectivity In Journalism Essay

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“News tells us what is important....News represents events in specific ways” (Thwaites et al., 2002: 102). “ While the formula and conventions that journalists follow are designed to make the news as factual and fair as possible, we know that language can never be completely neutral” (O’Shaughnessy & Stadler, 2008: 87). Some call it the dissemination of information; some call it the exploration of truth. But then again, news itself is a very subjective term. Often in our lives, media is the one of the most sophisticated yet helpful medium provided for all of us today in the modern world of technological era. On the contrary, into the bargain, people also always questioning about what is objectivity in journalism? In simple term, objective can be defined as intentness on objects external to the mind (Macquarie Dictionary, n.d.). Pursuit of truth, neutrality, fairness, impartiality all are the adjective term which let people associate with the words ‘objectivity’.
The origin of objectivity can be defined as the development of journalism as a commercial industry. From the beginning of the seventeenth century through the middle of the nineteenth century, fourth estates are always received complaints about inaccuracy, misinformation and sensationalism about news article. Nonetheless, general public did not understand that there is lots of restrictions of newspaper production by means of newspaper already become one of the tools of political advocacy and partisanship. What add to the interest on the concept of journalism are issues of democracy and economics as well as social science and technology. It may be added that we may not detect the ideological powers imbedded in some aspects of the media texts we encounter. Through the eme...

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...term, journalists themselves are humans, meaning that the way in which they depict certain story might not exactly be unbiased. As human being, we all have different ideologies and there are also different discourses in spreading news.
In a nut shell, there is always debate between objectivity and bias in the field of journalism. In this reality society, sometimes it is really hard to balance the intermediate value of some particular issue. Last but not least, we should be looking at the issue from many different angles instead of being restricted to a very narrow view of the matter. As a result, it is pretty obvious to say that reality always works through naturalising certain ideological beliefs. In an effort to be objective, there is something always exist called truth and be a professional journalists; it is your duty or job to convey the transparency of fact.

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