Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 18

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^^o£ular Culture Review

In order to place what follows in perspective, I will briefly
discuss the rise of the concept of objectivity within American
journalism. I will then analyze the three perspectives that best
represent the range of views within critical communications research
on the challenges journalists face in attempting to practice objectivity
in their work.
Schudson and Dan Schiller attributed the rise of objectivity to a
complex combination of social, economic, and political forces within
society that helped to create the Penny Press in the 1820s (Also see
Shaw). According to Schudson, the modem concept of objectivity
evolved in the twentieth century, because journalists recognized that
so-called "facts" were often simply subjective interpretations of the
w orld, interpretations that individuals had shaped and
manipulated to serve their selfish interests. The belief in objectivity
simply represented "an ideology of the distrust of self," a desperate
reaction to the fear of subjectivity (71). Ironically, this modem belief
in objectivity was accompanied by the growing paradoxical belief
among journalists in the twentieth century that such impartiality
was impossible but that journalists should attempt to attain it
anyway:
Journalists came to believe in objectivity to the extent
that they did, because they wanted to, needed to,
were forced by ordinary human aspiration to seek
escape from their own deep convictions of doubt and
drift (159).
Schiller went much farther than Schudson in one major
interpretation of the historical record. Schiller argued that the
penny press's use of objective reporting methods created a
legitimation of the American system of law which, at the time, was
dominated by the rich and powerful (123). Schiller argued that the
penny press’s dedication to objectivity prohibited it from forming
value judgments of any kind, including value judgments about a justice
system that gave legal preference to the rich (149). He suggested
that the modem press continue to rely on a similar set of beliefs that
ultimately provide authority to the establishment, and become a
means for "legitimating the exercise of social power over the
interpretation of reality" (196).