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As Andrew Heyward posits it, objectivity in news is out. Context and fairness are in.
Heyward, a research professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication — and a past president of CBS News — is author of a new report, with colleague Len Downie Jr., called Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms. In all, some 75 experts across the news worlds of television, newspapers and digital pureplays were consulted, and the results frame up the status-quo reenforcing problems with objectivity and urge for greater diversity and open newsroom dialogue to push towards less misleading and more trustworthy ends.
In this Talking TV conversation, Heyward parses the problems with objectivity, the complications of social media interweaving with journalism and how station groups have been wrestling with evolving towards post-objectivity goals.
Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.
Michael Depp: For decades, objectivity has been the gold standard for most newsrooms. But many newsroom reformers today say it’s a deeply problematic, fundamentally flawed idea. What’s more, it’s an unattainable and misleading goal. Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News, now a research professor at the Walter Cronkite School at Arizona State University, is the co-author, along with Leonard Downie Jr., of a new report that confronts head on the cracks in objectivity’s facade. That report is called Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms.
I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’ll be talking about the problems