Belief has declined in many areas in recent years: Christianity, table manners, the Republic of Ireland men’s football team. But one type of unbelief has had a more profound effect than any other: the loss of faith in objective truth.
Objectivity used to mean honest inquiry. The idea was simple and seemingly inescapable: “We are small creatures in a big world of which we have only a very partial understanding, and… the way things appear to us depends both on the world and on our constitution”, like the philosopher Thomas Nagel. Put the.
But in recent years, the idea that you get closer to the truth by removing personal biases and giving ideological opponents a fair hearing has come under fire.
Philosophy is partly responsible, notably the movement known as postmodernism. This propagates the idea that all knowledge is tainted by power. Drawing on legitimate criticisms of “pale, masculine” gatekeepers of information, postmodernism is a corrective against complacency, but has also been linked to both post-truth politics and anti-liberal currents of progressivism.
Cultural and technological changes have also played their role. Social media is subjectivity on steroids.
In journalism, the influence of these forces can be seen in a report released earlier this year by two veteran American journalists turned university professors, Leonard Downie and Andrew Heyward. Bringing together points of view Drawing on 75 prominent figures in the print and broadcast media in the United States, they found that journalists “increasingly believe that the pursuit of objectivity can lead to a false balance or misleading ‘bothsideism’ in coverage of news stories,” while denying many of their own identities and life experiences.
Among those interviewed was Emilio Garcia-Ruizeditor of the San Francisco Chronicle, who said: “The consensus among young journalists is that we have it all wrong…Objectivity has got to go.”
Much of the negative commentary about objectivity is based on the assumption that it equates to neutrality or a lack of feeling.
But that’s a misconception, Nagel explains in his classic book The View from Nowhere.
“Objectivity allows us to transcend our particular point of view and develop an expanded consciousness that more fully encompasses the world.”
A simple way to understand objectivity is to use the Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant. The first man handles the trunk and says “an elephant is like a snake”, the next man handles an ear and says “no, it’s like a fan”, a third handles the tail and says “no, it’s like a fan”. rope”, and soon. Basically, the elephant exists objectively, and all our perceptions of it are partly correct but also partly wrong.
In a world where subjectivity reigns, there are no elephants. Instead, we all have our own elephants that we loudly describe to each other. The possibility of a shared or absolute truth disappears.
We had an example of this last week, when people gave subjective interpretations of what happened in Dublin on the evening of November 23. Depending on your point of view: (a) a bunch of crazy people were rioting; (b) disenfranchised citizens were venting; (c) racists were expressing their hatred or (d) (insert your own interpretation here).
If subjectivity is the only legitimate form of inquiry, then we are stuck in a situation where everyone is content to shout their “truth.”
Objectivity means weighing the merits of each perspective while recognizing that none is entirely complete.
Within journalism, a shift away from objectivity has been observed in the United States and the United Kingdom, where partisan reporting and a blurring of the lines between fact and opinion have characterized coverage of the Trump presidency, respectively. and Brexit. There are signs, however, that the professional media has learned lessons from these episodes.
Editors paying more attention to fact-checking and debunking myths – RTÉ is the latest broadcaster announce the project of a disinformation correspondent. The barriers are being reestablished between news and opinion – the BBC is more willing to censor presenters like Gary Lineker for straying into party political commentary. And, having felt compelled to act as social media would have them do, journalists no longer flock to Twitter/X with their latest hot take on the news.
There is still much to be done, particularly to improve diversity within the profession, which is still very male, pale and middle-class in Ireland, and also to facilitate open but responsible exploration of sensitive topics such as immigration.
Naturally, journalists and the media will not always get it right. But they should be judged on their commitment to objectivity over time rather than their individual failings.
Although journalists have a special duty to be objective, it is a subject that every citizen should think about. Abandoning objectivity means we lose sight of universal moral truths. This means that there is no escape from “choosing sides” on issues such as that between Israel and Palestine.
Of course, no one can be 100% objective. However, the flippant and cynical response to this reality is to believe that we cannot move beyond subjectivity.
Objectivity is about trying, Nagel says. It’s “trying to get out of our minds… Part of that means not giving up on the search for truth, even though if you want the truth rather than just something to say, you’ll have a lot less to say.”
