What matters more: Objectivity or transparency?

I write a lot about the media because I have some insight from my public relations experience.

And as an artist I’ve studied perception. So I’ll tell you what I recently told a group of pastors during a workshop on social advocacy: it is not “objectivity” that’s important. Honesty and transparency are.

Objectivity is an impossibility. Why? Because everyone has a perspective. And no matter how carefully you work, it affects what you produce.

Consider a still life set up in a drawing studio. Students come in and take their places around the still life. Yet with one still life, 20 students produce 20 different drawings – all true from their perspective, although not equally well done or accurate.

So with news and information, transparency or honesty about an outlet’s perspective is what’s important. Unfortunately, most broadcast media try to lay claim to the ideals of “objectivity” and “balance.”

Additionally, in an age when most media are profit-driven and owned by corporate conglomerates, newsrooms have cut researchers and reporters. So the remaining overworked staff often uses pre-packaged stories, photos and news videos delivered to them via the newswires and public relations people like me. And because they all use the same sources, you get the same stories from the same perspective repeated on all the channels.

It’s an echo chamber.

In this environment, advertisers also play an unhealthy role in determining program content. Owners don’t want to deliver content critical of the advertiser. Take for instance, Sunday morning news programs. First let’s look at ownership.

FOX News is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, an international conglomerate that also includes The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, among others. (FYI, News Corporation is under investigation for illegal news-gathering tactics and bribery in Great Britain.)

NBC is owned by General Electric, hence all the energy company commercials during Meet the Press.

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company.

CBS formerly owned by Viacom, is now owned by CBS Corporation.

And with regard to providing balance or a variety of viewpoints, a recent study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (a non-profit organization challenging media bias and censorship since 1986) examined the content of ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press and FOX News Sunday. To quote study author Peter Hart, “Evaluating the guest lists for the eight months from June 2011 through February 2012, FAIR found a distinct conservative skew in both one-on-one interview segments and roundtable discussions.”

Other findings from the study included:

“In the eight-month study period, partisan-affiliated one-on-one interviews were 70 percent Republican—166 guests to Democrats’ 70.”

Guests were overwhelmingly male and homogenously white.

In roundtable discussions, Republicans and/or conservatives made 282 appearances to 164 by Democrats and progressives.

“Middle-of-the-road Beltway journalists made 201 appearances in roundtables, which serves to buttress the argument that corporate media’s idea of a debate is conservative ideologues matched by centrist-oriented journalists.”

Only 29 percent of roundtable guests were women, and only 15 percent were minorities. Read about the study here: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4514 So if these are your major news sources, you’re only getting one perspective. Consider yourself lucky this local paper you’re reading works to provide a variety.