Blog Post 4- Objectivity/Nuetrality

As a journalists in many cases it is important to stay neutral in your covering of the different issues that may arise in the community. However, I think it is humanly impossible for any journalists to totally separate themselves from the stories they cover.  Mainly because I think it is also vital to be engaged in the community and events that you are involved in to give your readers a better understanding and perception, and being able to understand your readers.  What journalists need to recognize is how to separate their feelings and ideals from being able to cover a story. Journalists need to have the foresight to recoginize if their personal feeling are comprimising their ability to fairly cover a story.

As we learned about in previous chapters journalists need to not just report the facts, but the truth about the facts.  I think this can go a long way to helping journalists not letting their biases enter their reporting.  It is easy to put facts down on a paper that support your argument or your story, but it can be hard if the context of those facts doesn't support your argument.  For example I could say that BYU was a better team than Utah because they had a better record.  The fact about the record is true, but that doesn't account for the quality of opponents that each of them played which may be a better barometer to measure which team was better.

If journalists feel strongly about different subject then they should refrain from reporting on them.  They should ask for different beats or stories to cover.  Journalists should understand that their first loyalty should be to the people they serve and then to the truth, and not various causes that they support.  There will be some cases that it is obvious to take sides like murder or child molestation.  Some things are bad and are universally known to be bad.  When it comes to covering social issues though is when the journalists needs to refrain from letting their biases or opinions affect the way they cover the news.