https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3926539-dangers-abound-when-media-abandon-objectivity-in-favor-of-a-narrative/
作者：威廉·莫洛尼，观点撰稿人 - 04/04/23
当长期担任哥伦比亚广播公司晚间新闻主播的沃尔特·克朗凯特（1962 年至 1981 年在播）在当时的民意调查中被描述为“美国最值得信赖的人”时，盖洛普组织开始调查公众对新闻媒体的态度，发现绝大多数受访者相信记者能够“全面、准确和公正地”报道新闻。1976 年，这一支持率达到了历史最高水平，达到 72%。
然而，在此后的几十年里，越来越多的美国人不再相信他们可以信任媒体。到 2015 年，对第四等级的认可度已降至 40%，而盖洛普在 2022 年 9 月进行最新调查时，这一数字已降至 34%——其中 28% 的人表示他们“不太信任”媒体，38% 的人表示他们“完全不信任”。
公众信任度急剧下降的原因并不难发现。随着时间的推移，大多数报道和塑造新闻的人似乎不再相信“客观性”应该成为他们行业的目标，或者盖洛普“全面、准确和公平”报道新闻的标准有任何用处。
这一明显的新闻使命新概念的一个典型例子可以在 2022 年 1 月的一份报告“超越客观性”中找到，该报告由前华盛顿邮报编辑 Leonard Downie 和前 CBS 新闻总裁 Andrew Heyward 撰写。两人目前都是亚利桑那州立大学的新闻学教授。
他们的报告基于对“新闻领袖、记者和其他专家”的数十次采访，一开始就指出了他们的核心前提，即新闻业的客观性已经“过时”。他们后来将其描述为“失去意义的新闻概念”。他们的受访者几乎一致赞同这一观点。旧金山纪事报的主编就是一个典型的例子，他告诉作者，年轻记者的共识是：“我们全都错了。我们就是问题所在。客观性必须消失。”在报告的结论中，唐尼和海沃德呼吁对新闻业进行新的审视，“用更切合实际的新闻标准取代过时的客观性。”
那么，这种新媒体格局会是什么样子，它可能带来什么危险？大多数记者是否已经不再是冷静的事实收集者，不再试图报道政治故事的各个方面，同时让这些事实成为他们结论的主要决定因素？他们是否反而将自己视为坚定的活动家，不追求客观事实，而是追求一种预先设定的“叙事”，以推进特定的议程，他们认为这种议程不仅在新闻上是正确的，而且在道德上是优越的？那些相信这一点的人是否也认为那些支持不同观点的人不是不称职的记者，而是道德低下的人和潜在危险的错误信息的传播者？
任何人，哪怕只是随意地在电视上浏览网络和有线新闻，或者对比一下《纽约时报》和《纽约邮报》、《华盛顿邮报》和《华盛顿时报》等主流媒体巨头的观点，都能看出这些偏见并没有什么秘密可言。CNN 和 MSNBC 是毫无歉意的左翼，就像福克斯新闻是右翼一样。然而，许多新闻媒体似乎并没有达到健康的平衡，反而反映了唐尼和海沃德在《超越客观性》中所宣扬的教义。
从围绕谷歌、Facebook、Twitter 和 TikTok 等互联网平台的激烈争议中，我们很容易看出这个勇敢的新新闻世界中隐含的深刻危险。他们参与了利益相关方（不祥地包括我们自己的政府）的努力，利用它们来压制、“取消”甚至惩罚那些持有不受欢迎观点的人，这令人深感不安。对宪法基石第一修正案的威胁太明显了，无需重申。
对一些人来说，一个容忍和执行一种政治观点或叙事的受控媒体环境的幽灵令人担忧；对另一些人来说，这个想法本身就等同于不切实际的恐吓。尽管如此，惊人的技术进步危险地赋予了中国和俄罗斯等极权主义国家增强控制本国人民的能力，这应该让那些说乔治·奥威尔的经典小说《1984》与这一代人无关的人停下来思考。那些坚持认为“这不可能发生在这里”的人应该谨慎行事。
威廉·莫洛尼是科罗拉多基督教大学百年研究所的高级研究员，曾在牛津大学和伦敦大学学习，并获得哈佛大学博士学位。他曾担任科罗拉多州教育专员。
Dangers abound when media abandon objectivity in favor of a narrative
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3926539-dangers-abound-when-media-abandon-objectivity-in-favor-of-a-narrative/
BY WILLIAM MOLONEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 04/04/23
When longtime CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite, on-air from 1962 to 1981, was described in a contemporary poll as “the most trusted man in America,” the Gallup organization began surveying public attitudes toward the news media and found that a large majority of respondents trusted journalists to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.” In 1976, that approval reached an all-time high of 72 percent.
In the decades since, however, an increasing number of Americans have stopped believing that they can trust the press. By 2015, approval of the Fourth Estate had dropped to 40 percent, and when Gallup did its most recent survey in September 2022, it had fallen to 34 percent — with 28 percent saying they had “not very much trust” in the media and 38 percent saying they had “none at all.
The reason for this precipitous decline in public trust is not hard to discover. Over time, a preponderance of those who report and shape the news appear to have ceased believing that “objectivity” should even be a goal of their industry or that the Gallup metric of reporting the news “fully, accurately and fairly” has any utility whatsoever.
A prime example of this apparent new conception of the journalistic mission can be found in a January 2022 report, “Beyond Objectivity,” written by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward. Both are currently professors of journalism at Arizona State University.
Their report, based on dozens of interviews with “news leaders, journalists and other experts,” states at the outset their central premise that objectivity in journalism is “outmoded.” They later describe it as a “journalistic concept that has lost its relevance.” Their interviewees almost uniformly endorse this viewpoint. Quite typical is the editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, who told the authors that a consensus among younger journalists is, “We got it all wrong. We are the problem. Objectivity has got to go.” In their report’s conclusion, Downie and Heyward call for a fresh vision of journalism that “replaces outmoded objectivity with a more relevant articulation of journalistic standards.”
So, what might this new media landscape look like and what dangers might it entail? Have most journalists ceased to be dispassionate gatherers of facts who seek to cover all aspects of a political story while allowing those facts to be the chief determinants of their conclusions? Do they instead see themselves as committed activists, serving not objective truth but a preordained “narrative” that advances a specific agenda, which they view not just as journalistically correct but morally superior? And do those who believe this also see those who espouse different views not as inadequate journalists but as moral inferiors and purveyors of potentially dangerous misinformation?
Anyone who even casually channel-surfs network and cable news on television or contrasts the viewpoints of, say, mainstream media giants such as the New York Times and the New York Post, or the Washington Post and the Washington Times, can see there is nothing clandestine about these biases. CNN and MSNBC are as unapologetically left-wing as Fox News is right-wing. Yet, far from adding up to a healthy balance, many news outlets seem to reflect the doctrines espoused by Downie and Heyward in “Beyond Objectivity.”
The profound dangers implicit in this brave new journalistic world are readily seen in the swirling controversies surrounding internet platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. Their involvement in the efforts of interested parties — ominously including our own government — to use them to suppress, “cancel” or even punish those with viewpoints deemed to be undesirable is deeply troubling. The threat to the constitutional cornerstone that is the First Amendment is too obvious to need restatement.
To some, the specter of a controlled media environment that tolerates and enforces just one political viewpoint or narrative is alarming; to others, the very idea amounts to unrealistic fearmongering. Nonetheless, the striking technological advances that have dangerously empowered totalitarian states such as China and Russia to enhance their capacities to control their own people should give pause to those who say George Orwell’s classic novel, “1984,” has no relevance to this generation. Caution should be advised to those who would insist, “It couldn’t happen here.”
William Moloney is a senior fellow at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute, who has studied at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.
In the decades since, however, an increasing number of Americans have stopped believing that they can trust the press. By 2015, approval of the Fourth Estate had dropped to 40 percent, and when Gallup did its most recent survey in September 2022, it had fallen to 34 percent — with 28 percent saying they had “not very much trust” in the media and 38 percent saying they had “none at all.
The reason for this precipitous decline in public trust is not hard to discover. Over time, a preponderance of those who report and shape the news appear to have ceased believing that “objectivity” should even be a goal of their industry or that the Gallup metric of reporting the news “fully, accurately and fairly” has any utility whatsoever.
A prime example of this apparent new conception of the journalistic mission can be found in a January 2022 report, “Beyond Objectivity,” written by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward. Both are currently professors of journalism at Arizona State University.
Their report, based on dozens of interviews with “news leaders, journalists and other experts,” states at the outset their central premise that objectivity in journalism is “outmoded.” They later describe it as a “journalistic concept that has lost its relevance.” Their interviewees almost uniformly endorse this viewpoint. Quite typical is the editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, who told the authors that a consensus among younger journalists is, “We got it all wrong. We are the problem. Objectivity has got to go.” In their report’s conclusion, Downie and Heyward call for a fresh vision of journalism that “replaces outmoded objectivity with a more relevant articulation of journalistic standards.”
So, what might this new media landscape look like and what dangers might it entail? Have most journalists ceased to be dispassionate gatherers of facts who seek to cover all aspects of a political story while allowing those facts to be the chief determinants of their conclusions? Do they instead see themselves as committed activists, serving not objective truth but a preordained “narrative” that advances a specific agenda, which they view not just as journalistically correct but morally superior? And do those who believe this also see those who espouse different views not as inadequate journalists but as moral inferiors and purveyors of potentially dangerous misinformation?
Anyone who even casually channel-surfs network and cable news on television or contrasts the viewpoints of, say, mainstream media giants such as the New York Times and the New York Post, or the Washington Post and the Washington Times, can see there is nothing clandestine about these biases. CNN and MSNBC are as unapologetically left-wing as Fox News is right-wing. Yet, far from adding up to a healthy balance, many news outlets seem to reflect the doctrines espoused by Downie and Heyward in “Beyond Objectivity.”
The profound dangers implicit in this brave new journalistic world are readily seen in the swirling controversies surrounding internet platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. Their involvement in the efforts of interested parties — ominously including our own government — to use them to suppress, “cancel” or even punish those with viewpoints deemed to be undesirable is deeply troubling. The threat to the constitutional cornerstone that is the First Amendment is too obvious to need restatement.
To some, the specter of a controlled media environment that tolerates and enforces just one political viewpoint or narrative is alarming; to others, the very idea amounts to unrealistic fearmongering. Nonetheless, the striking technological advances that have dangerously empowered totalitarian states such as China and Russia to enhance their capacities to control their own people should give pause to those who say George Orwell’s classic novel, “1984,” has no relevance to this generation. Caution should be advised to those who would insist, “It couldn’t happen here.”
William Moloney is a senior fellow at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute, who has studied at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.
