Language

In my objective opinion...

Submitted January 31, 2005 - 2:36 pm by Benjamin Melançon
Welcome to the NarcoSphere, Paul!  If everyone who got criticized here would get a co-publisher's account this would be a very interesting place.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall in 1905 wrote the words which she felt portrayed the essence of Voltaire's thought:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

I've been to journalism school, and any authentic journalist has lots of good reasons to reject objectivity.  My Journalism 300 textbook was borrowed and never returned by a co-worker several years ago, but its so-called objective definition of what makes information news is seven qualities including new, unusual, strange, unexpected, and things like that.

It's my "opinion" that what makes news is what matters in the real, lived lives of people.

I'm wrong, of course: the importance to people's wellbeing has very little to do with what gets in the newspaper or on the TV news.

But that's really the point: objectivity can be applied (incorrectly in my opinion, and I'm sure in yours) to maintain the status quo and marginalize those fighting for needed change.

On that subject, Beatrice Hall and Voltaire would probably agree that locking people up without trial and torturing them (and the threat to all our liberty this represents) must also be fought-- and that it is even news, no matter how long it goes on or commonplace it becomes.

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