"As Michael Schudson pointed out in “Discovering the News” (1978), the notion that good journalism is “objective”—that is, nonpartisan and unopinionated—emerged only around the start of the twentieth century. Schudson thought that it arose as a response to growing skepticism about the whole idea of stable and reliable truths. The standard of objectivity, as he put it, “was not the final expression of a belief in facts but the assertion of a method designed for a world in which even facts could not be trusted. . . . Journalists came to believe in objectivity, to the extent that they did, because they wanted to, needed to, were forced by ordinary human aspiration to seek escape from their own deep convictions of doubt and drift.” In other words, objectivity was a problematic concept from the start... Lippmann’s argument was that journalism is not a profession. You don’t need a license or an academic credential to practice the trade. All sorts of people call themselves journalists. Are all of them providing the public with reliable and disinterested news goods?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Louis Menand, “When Americans Lost Faith in the News”, The New Yorker, (January 30, 2023)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Journalism
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Journalism
163 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Journalism →
Related Quotes
"While journalists should view Wikileaks with some skepticism, it cannot be ignored. Welcome to the brave new world of…"
"The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restraine…"
"Anonymous leaking is an ancient art and many websites publish documents from sources they cannot identify. What Wikil…"
"My work as a journalist has been fundamental in my literary creations. Journalism taught me to know and love words, t…"
"Under established First Amendment law, prior restraints, if constitutional at all, are permissible only in the most e…"
"We are creating a space behind us that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has al…"
"Experience has shown, contrary to general expectation, that newspapers are one of the best means of directing opinion…"
"You go all over America and you see small papers that do really good jobs in their communities of reporting. The mode…"
"REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words."
"I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon."