Exploding THE MYTH of objective news

Our world is complex. There are several layers of facts behind any big news event. No longer is it possible for the traditional mainstream media, which is constrained in many ways, to tell a story in a completely credible or objective manner. Alternative news sources, made possible by the Internet revolution, fill this yawning gap, although so far few are of exceptional quality. These sources can provide interesting angles, critical analysis and fresh information that the traditional media ignore or have no interest in pursuing.

Objective news reporting is an ideal whose aim is to tell a story as it is and allow the audience to make their own judgement. This is in contrast to biased or subjective reporting, which seeks to mislead the audience on a particular subject.

But how do we know the objective world “out there”? This question preoccupied the philosophers of ancient Greece. They came to the conclusion that we live in a world of appearances set against a world of reality. The world of appearances is what we know from our sense perceptions while the world of reality can only be known through rational investigation. But if we don’t have the facts correct because the world gives us both false and factual information, news reporting that aims to be objective faces a challenge from the outset.

The world can be compared to a theatre, with actors on stage trying to show they are in control of what they say or do, although in fact they are simply “reading” from the script of other forces behind the scenes. We can’t have objective reporting without knowing the stories behind the scenes that underlie the official news.

Two outstanding websites for alternative news are zerohedge.com and globalresearch.ca, which provide valuable viewpoints and information that are rarely found in mainstream sources.

Traditional mainstream media can be owned either privately or by the government. The general audience tends to trust privately owned media more than its government-controlled counterparts. But there is no reason why state-controlled media cannot do a good job in reporting events in a truthful and credible way. State-funded television network Russia Today (RT) has become a very popular news source and now rivals the success of heavyweights like the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera. Given the confrontation between Russia and the West, the audience no longer accepts the standard reporting of BBC, Reuters, CNN or other Western mainstream media, which tend to paint Russia as the bad guy while taking a more positive tone towards the West. In the end, privately owned mainstream media outlets in the West also serve the interests of their respective governments. They too fail to offer objective news that is fair and accurate. It is ironic that Russia Today provides alternative news despite it being an “official” source. China’s CCTV is another case in point.

Both government-owned and privately owned media strive to shape public opinion. Alternative news sources have jumped into this scene. Since the Internet is an open field, practically anyone can create his or her own alternative news. Governments and state agencies have donned the cloak of alternative news to influence public opinion, thereby further complicating the scene.

In the end, there is no truly objective news reporting, because the world is too complex for anybody to have full access to all the information or have authority in all fields of knowledge. We can only know the partial truth, not the whole truth, because any big event contains many layers of facts. Mainstream media are often too constrained or too lazy to present all these layers. This leaves room for specialised alternative sources to uncover pieces of the picture that are missing, though they also have limits in terms of resources.

Ultimately, the audience must exercise their judgement, play a more active role in seeking accurate information and decide for themselves what to believe in.

They cannot expect to get objective news, which remains an unreachable ideal. But if the traditional media or the alternative media want to make a difference or a lasting impact, they need to work harder and be bolder so as to get to the bottom of the stories they present to their audience. The Internet revolution has made possible improvements in quality reporting. Still, we remain a long way from that ideal world of objective reporting.