A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists ⇥ nytimes.com

Wesley Lowery, New York Times:

And so, instead of promising our readers that we will never, on any platform, betray a single personal bias — submitting ourselves to a life sentence of public thoughtlessness — a better pledge would be an assurance that we will devote ourselves to accuracy, that we will diligently seek out the perspectives of those with whom we personally may be inclined to disagree and that we will be just as sure to ask hard questions of those with whom we’re inclined to agree.

The best of our profession already does this. But we need to be honest about the gulf that lies between the best and the bulk.

It’s possible to build journalism self-aware enough to bridge that gap. But it will take moral clarity, which will require both editors and reporters to stop doing things like reflexively hiding behind euphemisms that obfuscate the truth, simply because we’ve always done it that way. Deference to precedent is a poor excuse for continuing to make decisions that potentially let powerful bad actors off the hook and harm the public we serve.

Entirely agreed. I would rather read honest reporting than coverage of an event that is purportedly neutral, especially when that apparent neutrality is contrived and built on a phoney belief that there are two equal sides to every story. Honest reporting does not pretend that every argument is valid or needs to be presented.