On this beautiful “fall back” morning, I awoke at 6:30 a.m. (cell phone time) to a story on NPR about recent ways we’re seeing the objectivity of journalists challenged. The story, called Journalists as People and produced by WNYC’s On the Media, connected the issue with the recent suspension of Keith Olbermann for donating to a Democrat’s campaign and with the attention given to NPR for not allowing its journalists to attend Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity.
I’ve been stating that librarians and information professionals can look to what’s going on in the journalism world to provide some perspective on their own profession. This story provided an opportunity for me to explore that claim a little more in depth.
Here we have an organization, NPR, discussing objectivity (which librarians call neutrality) and what that means in a 21st-century media environment where consumers of that media discredit the very notion. NPR is a public organization in its funding and access model and also must answer to its audience or patron base while upholding its professional standards. The organization faced heavy criticism for its stance that was based on those professional standards.
The radio broadcast, which I’ve embedded below, really elaborated on the notion of objectivity, the unattainability of it’s pure form, and what’s at stake if a professional doesn’t achieve certain levels of it. Most interesting was about halfway through the story, where the journalist they interviewed stated, “Taking a political stance makes your views stronger.” He went on to say the stance takes you from a place of observation to a place of action, and added that it changes you internally and makes you more likely to convince others of your opinion.
The discussion of neutrality and librarians mostly surrounds developing collections. There is the practical application of managing a budget and not playing favorites when it comes to purchase decisions. However, the more interesting questions get raised when it comes to defending purchase decisions. Does intellectual freedom reign for all content and in all circumstances? Should gay penguins be allowed to stay in communities as liberal as Iowa City’s but not in others? What do you do when there’s minority of one? How often might we start to hear the term “activist librarian” get thrown around?
One editor interviewed for the piece stated that he jettisons his right to vote to maintain his level of objectivity. In order to serve such a diverse public, I do believe it’s important to maintain some level of objectivity and/or neutrality. As someone who’s in between fields at the moment, I wonder if the editor takes it to an extreme that would be ridiculous to replicate. The journalist who stated that taking a stance changes you makes an excellent point, but what are we signing up for when we go to a school of journalism or library and information science? If having opinions change us, it becomes a question of identity. What is giving up a self-determined identity worth to us–$40,000 per year or pride in our professionalism?
I would love to hear where other librarian or information professionals draw the line.
Feel free to listen yourself to the full story:
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