Truth

The number one objective of a journalist is to tell the truth. However, the truth can be subjective as journalists decide what stories to cover and what their angle should be. Of course there is no possible way for every story to cover every angle and be completely unbiased, but journalists should give equal weight to both sides and let the audience decide the truth for themselves.

The function of journalism is not to tell what the audience to think, the function is to tell the audience what to think about. By providing factual information the audience can think about what is written and decide what they want to believe.

I do not believe that it is ever possible to be completely unbiased. Journalists enter a story with their background and their way of thinking about an issue. However, the job of journalists should be to minimize bias. This means that if a journalist is assigned a story that they know they can not cover without significant bias, they should remove themselves from the story and write about something else. However, if journalists work to write without letting their bias come through, stories can still be balanced and honest.

Journalism bias affects both journalists and the companies they work for. The presentation on truth made me think about the movie "The Insider." In this movie Russell Crowe stars as Jeffrey Wigand who has evidence that the big tobacco companies perjured themselves. He agreed to talk on 60 minutes with Mike Wallace, but in the end 60 minutes did not air to full coverage because they were worried about retaliation by the tobacco companies. This is a real life example of the ethical dilemma's facing journalists. The producer Lowell Bergman, played by Al Pacino, wanted to tell the truth to his audience, however his plan was thwarted by the business side of journalism and fear of lost advertisements. I think this shows the difficult choices made by news agencies every day. Although they are not always this drastic, the truth is sometimes difficult to get out and it can be hard to tell the full truth in the best way, especially if the truth is about media sponsors.

Bias is prevalent in the media, however, if journalists are able to put their bias behind them, they can tell the truth more effectively and fulfil the function of the media.