“So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here — not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.” — Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72”

“If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read, ‘President can’t swim.'” — Lyndon Johnson

The sentiment among some of today’s big media thinkers is that the press ought to abandon the “charade” of objectivity and embrace their personal biases in their coverage, essentially turning the mediascape into a series of niche publications with very targeted audiences.

After all, those thinkers argue, the biggest moneymakers in American journalism today are the outright biased opinion-talkers on primetime Fox News and MSNBC, and modern audiences don’t believe there’s such a thing as objectivity, anyway.

Writing in the Atlantic, for example, former Jimmy Carter speechwriter and veteran journalist James Fallows bemoans reporters’ ongoing “both-sides-ism,” accusing the media of maintaining “proprieties that would have made sense when dealing with other figures in other eras. But now they’re dealing with Donald Trump, and he sees their behavior as a weakness he can exploit relentlessly.

“If you are trying to inform the public, you’re better off not reporting what this president says, contends, or does, unless there are external indications that it’s true,” Fallows wrote. “And there is certainly no reason to present Trump’s claims on equal footing with other information.”

(Read Fallows’ whole essay here: https://tinyurl.com/y5qwykf5).

Thankfully, none of the mainstream press are following Fallows’ line of thinking (otherwise, he’d have nothing to complain about, would he?).

I say “thankfully” because I believe we owe a great deal of modern democracy to political debates beginning from an established set of facts. Both politicians and the populous have known that, should a candidate stray from the truth, some journalist will be there to out him or her.

I also say “thankfully” because, as my regular readers have repeatedly heard, journalists write not only for their readers today but for their readers in the distant future who will look to our pages for a sense of what life was like in 2020. Some historian will someday be grateful the Washington Post wrote down everything Trump said — and everything Nancy Pelosi had to say in response.

It’s a hard thing to accept, after four years of Trump and his supporters calling every unflattering story “fake news,” to have one of our own saying we’re not being hard enough on the president.

I’m not sure what Fallows wants. A few days into Trump’s presidency, the New York Times said Trump “lied” when he tweeted that he would’ve won the 2016 popular vote if not for the “millions of people who voted illegally.”

“Lie” is a tricky word, meaning that the speaker not only said something he or she knew was untrue but intentionally said it anyway, with the intent to deceive.

Journalists tend to avoid such words, because it’s hard to know what someone intended to do, so it was a big deal when the Times described such an early presidential statement that way (read the Times’ analysis on its word choice here: https://tinyurl.com/y6e6zfdw).

I’m still not sure I agree with the Times’ decision to go that route, but I also disagree with the Times’ critics who said the word showed the newspapers’ lack of objectivity.

Objectivity is not regurgitation. It is not, as Thompson argued, “box scores, race results and stock market tabulations.”

A judge is objective, but still makes a judgment. He or she puts aside personal opinions, preferences, and prejudices, weighs the facts and evidences, and decides what’s been proven to be true.

In the same way, a journalist sets his or her own feelings aside and chases down the evidence, providing that evidence to the reader, along with background and context to help the reader understand not just what happened but what it all means. Anything less is just meeting minutes.

If the evidence shows the president has made 20,000 false or misleading claims in less than one term, reporting that information is not unobjective.

On the flip side, reporting what the president — whose tweets have been proven to move the stock market — has to say is not gutless or over-objective or whatever it is Fallows tried to accuse the press of being.

The press isn’t blameless or flawless, but it remains the most honest broker in the democratic process.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-358-5686 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.