Recently I have been thinking a lot about objectivity and journalism in a new digital environment, since I am writing an article on impartiality at the BBC. Yesterday, I came across a fascinating piece on journalism and truth written by Mathew Ingram from GigaOM. Ingram claims that truth is more difficult to achieve in journalism today. He cites Clay Shirky from a recent Poynter conference:

Shirky noted in an essay that was published as a companion piece to the Poynter forum, the fact that anyone can make themselves heard about virtually any topic — something that was never possible before the web and social media came along — makes it a much more complicated task to arrive at any kind of actual consensus about the truth. 

When we talk about objectivity, we need to be careful. It’s not that objectivity or truth is dying… it is simply transforming. To quote Nicholas Lemann from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism:

The nostalgics can take comfort that the opinion media complex isn’t a recent invention: “Journalism was opinion journalism from about 1700 to 1900.”

Arriving at the truth may be complicated because there are more sources available and more “moving parts” in our narratives. But is it really more complicated to achieve objectivity or truth? This remains a question for debate.

More on the article here.

Last month, a US federal judge ruled that a blogger, sued for defamation, could not ask for the same protection journalists have under the Oregon state law because she was not affiliated with “a newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.” The judge also elaborated a series of criterias to define journalism.

In a New York Times debate, lawyers and university professors raised some interesting points.

Kyu Ho Youm, Jonathan Marshall First Amendment Chair at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, wrote: “Judge Hernandez ruled correctly that Crystal Cox, the self-proclaimed “investigative blogger,” was not a journalist, so she was not privileged to protect her source. But his textual interpretation of the Oregon shield law shows that the pre-Internet law needs updating.”

Ellyn Angelotti, social media professor at the Poynter Institute asked, what is a journalist and advanced: “A journalist — good or bad — possesses a hunger to pursue the truth and to share it in compelling ways.” If quality is produced, she added, it means that bloggers could be considered journalists.

These are all interesting points raised by the debaters, pointing out to both the inneficiency of pre-Internet laws and the changing definition of journalism in different contexts.

There are other people that have discussed the issues on the Web and are worth mentionning:

- David Coursey in Forbes claiming that the judge definition was stiff.

- Julie Hilden in Counterpunch describing the federal court case.

I am wondering, how can these definitions of journalism be made relevant in a legal context, such as the one in Oregon? In a social context, does journalism need a broader definition, and include some bloggers that are not affiliated with traditional news institutions? How could that be done?

This is a question that I am thinking about outside of my current research project. I look forward to hear and take part of further debates on the topic. Even though this question was raised since the advent of blogging years ago, it is still relevant today.