Objectivity should journalists be objective? Personally I think we should strive for it though it seems its not really attainable. Its not attianable in the sense that as individuals we have our own personal views of the world that are shaped by our class, race, culture etc As journalist when we write a story these views that we have which are shaped by our enviroment come out. We may not be aware of this but the proof is in the fact that the same story is often reported differently by various journalists. Why is that? if we were as journalist so objective then the stories would come more or less the same but because we use our own experiences of the world to tell stories that we gather, our stories come out differently!
However ! as I have stated above we should strive for fair and well balnced stories. Some in our Radio prac claimed that by being objective we bocome "mechenical”. I disagree with that, people must realize that as journalist we operate in a real world and democratic country ( Some may even contest if SA is democratic at all! I think it is, we enjoy quite a great measure of Press freedom than most media practitioners in Africa and the world at large). Where finances, economics and politics takes place, being un- objective ( unbalanced and un fair) may have finacially implication for a publication.
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Good work, I think it is important that you take a stance, while acknowledging that our backgrounds do contribute to news bias.
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