By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

That was a trick question. Sorry. No one can be objective.

It’s not that people don’t want to be objective. Many do. And many news sources insist that they are. But human beings don’t have the capacity to directly know the truth. If we did, salvation would not require faith.

Even when we see things “with our own eyes,” they remain our eyes. The process by which we “know” something involves taking in sensory information and giving it meaning. The human brain can’t do one without simultaneously doing the other. And the only basis that we have to understand and give meaning is every other experience that we have ever had and the meaning that we gave to them.

When I was in my teens, I had a friend who would say, ‚ÄúHow do we know that when we see the color blue we‚Äôre both seeing the same thing? How do we know that we‚Äôre even in the same universe?‚Äù 

At the time, we were trying to impress each other with our deep thoughts. But we all have an intuitive sense of this when we talk about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes or seeing the world through their eyes. We understand this most often in regards to differences of class, race, gender and national origin, but it applies too much more.

In the 19th century, Americans read newspapers more than any other people in the world.  Those papers were fiercely partisan. The idea that journalists should, or even could, be ‚Äúobjective‚Äù is historically recent. A handful of intellectuals in the 1930s, most notably Walter Lippmann, argued that journalism could not become a ‚Äúprofession‚Äù until its practitioners were fully ‚Äúobjective.‚Äù

Newspapers subsequently promoted their objectivity, but, as historian Christopher Lasch points out, it was not because they yearned to be professional. 

‚ÄúResponsibility came to be equated with the avoidance of controversy, because advertisers were willing to pay for it. Some advertisers were also willing to pay for sensationalism, though on the whole they preferred a respectable readership to sheer numbers. What they clearly did not prefer was ‚Äòopinion‚Äô‚Äînot because they were impressed with Lippmann’s philosophical arguments, but because opinionated reporting did not guarantee the right audience. No doubt they also hoped that an aura of objectivity, the hallmark of responsible journalism, would rub off on the advertisements that surrounded increasingly slender columns of print,‚Äù according to Lasch.

In other words, the blander that you were, the fewer people you would offend and the larger market share you could capture. With the proliferation of cable television and Internet news sources, the trend has gone in the other direction‚Äîmarket segmentation.  Cable networks‚Äô ratings quests still dominate considerations of completeness and accuracy. Each network has decided that anger boosts ratings. Fox sells Bill O‚ÄôReilly‚Äôs right-wing anger, MSNBC sells Keith Oberman‚Äôs left-wing anger, and CNN sells Lou Dobb‚Äôs artificial populist anger.

Younger and more educated readers are increasingly turned off by both bland sources that pretend objectivity and partisan sources that focus on a selective set of ‚Äúfacts.‚Äù  The reliably nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press tell us that, ‚Äúas many as 38 percent, who rely mostly on the Internet for news, say that they have an unfavorable opinion of cable news networks.‚Äù What they want is reporting that gives context and opinion, while being true to the facts.

The Guardian, Times of London and the Independent, three English newspapers, now have more American than British online readers. They place a much higher premium on analysis and opinion than does any serious American paper. In one of his farewell addresses, Prime Minister Tony Blair complained about this, calling them “viewspapers.” Irish newspaper magnate Tony O’Reilly proudly agreed, saying that it is what his readers want.

When I hear a person or a news source insist that they are “objective,” I become a little bit skeptical. I wonder how different their experiences and circumstances are from mine. I wonder whether what appears to be “objective” to most isn’t just the status quo, and that the status quo seems objective because it is what is most familiar, rather than what is most accurate.

So, if we are going to do our best to get at the truth without pretending that we are objective, I believe that we have two obligations. The first is to seek out all of the relevant evidence that we can find and not exclude any because it contradicts our position. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.”

The second is to describe our underlying assumptions as honestly as possible, and let others evaluate what we say based on their understanding of those assumptions. I’ll attempt to do that in this space next time.