Voice, opinion and objectivity: An Argo webinar

October 13, 2010 | 5:50 PM | By
FILED UNDER: Practice, analysis, Dan Gillmor, Elements of Journalism, ethics, Ezra Klein, style

I had a nuanced conversation today with the Argo bloggers and NPR’s Mark Memmott about the effects of different ways of couching perspectives and information. I’m posting the slides and a teensy bit of summary here now, with more context to come later.

Quick summary: I opened the conversation by saying that I didn’t intend to use the word “objectivity” much in relation to the conversation. To the extent I use the term, I talk about it as an ideal applied to a method, rather than to particular material. (I wouldn’t say a particular post is “objective,” but I might say a journalist pursued information in a rigorous, objective fashion.) I’ve taken inspiration on this point from Rosenstiel and Kovach’s Elements of Journalism, which clarified the distinction:

The call for journalists to adopt objectivity was an appeal for them to develop a consistent method of testing information – a transparent approach to evidence – precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work.


That clarification made, I talk about the values that inform this method: Accuracy, fairness, thoroughness, transparency and humility. (Thanks again to R&K, plus Dan Gillmor.)

Then we talked about voice. This was the real focus of the conversation – the effects of different approaches to presenting information, from the straight-news, just-the-facts voice to the more assertive, opinionated voice. We walked through several different posts by various bloggers, pinpointed each post on a scale from straight to analytical to assertive,* and talked about when each approach was effective, and when it was less so.

We concluded by recounting some rules of thumb that the examples – and our experience – suggested.

So with no further ado, the slides:

Voice, opinion, and objectivity: An Argo webinar

I’ll follow up soon with more detailed descriptions of the conversation around each set of blog posts.

* In fact, in the version of this presentation given, I drew a line from “straight” to “analytical” to “slanted.” Alex Friedrich made the good point that “slanted” has a more pejorative implication than I intended to apply, so I settled on “assertive” as a more appropriate word, borrowing again from Rosenstiel and Kovach’s distinction between the “journalism of verification” and the “journalism of assertion.”