Time managing editor Rick Stengel giving the Bullion Lecture at the University of Mississippi says he was tired of his magazine asking questions and he wanted it to give a perspective (it’s on the audio player here):
I didn’t go to journalism school… This notion that journalism is objective or must be objective is always something that has bothered me. The notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy. I don’t know that there is such a thing as objectivity.
One way to break through commodified news, he says, “is to have a point of view, to have an opinion.”
He bases this on the notion that the journalist is an expert. I don’t think journalists are experts as often as they’d like to believe. They find the experts. But still, I do side with Stengel on objectivity.
That’s a perspective.
