Being unbiased will help a writer gain respect and trust with the public.
A key to being objective is reporting only verifiable facts and eliminating personal opinions from stories. Eliminating the writer's opinion will allow the reader of the story to form an opinion of their own. One of the main goals in journalism to to inform.
Being objective also means being able and willing to tell all sides of a story. Interviewing a cop or reading a police report will provide a lot of valuable information for a crime story, but interviewing the suspect, victim and witnesses will give the story a full range of voices needed to tell the complete story.
Being objective can be difficult, especially when writing about crimes and people accused of crimes. A journalist has to be careful not to "convict" a person suspected of crime. Doing this is unfair, and it can also lead to lawsuits if the suspects ends up being found not guilty of the crime.
At the same time, the reporter needs to be careful not to exonerate a suspect before a court of law determines the case.
While criminal cases might seem the obvious examples of the importance of unbiased reporting, being objective is important in all aspects of journalism.
Just think of sports reporting. A reporter needs to remember to be able to put his or her loyalties aside when covering an event, so he or she can better explain the event and report on it in a unbiased manner.
In a perfect world sports reporters aren't fans of teams, but are fans of objectively reporting the story at hand.
The same holds true in reporting on business, travel, entertainment, civil issues, government and an other beat covered in journalism.
I work for The News-Press in Fort Myers covering a cops beat. It just so happens I worked on a story a few weeks ago that called for me to put my personal feelings aside and objectively tell the public about a man jailed for six months for a sexual assault on a young girl. It turns out the girl changed significant parts of her story during a deposition, and the charges against the man were dropped. The story was published in The News-Press on March 30.
Here is a link to the story on news-press.com:
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009903300356
While working on this story, there were many times when I could have let my personal feelings affect my view story. To start things off, the suspect was accused of sexually assaulting a young girl, which is one of the most troubling crimes. I had to put my obvious disgust for that type of crime out my head so I could understand his side of the story.
Once I heard his side, I had to put aside my feelings of guilt for his situation and attempt to talk to the accuser's mother, his ex wife, to get her side of the story. Unfortunately, in this case efforts to contact her didn't lead anywhere, so I was unable to present that side of the story.
The accuser was very outspoken in criticizing several state and local agencies for their handling of the case. While this makes for a great read and a strong reader responses, I had had to make sure I got these agencies' perspective on what happened.
Because they were government agencies, they weren't willing to say too much I couldn't find in public records, but the important thing as a journalist is to make sure you give them the chance to say something if they decide they want to. They key is to not take any one side. Present all sides of the story as equally as possible.
Above was just a brief example of how important it is to be objective in journalism.
Accomplishing this helps you gain credibility as a journalist.
I found some information for this blog at the following Web sites:
www.images.everything2.com
www.yourish.com
www.usatoday.com
www.news-press.com
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