Objectivity

It really annoys me that while objectivity is not entirely dead in the media, it certainly is in perilous condition and losing ground. "Objectivity" means, to me, a presentation of the facts in as neutral a fashion as humanly possible (taking into account unavoidable human psychological tendencies and working purposely to identify/eliminate any bias). Let me be clear: Just wandering into an event, turning on a TV camera, and calling it 'done' is not right. C-SPAN runs the camera without talking heads, but this cannot be considered objective because 'fact check' is missing. Report on what was said, but then correct the speaker's stated number of '8 million participants' to the actual, counted '500 people were there'. Sgt Friday from Dragnet had it right in stating he wanted just the facts.

Americans are no longer getting 'just the facts'. They're getting a carefully engineered screed purposely designed more to entertain in the guise of information than to provide real reportage, more to provide profits than facts. Sensationalism is much cheaper to produce and, like a diet of junk food, much more popular. Couple this now with agenda-driven news organizations who twist whatever remained of worthwhile content into agitprop, and we have a real challenge to our form of government.

Free speech is vital to a democracy and I do not want to restrict this in any way. What needs to be addressed is those who insist on yelling "Fire" in a crowded movie house. We have got to place more importance on the truth... even when it is not as entertaining.