The New York Times' publisher just wrote a generation-defining essay on independent journalism. And showed that he fundamentally doesn’t get it.

Why it's dangerous to conflate independence with objectivity. A response to "Journalism’s Essential Value" by A.G. Sulzberger

Image by Wally Gobetz (Flickr, CC)

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On Monday, May 15th, the publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, published a monumental defense of independent journalism in the pages of the Columbia Journalism Review (at just over 12,500 words, it takes about an hour to read). It’s the kind of once-in-a-lifetime essay that future media scholars will very likely teach their students. And there is much that’s admirable in it. In clear, powerful prose, Sulzberger describes the many difficulties journalists face and the many ideals that inspire them. These ideals are significant for our time and Sulzberger describes them well.

The problem is, Sulzberger mischaracterizes, and seems to misunderstand, the fundamental ideal he’s writing about—namely independence—and takes it to be the same thing as objectivity. While both are certainly laudable journalistic ideals, it should be evident to the world’s most powerful newspaper publisher that they are, nonetheless, two separate ideals. Yes, they relate in certain ways, but they also differ—and even conflict—in other ways, and these differences are essential to understand.

In his article, Sulzberger laments the loss of public trust in the media, blaming it in large part on the rise of disinformation. But the real cause can be traced back to the underlying viewpoint of his own article, a viewpoint that’s shared throughout mainstream media. There is, perhaps, no better example of this viewpoint than Sulzberger’s act of conflating independence with objectivity.

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First, it’s just weird that an essay on independent journalism—especially one that strives to be a definitive and timeless treatise on this highest journalistic ideal—confuses these two things. But the confusion is there from the start.

The title of the essay is, “Journalism’s Essential Value,” followed by the subtitle, “On the ‘objectivity’ debate.” So it would seem that objectivity is journalism’s essential value. The description that follows would seem to confirm this; it begins, “The debate around ‘objectivity’—if that’s even the right word, anymore—has become among the most contested in journalism.” Got it. So we’re definitely talking about objectivity, though the word itself is hotly contested. But then the first line of the essay is, “As long as independent journalism has existed, it has angered people who want stories told their way or not at all.” Wait. —What? Are we talking about independent journalism or objectivity? We’re less than a paragraph in and the reader already has cognitive whiplash.

From there the confusion only spreads. Usually an author defines their terms from the start so readers know exactly what they’re talking about, but Sulzberger gets 2,800 words into the essay before owning up to the fact that he’s combining these two entirely distinct terms:

Today, however, the word objectivity is so contested inside the journalistic community that it is viewed by many as self-discrediting in the debate over the role of journalism. I continue to believe that objectivity—or if the word is simply too much of a distraction, open-minded inquiry—remains a value worth striving for. But independence, the word we use inside the Times, better captures the full breadth of this journalistic approach and its promise to the public at large.

So independence is a kind of umbrella phrase, and Sulzberger clearly prefers it—he uses “independence” and “independent” ninety-six times in the article; in comparison, “objectivity” and “objective” appear a mere twenty times. And it’s understandable why: the ideal of independent journalism—the glorious “free press”—has been around since the very founding of the United States. Just think of the role the written word played in the American Revolution, how people like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine set the world on fire because they had access to a printing press. It all has a certain impassioned and hallowed aura about it. In comparison, “objective journalism” just sounds sterile.

And for good reason; it is a relatively new ideal and, in a way, it was born in the scientist’s lab. Sulzberger writes about this too—how the early 20th century reporter Walter Lippman wanted to apply the scientific method to journalism, how he encouraged reporters to keep an open mind and follow the facts wherever they lead.

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Obviously one can only praise such ideals. But still, the striving for objectivity, for impartiality, is not the same thing as independence. For example, it’s not at all what the founders were imagining when they enshrined the ideal of a free press in the constitution’s first amendment. They weren’t saying, “We need institutions that can be really objective about the news.” They were saying, “We need institutions that are free of the government—that are free of all power centers—and can act as a check on tyranny.”

Of course it would be great if the press was also objective, but that’s not what the founders were talking about. In the first amendment, the free press is mentioned right after free speech because it’s an extension, an institutional embodiment, of free speech. And both rights are mentioned alongside the separation of church and state (the so-called “establishment clause”), because they’re kin to the conviction that every citizen should be free to follow their own beliefs and ideas. The first amendment says nothing about objectivity; the whole thing is about freedom—the freedom of citizens to think what they want and speak their minds without powerful gatekeepers shutting them down.

It’s not that Sulzberger doesn’t know this. He does include this (actual) characterization of independence in his essay—it’s just that he only mentions it a couple times in a colossal work that’s ostensibly devoted to it. It’s clearly not worth spilling much ink over.

Frankly, Sulzberger is just co-opting “independent journalism” for his own purposes. I have a hard time ascribing sinister motives to this, seeing as our collective imagination of what a free press is, and could be, is so entirely vague and undeveloped. But using the ideal of independence—of freedom—to call on social media companies to censor journalism is a pretty bizarre and cynical move:

Search engines and, especially, social platforms—most notably Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok—have played an outsize role in creating the conditions that threaten independent journalism… I’m talking about the profound shifts in how people find and engage with information, shifts that have exacerbated groupthink, fostered antipathy, and fractured people’s understanding of reality. These platforms and others have largely treated facts as indistinguishable from opinions, allowed reality to mix with conspiracy, and given propaganda equal footing with journalism… they will continue to foster misinformation and polarization until they do more to both differentiate and elevate reputable independent news sources…

But what exactly are “reputable independent news sources” and who decides? Would the British government have considered Thomas Paine “reputable,” or would they have denounced his pamphlet Common Sense as propaganda that only furthered polarization? Of course Sulzberger isn’t asking the government to clamp down, he’s asking the companies that distribute the news to clamp down. It’s like asking the newsstands or grocery stores to stop carrying tabloids—that is, if those were the main places that people got their news, and if only a handful of companies owned them all. And he’s doing this in the name of defending the free press.

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Let’s be clear: objectivity is a worthy ideal—one that every human being should strive for—but it’s also an inner ideal; it can’t be imposed from without. For a person to become objective, they must learn to perceive that which influences them—not just outer forces, like the government or public opinion, but also their own inner biases, their own prejudices, their own sympathies and antipathies. It is indeed a form of independence, and a higher one at that. Inner independence. Inner freedom. But it simply can’t be forced. You can’t make someone be objective. You can only present it as an ideal and leave people free to pursue it. Or not.

So objectivity and independence don’t naturally conflict, it’s just that in promoting objectivity we often violate independence. We say, “People should be free, but only if they can be objective.” Which is to say, “People should be free to think and say whatever they want, as long as they think and say what I want them to.” Obviously freedom is negated by this condition—independence is nullified by the requirement to be objective. We need independence precisely for those views that we believe are partial and problematic. As Noam Chomsky put it so clearly:

If you believe in freedom of speech, then you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. I mean Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

But what about all the disinformation and fake news?! Can we really just let people consume any news they want? Won’t they just sit around eating garbage if we don’t “moderate” it in some way?

(The funny thing about this concern is that it’s never our side that’s consuming disinformation or fake news. It’s certainly never me. It’s always our opponents. Somehow, incredibly, our side has found the truth in relation to every. single. issue. And the other side has gotten every issue wrong. It’s wild, isn’t it? What are the chances? And I have to say, it does feel wonderful to be on the good side!)

To think this way is to treat people like children, to believe that they can’t be trusted to think for themselves. This is implicit in Sulzberger’s essay, though he says the opposite:

Independent journalism roots itself to an underlying confidence in the public; it trusts that people deserve to know the full truth and ultimately can be relied upon to use it wisely.

But how can that be anything other than lip-service? When you demand that social media companies better moderate content, the obvious fact is that you don’t trust the public to moderate it for themselves.

Sulzberger’s arguments for an objective approach to journalism are well-founded—objectivity does help us get closer to the truth. And his claim that the New York Times is objective, and other news sources aren’t, might be perfectly valid. But it doesn’t really matter. When it comes to a healthy, thriving free press, it’s entirely beside the point.

This is not to belittle the search for truth. Not at all. Everyone should do their utmost to try to perceive reality and help others do the same, and part of this is calling out all the misperceptions and false ideas that lead people astray. We shouldn’t hold back in this struggle, but give our whole hearts to it.

But when we let our fervor for the truth impel us to call for the other side to be silenced, that’s the moment we’ve taken a step too far. Because in that moment we’ve actually given up on the truth and decided it’s more important to win. In that moment we’ve given up on people finding the truth for themselves and decided that instead they must accept the truth as we see it. In that moment we’ve degraded truth and we’ve degraded human beings.

It can be hard to see this when you’re the one calling for censorship, but it’s not at all hard to see when you’re the one being censored. It’s immediately obvious, and it seeds the anger and mistrust we see in so many people today, seeds that are already in full bloom in the toxic culture wars all around us.

The viewpoint that my side has a monopoly on the truth and therefore it’s ok to bend the rules—to artificially amplify my own voice and dampen down my enemy’s—is the real cause of the public’s distrust in the media. It’s also the opposite of a true commitment to the free press. But we shouldn’t spend too much time lamenting the fact that the most powerful people in publishing can’t see this. We should instead work to envision what a truly free press would look like, and then do what we can to make it reality.