Just the Facts: How "Objectivity" Came to Define American Journalism

Just the Facts: How "Objectivity" Came to

Define American Journalism. By David T. Z.

Mindich. New York: New York Univer

sity Press. 1998. 201 pp.

I found it appropriate that this carefully crafted historical investigation of the raison d'etre of American journalism should have quotation marks around the central word in the title. This is the golden age of the tabloid philosophy in that there is an ever shrinking line of demarcation between what we call the news and what we regard as entertainment. If one were to point fingers of blame at the messengers, it is easy to single out America's transplanted Australian Rupert Murdoch, Britain's seedy element on Fleet Street and Canada's Quebecor as ready examples of those who have purportedly transformed the time honored transmission of news into something more that "just the facts." It is more difficult, but not impossible, to single out the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the CBS Evening News to mention three outlets once considered bastions of journalism excellence, as the new merchants of sin and slime. Their respective passions for the Clinton-Lewinsky gossip did not quite match that of the eyewitness news set, but they weren't far behind. In a word, journalism professors now regularly argue that the concept of "objectivity" is as dead as the Roman Empire. In many ways the title of Mindich's final chapter "Thoughts On A Post-Objective Profession" pays heed to many of the same principles.

The words on the dustcover make the claim that until this book appeared, the concept...