During an interview with Jorge Ramos earlier this year Bill O'Riley eloquently argued that the press can't call someone a racist and cover them fairly, "If you, the top guy, has demonized him as a racist, how can you possibly cover him?" Of course, taking facts and changing them to fit ones own political agenda is something Fox News grapples with daily. Yet this argument has a voice far beyond the incorrigible Fox News, as documented in The Intercept.
Glenn Greenwald may hold greater disdain for "objective" journalism than any other journalist. In his piece, The Rise of Trump Shows the Danger and Sham of Compelled Journalistic "Neutrality," he condemns the kind of journalistic principles that NPR enforces e.g. telling one of its columnists not to voice opinions in one of her columns. He points out that the historically great Murrow and Cronkite could never have condemned McCarthyism or the Vietnam war under modern journalistic rules of "neutrality" or "objectivity." Traditional media had no concern for such illusory principles, he states. Rather, these principles are the creation of modern corporate media, evidenced by calling assassination "targeted killings" and calling torture "enhanced interrogation techniques."
If someone calls Mexican immigrants drug dealing rapists, calls for the rescinding of citizenship for millions of people, the deportations of millions, the carpet bombing of heavily populated cities, the mobilization of the military against planned parenthood, torture, and a database of Muslims, then journalists can't condemn them. That's the horrible truth of neutral journalism.
This line of thought implies that almost no one is objectively racist, sexist, a war criminal, etc. Anything short of self-proclaimed bigotry is normalized. A consequence of this is that powerful people with the resources, or sensationalism, to have their voices heard are allowed to say virtually anything. And rather than receive condemnation they get free publicity.
The press defends neutral, objective journalism by arguing it allows for people to form their own opinions. This perspective fails to see the normalizing affect neutrality has.
When people say it's always better to let people form their own opinions and there's no implicit acceptance in neutrality I think back to when my teenage sister told me, "War doesn't phase me. We've been at war as long as I can remember, it's been onTV for years. It's normal." Journalists never told her it was not.
