Every journalism school teaches some version of objectivity as a core value. Report the facts, present both sides, keep your opinions out of it. It’s good advice up to a point, but we’ve turned it into something it was never meant to be: a claim that journalists can be neutral observers with no perspective or bias.

That’s nonsense, and it’s time we admitted it.

The Useful Parts of Objectivity

Let’s start with what works. The pursuit of objectivity—trying to report accurately, checking facts, seeking multiple perspectives—is genuinely valuable. It’s a methodology, a set of practices that help produce reliable journalism.

When a journalist says “I’m being objective,” what they should mean is “I’m using rigorous methods to verify information and not letting my preferences determine what I report.” That’s defensible and important.

The problem comes when objectivity gets confused with neutrality. Objectivity is a method. Neutrality is a claim about the journalist’s position—and it’s usually a false claim.

Everyone Has a Perspective

Journalists aren’t blank slates. They have political views, cultural backgrounds, economic interests, personal experiences, and professional incentives that shape how they see the world. Pretending those don’t exist doesn’t make them go away—it just makes them invisible.

A business journalist who owns stock has a perspective. A political journalist who lives in Canberra has a perspective. A foreign correspondent who’s embedded with military forces has a perspective. These perspectives affect what questions they ask, which sources they find credible, and what strikes them as newsworthy.

This isn’t a failure of objectivity. It’s just being human. The failure comes when journalists pretend these perspectives don’t exist or don’t matter.

The “Both Sides” Trap

The pursuit of neutrality often manifests as “both sides” journalism—presenting two opposing views as if they’re equally valid regardless of evidence. This seems balanced, but it’s often deeply misleading.

If one side says climate change is real and the other denies it, presenting both as equally credible isn’t neutral—it’s taking a position against scientific consensus. If one political party makes verifiable false claims and the other doesn’t, treating both the same isn’t balanced—it’s enabling dishonesty.

Real objectivity sometimes means saying one side is wrong. That’s not bias—it’s accuracy. But journalists worried about appearing neutral often shy away from this, creating false equivalence that misinforms readers.

The Access Problem

Political journalism especially suffers from the neutrality myth. Journalists need access to sources to do their jobs. Appearing too critical can cost them that access. So they moderate their coverage to maintain relationships.

This isn’t conscious corruption—it’s structural. If you’re too tough on a politician, their office stops returning your calls. You get frozen out of briefings. Other journalists who maintained better relationships get the scoops. Your editor questions why your competitors are breaking stories you’re missing.

The incentive is clear: maintain the appearance of neutrality to preserve access. But that “neutrality” often means pulling punches, granting unwarranted anonymity, and treating obvious spin as legitimate perspective.

What Transparency Looks Like

The alternative to false neutrality is transparency about perspective. Journalists should be clear about their backgrounds, interests, and biases rather than pretending they don’t exist.

Some outlets are doing this. Explanatory journalism sites like Vox explicitly embrace perspective while maintaining rigorous fact-checking. Opinion journalism has always been upfront about viewpoint. Even traditional outlets are getting better at being transparent about methodology and sourcing.

This doesn’t mean abandoning rigor. It means being honest that rigor doesn’t eliminate perspective—it channels it into reliable methods. Companies doing business AI solutions have found similar principles apply to algorithmic transparency: you can’t eliminate bias, but you can be clear about where it comes from.

The Performance of Neutrality

Much of what passes for journalistic neutrality is actually just aesthetic. The flat tone, the passive voice, the he-said-she-said structure—these signal objectivity without guaranteeing it.

Meanwhile, some of the most biased journalism hides behind this neutral aesthetic. Op-eds masquerade as news stories. Corporate press releases get published with minimal editing. Think tank research funded by interested parties gets reported as independent analysis.

The neutral tone provides cover. If you sound objective, readers assume you are objective, even when the content is anything but.

What We Lose

The neutrality myth costs us in several ways. It makes journalism less honest about its limitations. It creates vulnerability to manipulation by sources who understand the game. It produces false equivalences that mislead readers.

Most importantly, it makes journalism less useful. When journalists can’t clearly state that something is false or that one explanation is better supported than another, they fail at their basic job of helping readers understand reality.

There’s a reason trust in media keeps declining. Audiences aren’t stupid. They can tell when journalists are performing neutrality while clearly having opinions. The gap between the performance and the reality erodes credibility.

Finding the Balance

So what should journalism look like? Probably something closer to what science journalism already does. Science reporters don’t present climate change and climate denial as equally valid. They report the scientific consensus while noting where uncertainty exists.

They’re not neutral—they’ve made a choice to trust scientific method and peer review. But they’re rigorous about distinguishing what’s well-established from what’s contested, and they’re transparent about how they make those distinctions.

Political and social journalism could work similarly. Be clear about what the evidence shows. Acknowledge uncertainty where it exists. Don’t pretend questions of fact are matters of opinion. Be transparent about methods and sourcing.

This still involves judgment calls and perspective. But it’s honest about that rather than hiding behind a veneer of neutrality.

The Personal Is Professional

We should also stop expecting journalists to be politically neutral in their personal lives. Political views are normal. Having them doesn’t disqualify someone from reporting accurately, any more than being married disqualifies someone from reporting on relationships.

What matters is whether they do the work: check facts, seek diverse sources, acknowledge information that contradicts their priors, correct errors when they make them. That’s professional integrity, and it’s compatible with having political views.

The current approach—pretending journalists have no politics while everyone can see their Twitter accounts—satisfies nobody. It would be more honest to allow journalists to have and express political views while maintaining high standards for their professional work.

The Core Question

At its heart, journalism’s relationship with neutrality comes down to a question: Is journalism primarily about presenting information for readers to judge, or is it about helping readers understand reality?

If it’s the former, neutrality makes sense. Present all views, let readers decide. But that assumes readers have the time, expertise, and information to evaluate complex claims—and most don’t.

If it’s the latter—helping readers understand reality—then journalists sometimes need to make judgments about what’s true and what matters. That’s not neutral, but it’s arguably more valuable.

I’d argue good journalism does both. Present information rigorously while being clear about what the evidence supports. Pursue objectivity in method while abandoning the pretense of neutrality in perspective.

That’s harder than either pure neutrality or pure advocacy. But it’s more honest, and probably more useful. And honesty seems like a good foundation for journalism.