I think this piece over-eggs the pudding. Reporters shouldn't strive for objectivity as much as they should strive to provide facts, which lets the reader decide what to think. This isn't a perfect formula, as some facts might be missed. But between a reporter and a good editor (remember those?), you're probably going to get close to as good and accurate story as it's going to be. In this sense, objectivity naturally occurs because a reporter went to a scene, event, crime, whatever, and provided as many facts as he or she could. The story gets filed, an editor reviews, and might say, what about xyz, did you ask this or that? This process, which may happen a few times depending on the type of story and the needs of publishing timing, moves the story toward truth.
Once reporters start intentionally including their viewpoints, they lose the reader and thus, lower readership. That's because once you start moving away from facts and objectivity, you unfortunately start heading toward an agenda. And having an agenda doesn't make you a journalist, it makes you an activist. Nor is it the reporter's job to tell us whether something is true or not. This new journalism tick of telling the reader there's no evidence to support what some person said in the article doesn't help because often the claim is written without any support of its own. Who said? Why? And if it is something this person actually believes, the reporter can just say that and then supply evidence that shows it is or might be incorrect.
Finally, the comment on objectivity being "determined by what doesn’t rock a white, male, upper-class sensibility and worldview" misses the mark. Newsrooms might be mostly white (not as much nowadays), but they're certainly not filled with upper-class whites. And btw, I don't have the evidence handy but I'm pretty sure most upper-class, college educated whites possess a worldview that aligns with the viewpoint of the person who made that comment. It's true a paper itself might have a certain worldview, but that often depends on ownership. But if reporters aspired to just supplying the facts and leaving opinion to the Op-Ed page, we'd have a better product and maybe more readership. If there was more balanced reporting, a paper like NYT could probably double its profits -- there is a large cohort, maybe half the country, that the NYT doesn't speak to. So, just the facts please, without fear of favor.
It strikes me that this is yet another example of specialists changing the name of something people want to talk about, and demanding that everyone follow their Thought Leaders (TM) in using the new language. It's great for would-be thought leaders attempting to demonstrate their superiority to potential followers, but not of much value for any other purpose. (Often such a change was originally intended to point to problems with a prior conception, but that rarely gets communicated _effectively_ to those being told to use the new language.)
It ought to be obvious to anyone who thinks about it, that objectivity is an aspirational goal, impossible to ever completely accomplish. A communication can be more or less objective, but can essentially never be 100% objective. If we stop using the word for that reason, or give it a negative connotation, and replace it with any of the other terms you list - or, improbably, with several used independently and accurately - my prediction is that at some time in the future, someone will be writing the same essay about those new terms. Specialists will hate them, non-specialists will just be annoyed with the specialists for changing terminology yet again.
You can't be 100% transparent. "100% consensus" usually means that those who disagree have been silenced or are being ignored. "Impartiality" often means taking into account several respectable (aka "elite") viewpoints; representing literally all viewpoints is impossible.
I think this piece over-eggs the pudding. Reporters shouldn't strive for objectivity as much as they should strive to provide facts, which lets the reader decide what to think. This isn't a perfect formula, as some facts might be missed. But between a reporter and a good editor (remember those?), you're probably going to get close to as good and accurate story as it's going to be. In this sense, objectivity naturally occurs because a reporter went to a scene, event, crime, whatever, and provided as many facts as he or she could. The story gets filed, an editor reviews, and might say, what about xyz, did you ask this or that? This process, which may happen a few times depending on the type of story and the needs of publishing timing, moves the story toward truth.
Once reporters start intentionally including their viewpoints, they lose the reader and thus, lower readership. That's because once you start moving away from facts and objectivity, you unfortunately start heading toward an agenda. And having an agenda doesn't make you a journalist, it makes you an activist. Nor is it the reporter's job to tell us whether something is true or not. This new journalism tick of telling the reader there's no evidence to support what some person said in the article doesn't help because often the claim is written without any support of its own. Who said? Why? And if it is something this person actually believes, the reporter can just say that and then supply evidence that shows it is or might be incorrect.
Finally, the comment on objectivity being "determined by what doesn’t rock a white, male, upper-class sensibility and worldview" misses the mark. Newsrooms might be mostly white (not as much nowadays), but they're certainly not filled with upper-class whites. And btw, I don't have the evidence handy but I'm pretty sure most upper-class, college educated whites possess a worldview that aligns with the viewpoint of the person who made that comment. It's true a paper itself might have a certain worldview, but that often depends on ownership. But if reporters aspired to just supplying the facts and leaving opinion to the Op-Ed page, we'd have a better product and maybe more readership. If there was more balanced reporting, a paper like NYT could probably double its profits -- there is a large cohort, maybe half the country, that the NYT doesn't speak to. So, just the facts please, without fear of favor.
It strikes me that this is yet another example of specialists changing the name of something people want to talk about, and demanding that everyone follow their Thought Leaders (TM) in using the new language. It's great for would-be thought leaders attempting to demonstrate their superiority to potential followers, but not of much value for any other purpose. (Often such a change was originally intended to point to problems with a prior conception, but that rarely gets communicated _effectively_ to those being told to use the new language.)
It ought to be obvious to anyone who thinks about it, that objectivity is an aspirational goal, impossible to ever completely accomplish. A communication can be more or less objective, but can essentially never be 100% objective. If we stop using the word for that reason, or give it a negative connotation, and replace it with any of the other terms you list - or, improbably, with several used independently and accurately - my prediction is that at some time in the future, someone will be writing the same essay about those new terms. Specialists will hate them, non-specialists will just be annoyed with the specialists for changing terminology yet again.
You can't be 100% transparent. "100% consensus" usually means that those who disagree have been silenced or are being ignored. "Impartiality" often means taking into account several respectable (aka "elite") viewpoints; representing literally all viewpoints is impossible.