Fairness is our greatest goal

Journalists make many thousands of choices every day in reporting, writing and presenting the news.

What a newspaper decides to report on, what it decides to highlight on its front page, who a journalist decides to talk to and how the facts are presented invariably reflect the value judgments of the newspaper and its journalists.

Last week I wrote that news articles in the Star should not include reporters' opinions. Several readers responded to that with questions about whether news reporting in this newspaper is "slanted" to reflect this newspaper's long-held small-l liberal values as established by the Star's legendary publisher, Joseph Atkinson.

Clearly, the Star is a newspaper with a purpose. And I think it's fair to say that there is some inherent tension between the perceived ideal of totally impartial, "objective" journalism and the reality of this newspaper's role as an advocate for a fairer, better society.

When I was a young reporter here, imbued with a sense of journalistic mission aligned with the Star's values of the greatest good for the greatest number, I often wrestled with the challenge of journalists of my generation to be an "objective reporter" and write authoritatively about the issues I reported on without expressing my personal views.

For example, in 1985 at the behest of the then publisher, Beland Honderich, I was assigned a month-long project to examine hunger in a then-booming Toronto. What I learned about economic inequality in our midst by working in a food bank, lining up for meals at shelters and missions and food shopping with welfare moms shocked and saddened me. As a reporter, I never stated that opinion. But certainly, I hoped that my reporting of what I had learned would prod readers to question the public policies that allowed this injustice.

Honderich's 1989 convocation speech at Carleton University helped me better understand that complete objectivity in journalism is neither possible nor desirable. Fairness is what matters most.

"No self-respecting newspaper deliberately distorts or slants the news to make it conform to its own point of view. But you cannot publish a newspaper without making value judgments on what news you select to publish and how you present it in the paper," said Honderich, who retired as chairman of Torstar in 1993 after 52 years at the Star. He died in 2005.

"In saying that newspapers should be objective, the public undoubtedly believes as I do, that newspapers should be fair. But you can hold a point of view and still try to be fair," he said.

Innumerable tomes have been written on what fairness in journalism really means. I don't think there's any better, more succinct expression of this ideal than what Honderich said in 1989: "Fairness requires that whatever your personal beliefs, you report the news fairly and accurately, including all pertinent facts and points of view."

As a journalism professor at Ryerson University, I used the speech as a means to help students understand the impossibility of total objectivity in journalism and the more critical importance of fairness. I returned to it this week after being reminded of its significance by editor-in-chief Fred Kuntz during a discussion about the Star's values and the news/opinion divide.

The reality is that journalism that seeks to serve its community is not simply stenography. Journalists are required to do much more than witness and record the events of the day; they try to make sense of them in as fair a way as possible. Journalists are smart people with opinions, perspectives and the privilege of poking their noses and notebooks into the business of a community to help readers know and to understand.

And while the tenets of ethical journalism have long called for a clear distinction between news and opinion, it's essential to understand that all journalism is the art of selection, requiring many judgments by those smart people who gather, order and assess the facts within news organizations guided by values and principles.

Journalistic excellence demands that journalists and news organizations recognize this reality and engage in the reporting and presenting of both the news and opinion with a clear understanding that fairness is always our greatest goal.

publiced@thestar.ca