Journalistic objectivity is a recent convention enabling shared trust markers rather than actual truth.

Evidence

To standards in journalism-‘objectivity,’ and so on-they are really talking about a set of conventions that have been created in this country over the past fifty years or so. These conventions tell the journalist how to write, and the reader how to read, a news story in an American newspaper. They set out what sort of information should go in the lead, who should be quoted in reference to what, and so on. As newspaper readers, we are so accustomed to these conventions that we barely notice them anymore. But their effect is to allow the reporter and the reader to share certain markers. You as the reader cannot be certain that what you are reading is ‘the truth’; you cannot be certain that it is ‘objective’ in any real sense. But you can be sure that the reporter will interview certain people and ask certain questions, that he will go about constructing the written account in a certain way, and that certain standards of accuracy and, if you like, fairness will be observed” (Lapham et al. 1985, pp. 40-41). — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 74

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to media-studies work on objectivity as an institutional ritual or ritualized convention (Gaye Tuchman), and to the ADDENDUM on garment moral panics as socially constructed norms. — connects to: Truth-telling critical work produces new knowledges rather than circular confirmations of known positions.; Narrative credibility depends on skill, not factual accuracy. — Janet Burroway; Elizabeth Stuckey-French; Ned Stuckey-French, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition: A Guide…, 56; The medium itself now produces truth rather than reflecting it. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 106 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Redefines ‘objectivity’ as a set of writer-reader conventions, not as correspondence to truth.
• QUESTION: Curious how far back the author thinks such trust-by-convention extends in other fields like auditing or law as impersonal trust substitutes.

Broader Connections

• Truth-telling critical work produces new knowledges rather than circular confirmations of known positions. #expands (0.80)
• Narrative credibility depends on skill, not factual accuracy. #expands (0.75) — Janet Burroway; Elizabeth Stuckey-French; Ned Stuckey-French, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition, 56