In the minds of many newspaper readers, the ethical editor suspends personal belief when on the job, having been trained in techniques that strip subjectivity from news reporting. Like a judge in the courtroom, editors in the newsroom are expected to flip a switch and become robotic reviewers of fact.
With that expectation, one might be surprised by this statement from Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the late publisher of The New York Times: “You’re not buying news when you buy The New York Times, you’re buying judgment.”
Every editorial decision involves personal judgment. We deem what stories are worth reporting, whose perspective is worth citing and what information to include or omit. The “veil of perception,” as John Locke described it, makes some subjectivity inescapable. Good editors embrace that reality, weighing the facts before taking a distinct angle for reporting them.
The greatest damage is done when editors put on a charade of pure objectivity, and the same can be said of leaders at Georgetown, both students and administrators. When we pretend to be impartial arbiters and repress our better judgment, we allow black and Latino applicants to be severely underrepresented in graduate admissions, we allow the 2009 Initiative on Diversity and Inclusiveness for faculty to founder and we allow student groups to become exclusive and like minded. We deny or downplay the inequality of opportunity at Georgetown and how dramatic our collective leg up is compared to so many away from the Hilltop.
Editors are wary of jargon and the tendency of columnists or interview subjects to hide behind it. The Jesuit tradition is rich in values – “education of the whole person,” “men and women for others” – but too often are these concepts abused, becoming empty promises that many take pleasure in evoking but take pains not to practice. Instead of citing these values in defense of the status quo, we must read deeper into what they entail and how they can be better realized.
Certain values are sacred to journalistic judgment, and “transparency” – the buzzword of this past summer on the Hilltop – is among them. The Hoya does its best to expose issues and raise awareness, but we also depend on a basic level of openness. In that regard, schools officials have repeatedly failed to meet their end of the bargain, paying lip service to “the Jesuit commitment to