The Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, the New York University and Columbia University co-sponsored a symposium in April 1999 entitled "Journalists Covering Conflict: Norms of Conduct". It provided an opportunity for professionals from the international news media and academia to discuss how norms and training can contribute to more effective news coverage of conflict situations. This article addresses one of the major issues that arose during the symposium: the tension between the news media's pursuit of objectivity and the ethical challenges of covering conflict.

The rise of objectivity as a journalistic ethic occurred in the last 60 years. Journalists, seeking to improve their status as purveyors of information, found that their credibility increased with non-partisan reporting. Objectivity and related norms of neutrality and fairness are now considered inviolable by journalists as part of their profession's commitment to discovering and reporting the truth. But they are also impossible ideals. Reporting is constantly influenced by the ongoing subjective decisions a reporter must make, such as whom to interview, which quotes to include, and what pictures to discard.

UN Photo/Janel Schroeder

Objectivity is an interesting choice as a value for a profession that has no other established standards of credentials or training. In their observance of objectivity, journalists can be grouped into three camps. The first assigns a strictly passive, neutral role for journalists; the second believes that reporting can be objective and create an incentive to take action; and the third abandons objectivity as the core value in war reporting.

The first camp defines objectivity in journalism as a form of neutrality, a "fly on the wall". According to Leslie Gelb, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, "journalists are in the business of news, not truth. When journalists forget that, they do very misleading and destructive things. News is what you can honestly find out that day. This is a constant process that bows to reality and doesn't impose any view on that reality."

The view of the journalist as a passive observer has been challenged on many grounds. Scientists question the ability of any human to be objective, and others question the moral dimensions of passivity. Robert Manoff, Director of the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media at New York University, develops an argument on the criminality of the passive role of journalists in violent conflict situations in his paper Telling the Truth to Peoples at Risk: Some Introductory Thoughts on Media and Conflict. "Experts have argued that bystanders play a role in propagating genocide - and journalism is, in fact, an institutionalized bystander of the world. If journalists do not act, they are contributing to the violence of the world."

The second camp of journalists claims objectivity as an ideal, but ignores the contradiction in its call to action. "What I think a reporter ought to be doing, and what we ought to be training reporters to do, is to lay the facts in such a way that it creates an incentive to take action", comments Seymour Topping, Sanpaolo Professor of International Journalism at Columbia University and Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia School of Journalism. In fact, most of the journalism community defines and rewards success not as the provision of accurate information, but in the way that information moves the public to action. Accordingly, news "fails" when there is no corresponding public reaction.

The third camp of journalists has abandoned objectivity - either permanently or because they believe the moral imperatives of a situation warrant it. In a 1996 interview in the Guardian, CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour was unequivocal. "Objectivity, that great journalistic buzzword, means giving all sides a fair hearing - not treating all sides the same - particularly when all sides are not the same. When you are in a situation like Bosnia, you are an accomplice - an accomplice to genocide."

Similar is the view of Roy Gutman, a reporter for Newsday who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Serb detention camps, explaining his own shift from objectivity: "I do not believe the fairness doctrine applies equally to victims and perpetrators." Some reject their role as objective observer in order to fulfil what they perceive to be a moral duty as a human witness. But there are still others who maintain that objectivity is not a valid goal. Obviously, there is a clear lack of consensus.

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