How Journalism Schools Are Baking Bias Right Into The Cake

Over the past decade, the biggest news outlets in our country have resorted to reporting that is tainted by their journalists’ personal beliefs, regardless of political affiliation. Apparently, the virtue of objective reporting has become a thing of the past. Being a student at the Missouri School of Journalism has shown me that the main contributor that often doesn’t get the attention it deserves is the dwindling standards of journalistic ethics.

In one of my core journalism classes this past semester, my professor argued that “objectivity harms,” claiming that the ideal itself is essentially dead in the media today. This claim allowed her to justify the uncritical imposition of her own beliefs on a class of nearly 200 students. The irony was hard to miss. The course, Cross Cultural Journalism, was designed to teach students how to represent different groups fairly and accurately in the media. However, it became clear during the week on International Politics and Conflict that this was not the lesson being taught.