A recent post (maybe more of a rant) by Alan Meckler of Jupitermedia over how his company is portrayed on Wikipedia reminds me that I've long thought that it's almost impossible to be objective. (Link to post here.)
Alan's beef is that the entry is innaccurate. I have no way of judging if he's right or not, nor do I really care. But it seems that every institution that tries to be "objective" from the New York Times to Wikipedia needs to realize that anything a human writes is by definition not objective. Just providing both sides of the story and trying to stick to facts is not enough. Because in the end it depends on what facts you include, in what context they're portrayed.
In the case of Jupitermedia Alan is taking offense at some controversy he says never occurred:
Then read the next controversy. There is reference to something about social networking at JupiterResearch. First of all we do not own JupiterResearch anymore and secondly as far as I am aware there was never a controversy about social networking, JupiterResearch and Jupitermedia. Clearly whomever added this "controversy" was promoting a book or service or something that has nothing to do with facts or history.
Alan is objecting to something he's not "aware" of. Thus, this controversy probably could have happened. Or it could have been important to the writer, but not the company. Might it just be better to admit the article aspires to be objective but the reality is it isn't?
I am beginning to realize that what I call "point of view journalism", something The Economist is excellent at, is the wave of the future. Because there is so much media out there most consumers of mainstream media already come in with a perspective (bias?) to begin with and nothing is going to change their mind. (If someone thinks the New York Times is liberal, it's pretty certain they will feel that way not matter what the paper write. Same goes for Fox News and its perceived conservative slant.)
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