Objectivity and Stability

A lot has been said about objectivity at this time of national instability in the US, especially media and journalistic objectivity. The argument is that all reporting is somewhat subjective in a sense and to claim it is objective is false and even deceiving. It transforms the subjective (for example economic events through the lens of the dominant neoliberal ideology) into the objective through deceitful posturing, thereby lending them the veneer of a reliable, honest account of the facts. But what really is objectivity? And why does it seem to be breaking down in our national discourse?

Let’s argue that instead of being some absolute value, objectivity instead is a quality of not only a sincere attempt to understand the facts, but an underlying stability among the consensus surrounding those facts. When we understand something is objective, we not only feel certain that it corresponds with the facts as we see them, but feel certain that everyone else feels certain that it corresponds with the facts as well. We have no concrete means of verifying anything to the point of absolute certainty, but we can approximate this via universal consensus.

Objectivity will always occur inside some sort of ideological framework. Ideology doesn’t have to be some rigid dogma. It can be a faint yet firm framework used to understand the world. Science itself is an ideology in this sense. Science, as an ideology, puts emphasis on empirical facts and careful methodical logic in order to approximate objectivity. Science anchors its conditions for knowledge on external, verifiable phenomena, and because of this, it enjoys the greatest stability, reliability, and flexibility of all of our ideologies. Scientific content is always being revised, but the form of gathering content and the criteria for understanding the content will never change.

But then you have a more metaphysical, mystical, or dogmatic ideology, and you have a framework for understanding the world that is floating so to speak. It is floating on human understanding itself. This sort of ideology runs the danger of being revised and wielded by power, since its core content can be modified in accordance with the interpretation of intellectual authorities. Not only that, but the form of the ideology itself could be quite incongruent with the underlying reality it is trying to explain, and this incongruency may never be rectified. But nevertheless, an idea of objectivity can emerge within this limited framework among its adherents, so long as they all firmly believe that their ideology accurately describes the world and that there is a broad consensus on this fact.

Political ideologies are probably the most volatile in this regard. They emerge out of groups often with a strong emotional tie to some perceived reality that is generated within their own socio-political group, usually due to some reaction or desire for change. Objectivity becomes a perception to a truth concerning a limited group in political space. But that does not diminish the perception that there is an objective truth to the ideology’s adherents and their amplified certainty upon agreeing with one another. Though of course, some political ideologies are going to be closer to approximating reality than others.

But what happens when conditions under these ideologies begin to break down and its adherents experience group schisms or simply begin to disagree? Or what if one ideology comes up against another? Well then the competing ideas perceived to be inferior are experienced as contrivances. And sometimes all of the participants come to realize their own ideologies are contrivances and thus subjective, or that there are conflicting ideologies but there’s only one that’s right, and then issues of faith come up.

Now take journalism in the media. The dominant outlets gather their information and frame it through the lens of the dominant national ideology (today, in this case, Capitalist ideology, which can range from liberal to conservative depending on the consensus of national power). Now when the nation was stable and there was a decent enough consensus this process was called objective by reporters and administrators, and many probably believed it. But now that the nation has become unstable, and the national body has broken up into multiple groups with often widely differing ideologies, many perceive these posturings of objectivity to be ridiculous and insincere. Many even claim that any sort of objectivity is false and that everyone should just report with an explicit opinion.

This is more of a result of social fragmentation than a reflection of any truth. We can have objectivity, or at least, again, the approximation of it. Our ideologies and opinions can be closer to observed realities than inferior ones. And we can all agree on a given interpretation. This state of affairs can be extended for as long as the given consensus is a solid one supported by a useful, reliable, flexible ideology. When it can no longer function on its own merits, it is time to build a new one.