The theme of this semester seems to be centered on objectivity and subjectivity. These are ideas I’ve dealt with a lot as a journalist, but lately I’ve really been thinking about it a lot. As I wrote in one of my papers for Covering Race lately, as a journalism student I’ve been told that objectivity is the highest ideal. I’ve pursued it, trying to keep my personal beliefs and opinions out of the discussion. I always had the feeling that perfect objectivity was unnattainable, but lately I’m feeling like even imperfect objectivity doesn’t even exist.

It’s hard to deny that all actions and all speech and writing are political. For some of you Americans, you may need to broaden your perspective on what the word “political” means. What I mean is that just about everything anyone does has an agenda. I know this isn’t some crazy new idea, but my point is that as a journalist and writer, it’s something I need to reconcile on a philosophical level. If nothing else, I want to maintain my integrity and feel like what I do in the world has a purpose and goal. If I’m told throughout all these years that writing objectivity is how I do that most effectively, what does it say about my world view if I’ve suddenly decided it’s impossible to do so?

This is a much abbreviated version of the post I want to make about this, and I’ll expand on it more and more as I figure it out in my own head. But for now the conclusion I’ve come to, as to how I can rationalize calling myself a journalist while knowing that objectivity is impossible, is that I need to change my definition of goals. Instead of trying to be objective, honesty and integrity need to be the mainstays of my profession.

These days, mainstream media is a joke, and I don’t fancy the idea of being a cog in that machine. That’s part of why I wanted to start my own blog: freedom of choice and speech. Here I can really be honest and maintain my integrity to myself. True, I’m not going to make a living at it, and I haven’t really started writing journalistically here. But at least here I can say “this is what I stand for and believe in, and here’s how I see the world.”

I think subconsciously, when I realized objectivity was an illusion, which is a conclusion I came upon a few years ago, I was disillusioned by the profession in its entirety. My faith in it is coming back; driving a garbage truck all last winter and listening to NPR for several hours a day helped that. More than anything, though, I’m coming to terms with how to cope in a subjective world. If nothing else, I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not to sell my stories. Hell, I could give up my morals for plenty of other jobs and make better money if I wanted to.

Anyway, this is sort of a rough sketch of my ideas on objectivity and subjectivity. I may come back and edit this, or post a more polished version later on, or some of the papers I’m working on that expand on it. In the meantime, if you have thoughts about what objectivity and subjectivity mean to you, I’d be happy to hear them and maybe gain some insight.

I’d put this together a little more, but that mouth problem I mentioned earlier has gotten considerably worse. It’s infected now and the infection is spreading to the ear, and it’s pretty damn painful and getting worse. Oddly enough, it even hurts on the right side of my scalp, and I get shooting pains through my ear and up to the top of my head. Ugh. Depending on my state of affairs in the morning I’ll be going to the doctor to get some antibiotics and, hopefully, some painkillers that’ll knock me out for a couple of days. It couldn’t be shittier timing; I have two presentations and a paper due tomorrow, all of which I worked my ass off today to do a good job on, and oddly enough I was actually looking forward to giving them. Shocker, I know. When the hell did I become a good student again?