Essay on Social Justice vs. Objective Reporting

Submitted By mrsdbendolph
Words: 764
Pages: 4

Social Justice vs. Objective Reporting

CM 450
November 18, 2013
Dean Gualco

Social Justice vs. Objective Reporting
The term social justice when referring to journalistic practices has a great deal with ethical principles. Social justice will go after what is ethically right that the journalist will choose to be proactive about. In difference objective reporting will tell both sides of the story without letting the story lean to one side or the other. Objective reporting is ideal to allow readers to honestly decide what side they want to be on once hearing the facts to the story. A journalist should always try to keep personal opinion out of reporting but as humans it quite difficult not to respond and take side, especially on hot topic issues. Professionalism will prevail if a journalist could hold off making comments when trying to explain facts within a story. In recent times the biggest debate in government is the stance on the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, and just as America is taking sides, journalist are reporting the story in the matter at which they support or do not support ObamaCare. There has not been a lot of objective reporting when talking about the Affordable Health Care Act as journalists are showing their support towards the social justice of the act, or they are refusing to support it by revealing evidence of why it might fail the American people. It is important that when speaking about such hot topic subjects in the media, such as ObamaCare fighting for social justice is important but not as important as reporting the most accurate story to the fact with little to no opinion from the journalist that is writing.
Social agenda or Objectively reported
The Affordable Care act was passed to allow the consumer more control of health coverage by stopping insurance companies from cancelling health plans and increasing premium for some of the previous mundane reasons. The slang name ObamaCare has been the talk of the nation for the past couple of months because there is a clear split with protestors and supporters. Supporters of ObamaCare argue that this act is of a social justice agenda as this gives all Americans access to healthcare without paying unrealistic rates. Equality would be considered an ethical standard so one could argue that Mill was right when he said, “majority of journalist equate objectivity with journalistic ethics” (Is Ethical Journalism Simply Objective Reporting, 1985). The two approaches, social justice and objectivity, are alike, as there are both positive goals when it comes to reporting the news. Social justice wants to bring about fairness and objectivity remains fair by stating the facts while reporting. The main difference between the two is that objectivity’s main goal is to only give you the fact and leave all opinion out, while social justice is clearly leaning to one side of an issue and will try to convince others as well. Some demographics, such as teens, reject the idea that there could be objectiveness in journalistic practices. Teens tend to gravitate to fake news or “snarky” news rather than the official type (With Facebook, Blogs, and Fake