The Objective Reporter

Howdy Gents,

I just wanted to clarify and elaborate on my comments in class today.  I noticed there was some confusion at the time, so I want to take this opportunity to articulate my position to the best of my ability.  

The very word "fact" is a convention.  It is a linguistic structure dating back to the Latin factum, which meant something close to "deed" or "event" even with an evil connotation.  There is no doubt, though, that today we use the word to demarcate truth,what the reality of any situation was.  

In many cases fact is an established result of empirical data and observation.  Those facts carry such a large body of proof that in many cases they're truthiness (oh yes) is indisputable - the world is round example, perhaps overused but apt falls into this category.  

Yet, for those nuanced and multi-variable events that human narratives so often include, fact, I believe, becomes impossibly subjugated to perspective.  But more than that, to claim facts in those cases compresses complex situations into simple, digestible dominoes, that can be aligned in a way that would demonstrate the reality of a certain event.  

I believe that these sorts of facts are fallacies.  As conventions themselves they represent the agendas of all who participated in the construction and maintenance of the linguistic societal rules.  They are the products of the indoctrinated, and thus inseparable from perspective.   

Even if we were to remove every variable of the mirror analogy that Leighley suggests appropriately characterize her "objective fact news," the ways in which those facts are presented, structured, organized, and communicated are products of culture and invariably influence their content.  The upturned lip of a monotone shatters this theory.

I, though, have no problem with facts.  I think that there need to be things that we take for granted in this world.  We simply can not process all of the information we take in every day, let alone every week, etc.  But to ignore that the word fact represents a social contract of that sort can create major problems.  

To maintain that journalist, and news outlets, have an obligation to fact and to truth, is a conjecture that I think is unreasonable and unsound.   It is unfair to hold someone responsible for documenting truths beyond human existence.  We can not and can never be mirrors.        

Even CSPAN positions its camera.