Objectivity is less a feature which journalism provides and more a part of its very foundation. If you are going to get your information from someone else, you want your source to be trustworthy. Therefore, objectivity becomes important to journalists and to this discussion. Without it, journalists would not be trusted by their readers. There is of course a difference between news and editorials, where the format indicates a lesser amount of objectivity (as it also does in columns). It is easy for a company to mimic objectivity by avoiding particular formats, thereby perhaps gaining the trust of the audience for their commercials. But how can objectivity be defined?
   There has of course been research on the subject. One question that arises is whether journalists should try to find the truth behind the claims of different sources, or just report what has been said. My opinion is that the newsroom that adopts the policy to always just report what has been said and never look deeper will have very little interesting news. And if it is not reported what has been said, there will be no point in looking deeper. Both might not be in the same report, but they are definitely two journalistically valid and important tasks.
   Monroe E Price quotes Habermas, who coined the term "Ideal Speech Situation". That is the fact that "every time we speak we are making four validity claims: to comprehensibility, truth, appropriateness and sincerity. Ideal speech is inconsistent with an intention to distort, or to use overweening power or wealth purposely to manipulate." (Price 1995: 27) That goes for journalism too. Price states that "a medium cannot be considered truly a participant in the public sphere if those who habitually use it do not, in their speech, abide by a high standard of truth, comprehensibility, appropriateness, and sincerity." (Price 1995: 27) That is why journalism needs objectivity.
   Wolfgang Donsbach and Bettina Klett constructed five different definitions of objectivity, and then asked journalists in different countries which was the closest to their own. The definitions were: "No subjectivity" (that the journalist's political beliefs must not affect the presentation of the subject), "Fair representation" (to express the position of each side in a political dispute), "Fair scepticism" (an equally thorough questioning of the position of each side), "Hard facts" (to go beyond the statements to find the facts of a political dispute), and "Value judgment" (to make clear which side has the better position). (Donsbach & Klett 1993: 63-64) Very few journalists said that the "Value judgment" was the best definition, but they differed on which of the other four was the best. For an individual journalist it most likely varies which is the better approach for each article, but a journalist could compare one single story to the definitions and see how she or he would define "objectivity" in that case. In a political matter even the middle alternative, "Fair scepticism", with its questioning of either position, is well nigh impossible without seeming to take sides. In the Swedish EU debate, most articles were just referring to what both sides had said. Few wanted to get more deeply involved and risk to seem partial.
   Ellen Hume quotes Lani Guinier, who says that "fairness does not mean simply looking for extremes on either end of the spectrum in order to present a controversy, but being prepared to show the nuance, to show the complexity, to show the range of viewpoints that may enlighten, not just entertain." (quoted in Hume 1996) This seems to be particularly important in the US, where objectivity is closely related to "balance", which is often misenterpreted to mean that both sides of a conflict should get an equal amount of good or bad publicity--and that practice is not really objective by any standard.
   Mark Pedelty argues against this American view of balance as objectivity. As Donsbach and Klett showed, there are at least four other notions of objectivity, and "Fair representation" is not even in the middle; it is one of the two where the reporter does very little to reach some sort of truth. (Key concepts of objectivity, such as Truth and Fact, can ironically vary a great deal. I simply mean them to mean "that which we can know if we look hard".)
   Several of the reporters that Pedelty interviewed talk about "building a case" for the audience. Even if they are convinced of what is going on, and of whether it is good or bad, the reporters want to offer the audience a nuanced image of the events. Even one of the journalists who disagrees says: "It is not a question of presenting it and letting the reader sort it out. You sort it out first." (Pedelty 1995: 179) Still, this person does not believe in telling the reader which side is right, just in sorting out the evidence. So they all actually agree.
   Not only writing, but all forms of editing reality, are confronted with the objectivity discussion. Michael Gurevitch points to the different uses of seemingly neutral news agency pictures. Pictures of a sunny beach can also be used as pictures of an empty beach. Neither can be said to be wrong, even if the photographer went there to report on the weather and not the tourism revenues. In that sense, I would even agree with his statement that pictures from satellite feeds could be regarded "almost as 'an empty vessel'" (Gurevitch 1996: 220).
   As I said, the format influences the audience's perception of objectivity. "The interpretive conventions of reporters, sources, and editors are made to seem quite minimal when news is written according to the accepted conventions." (Pedelty 1995: 190) Pedelty then says: "Conformity feels like freedom." In the news sense, conformity might actually be freedom, since it will help the journalist communicate with the audience and thereby give more time to explain the story. But it is a freedom that has to be changed constantly by breaking the rules from time to time.
   Another problem is that reporting in itself interferes with the events (Gurevitch 1996: 214; Serfaty 1990: 9). This is the same problem that faces many sciences; where to draw the line between the observer and the observed, how to be certain that the observation instrument does not change that which it is supposed to observe. In that same field, Gurevitch points out that for lack of global polls, global public opinion is what the media say it is (Gurevitch 1996: 218).