Keeping an Objective View

As someone who recently wrote an article regarding the October 15 Presidential Debate, I can personally attest to how difficult it is to remain objective when talking about a race that has polarized the nation. I watched the debate on Wednesday night from two points of view - from the perspective of a student and as a citizen, trying to form an educated opinion about the presidential candidates based on their performances and policies, and from the perspective of a journalist, trying to suppress whatever opinions I have in order to write and deliver an unbiased story to the readers of The Hawkeye.

Trust me, it's no easy feat.

Watching the debates (and the entire presidential race, for that matter) and simultaneously trying to form an opinion and suppress it is near impossible. And when it came down to actually writing the article, it was even more difficult. There were so many things I wanted to point out - like that McCain was perhaps a little too aggressive, using words like "petty," "cockamamie," and "idiocy," interrupting both Obama and Bob Schieffer (who, now that I'm allowed to have an opinion, did an excellent job as a moderator), and rolling his eyes while Obama responded to the questions. I wanted to point out how while McCain was definitely on the offensive during the debate, Obama was playing "rope-a-dope," as George Will, a columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post and a news analyst for ABC, said - calmly taking the blows and letting his opponent tire himself out. I found myself so tempted to talk about the things I hate to read about in the news - how Obama was wearing a red "power tie," and McCain a much subtler blue one, but how McCain was definitely the more firey debater of the night. I was so tempted to spend my space on McCain's Freudian slip, calling Obama "Senator Government," and how his comment that Governor Palin should be a role model for American women didn't sit too well with the Democratic audience.

I suppressed my opinion, as much as I could, and talked about what I think is more important - the issues (although I did spend a good amount of time talking about the negativity of each campaign, since it was brought up in the debate). Doing so was definitely the ethical thing to do as a journalist, but I found that it was so ungratifying as I deleted many well-written, if biased, passages from my computer screen. And while I think some of the stuff I omitted from my article (especially the whole tie thing) was good to omit, I think other parts were relavent to the story, I just didn't know how to say it objectively. While it is difficult to describe McCain's and Obama's contrasting demeanors without injecting a personal bias, it is a valid topic to discuss, because the average American voter is going to be looking not only at what the candidates say, but how they make them feel. McCain's aggressive stance on Wednesday night appealed to some viewers, because they feel such a strong figure would be a good leader, but other viewers felt that he lost his cool in some regards, which isn't quite such a good thing.

These points, which are near-impossible to report without bias and yet important to discuss, are why I think you end up with articles like this one, "Candidates Clash Over Character and Policy," by Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times. Rutenberg talked about some of the things that I didn't dare to address in my article, but deserve to be remembered - like when McCain came out and said "Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago," and Obama came back by saying, "The fact of the matter is that if I occasionally mistake your policies for George Bush’s policies, it’s because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people — on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities — you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush."

At the same time, though, I wouldn't call some of Rutenberg's diction cool and objective - words and phrases like "anger," "methodical determination," "placid," "bemused demeanor," and "Mr. Obama said sternly as Mr. McCain bristled," hardly fit that description. I agree with the points he made on the candidates' approaches to the debate, but some of what I read made me frustrated (especially after spending a considerable amount of time editing bias out of my article). I mean, if I'm editing myself, shouldn't the NY Times reporter be doing the same thing? Take the following paragraph, for instance:

"The debate touched on a wide variety of issues... But it also put on display the two very different temperaments of the candidates with less than three weeks until Election Day. The lasting image of the night could be the split screen of Mr. Obama, doing his best to maintain his unflappable demeanor under a sometimes withering attack, and Mr. McCain looking coiled, occasionally breathing deeply, apparently in an expression of impatience."

If that's not a slanted description, I don't know what is, but describing the demeanor of the candidates is perfectly valid. I guess what I'm saying is, being objective is harder than it looks... and at what point does a reporter cross the line from fair to biased?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/us/politics/16debate.html?_r=1&sq=third%20presidential%20debate&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all