The Revolution Will Not Be Objective

As a journalism student, many of my courses contain an implicit or explicit hinting towards objectivity and maintaining it in our stories. From my Introduction to Journalism course to News Editing, objectivity and every its synonyms are drilled into our heads. Contrastingly, the courses I take as an African Diaspora Studies minor instruct me otherwise. While studying the Black Power movement, Chicano/a Movement, Third World Liberation Movement, and current movements, one fact became increasingly clear: social equality and media objectivity do not necessarily coexist. 

It may be true that "good reporting" needs to be produced from an objective framework, but that may not mean that revolutionary media needs to be produced from that same framework. Studying the histories of papers advocating for workers rights during the United States' industrialization era and abolitionist publications during the U.S.' dark period of slavery, were not at all published from an objective lens. That, consequently, is the reason that these publications were effective. Multiple publications, such as the Working Man's Advocate and The Free Press that raised awareness about the issue of child labor, were centralized on a clear view: that laws needed to be developed for child laborers. William Lloyd Garrison did not publish The Liberator from an objective point of view. In that era, objectivity - as most of the larger publications attempted to achieve - only created complacency in the oppressive system at the time. 

Publications that make a difference in the lives of those fighting for social equality and a truly just world, cater to particular view points. If these publications did not take such a firm, oppossing view to existing literature of issues of poverty, race, class, sexuality, and etc, the status quo would never shift in different directions. 

References: "Awakening of a Nation to the Sins of Slavery" and "Fighting for the Rights of American Labor" in "Voices of Revolution"