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For Politico, 'Objectivity' Means Asking Only Arms Industry Sources About an Arms Industry Endorsement Julie Hollar ([link removed])


[link removed] often cling to the idea of objectivity ([link removed]) as the key to their credibility. New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet, for instance, defends his insistence on not calling Donald Trump a racist ([link removed]) , or not calling out right-wing lies, because doing so would supposedly undermine the paper's claim to objectivity, and therefore the impact of its reporting; his aim, he told a Times reporter in an interview (The Daily, 1/31/20 ([link removed]) ; Press Watch, 1/31/20 ([link removed]) ), is "sophisticated, true objectivity."

FAIR has argued against this idea over ([link removed]) and over again ([link removed]) , and today we offer yet another example of the impossibility of objectivity, and the ways in which media's explicit or tacit claims to it in fact produce subjective interpretations of events.

The head of a major arms industry group—the Aerospace Industries Association that represents companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon— recently announced his personal endorsement of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. As a news outlet, how do you report this story? Who do you interview about it?
Politico: The head of the AIA endorsed Biden for president. Will that create problems?

Once you put news about the US military under the heading "Defense," you're already selling propaganda (Politico, 6/29/20).

We have Politico's answer (6/29/20 ([link removed]) ) in a piece yesterday under the headline, "The Head of the AIA Endorsed Biden for President. Will That Create Problems?"

You might read that and think, "Sure, that could create problems, since most people are against endless war and endlessly increasing budgets for the military/industrial complex."

You'd be right (see, e.g., The Nation, 6/6/20 ([link removed]) )—but you wouldn't be thinking like a Politico reporter.

Politico aspires to be an essential Beltway media outlet; it advertises ([link removed]) itself as aiming to "create, inform and engage a global citizenry," but also to "inform the powerful, particularly those who have a political, professional or financial stake in politics and policy."

Like the Times' Baquet, Politico's editorial leadership boasts of its objectivity. At a 2019 event (Daily Trojan, 4/17/19 ([link removed]) ), Politico editor Carrie Budoff Brown told her audience:

None of us are not biased. I know that. I’m not asking people to curb all of their feelings, but I do want them to bring objectivity to [reporting]....

I want everyone to look at the media and believe it’s a credible institution. I’m trying to do my part. There’s a time and a place for expression [and] opinion, and I think if you’re a reporter at Politico, you know what our jam is.

In other words, you're unlikely to find a Politico reporter who hasn't drunk the objectivity Kool-Aid. But you start running into problems with "objectivity" before a word is even written, because by calling the section in which it publishes the story "Defense," Politico has already adopted the propagandistic military/industrial term for our overwhelmingly offensive military force.

With that kind of starting point, perhaps it's no surprise that the piece looks exclusively within the industry for comment, letting sources from the for-profit arms business frame the story. Thus the potential "problem," reporter Jacqueline Feldscher explained, is that "defense companies and lobbyists" worry that the "trade group may not be able to represent their interests to the Trump administration." This, according to her "interviews with 10 industry officials, lobbyists, staffers and experts."

But what about those opposed to the influence of the military industry on our elections, and on our political system more broadly? For such sources, the obvious questions the endorsement raises would be about how it might influence Biden's military policy, and perhaps whether such an endorsement would be demotivating for antiwar voters in Biden's voter base. At the very least, some kind of reference to Biden's military policy and political record would seem to be pertinent to the story—but no such information can be found in Feldscher's version.

Politico might argue that such a framing would be for its "Election" news section—except there's no such article there, nor does siloing news in that way serve any purpose but to shield the "defense" industry from voices it presumably doesn't want to hear. And so the "powerful" people Politico seeks to inform—as well as the broader "global citizenry" it gestures toward—are left with the impression that such political endorsements have no implications worth considering outside of those directly affecting the military industry, and that the only opinions worth considering on this issue are those of members of that industry.

Feldscher didn't write about her personal feelings on the issue, sure. But that doesn't make this kind of reporting anything approaching "objective"—which is exactly Politico's jam.
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Featured image: Screengrab from the Aerospace Industries Association website ([link removed]) .
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