mediaethics

The Myth of Objectivity

Subtitle: How neutrality fails trauma journalism and why empathy is a better metric

Author: Megan A. Green
Project: Cognitive Culture Series
Date: October 2025

Abstract

Traditional journalism still clings to a 20th-century fantasy: that reporters can observe without influencing.
But when covering trauma, disability, or cultic abuse, detachment becomes complicity.
This essay reframes “objectivity” as a cultural performance—a posture of distance that privileges comfort over truth.

The Problem with Neutrality

Neutrality implies that all sides deserve equal weight. In stories of harm, that’s false balance.
When survivors describe coercion, and perpetrators describe “misunderstandings,” giving both equal space isn’t fairness—it’s mathematical erasure.
Trauma fields require discernment, not detachment.

The Reporter as Participant

Every journalist shapes the narrative by the questions they ask, the silences they leave, and the platforms they choose.
Pretending otherwise absolves them of accountability.
Objectivity isn’t absence of bias—it’s unacknowledged bias wearing formal clothes.

I learned this the hard way. When sources from cultic networks spoke to me as a survivor first and a journalist second, their trust depended on shared experience, not credentials.
To pretend that empathy contaminated my reporting would be to deny the very method that made honesty possible.

Empathy as Methodology

Empathy doesn’t mean agreement; it means precision in listening.
It allows for context without collapse.
An empathetic reporter can distinguish between manipulation and memory without granting both equal credibility.

Trauma-informed journalism begins with self-audit:
– Who benefits from my framing?
– Whose pain am I translating for whose comfort?
– What language normalizes harm as inevitability?

Reframing Accuracy

The ethical pivot is from “objectivity” to transparency.
Readers deserve to know where a writer stands, what informs their lens, and how they manage conflicts of interest.
Honest subjectivity produces clearer data than feigned neutrality.

TL;DR

Objectivity is not the absence of bias; it’s the denial of empathy.
Trauma reporting demands clarity, not coldness.
The goal isn’t to stand outside the story—it’s to tell it without betraying the people who lived it.