Objectivity: It’s Time to Say Goodbye ‘As a standard to separate news from nonsense and a guide to ethical reporting, objectivity is about as reliable as judging character by the firmness of a handshake.’ By John H. McManus American journalism has long embraced an impossible standard—objectivity Beyond being unachievable, it’s undesirable because it rejects biases that are necessary if news is to be useful in a democracy—biases for the common good, for brevity, for making what’s important interesting.