That old, tired balancing act: did the election kill objective campaign journalism?

• Author: Welch, Matt

JAY ROSEN, CHAIR of the Journalism Department at New York University, calls it "The Contraption." Thomas Lang, a correspondent for CampaignDesk.org, terms it the "automatic pilot approach to reporting." Hunter S. Thompson labels it "the Objective rules and dogma," adding that it's "one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long." More politely, A Free and Responsible Press, the influential 1947 report prepared by an all-star cast of 13 academics, referred to it as the means by which reporters pursue "a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day's events in a context which gives them meaning."

By whatever name, the ethic by which the vast majority of daily newspapers and network news broadcasts have produced their work in the last half-century has come under a perhaps unprecedentedly heavy barrage of questioning by self-doubting journalists in the wake of George Bush's re-election. From New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who awoke November 3 feeling "deeply troubled" about his countrymen, to Los Angeles Times photographer Luis Sinco, who abruptly left Iraq because of the election's "clear-cut signal" that "we as journalists are not changing anybody's mind about this conflict," reporters seemed to take the results as a personal repudiation, requiring immediate reassessment.

A few of the many examples:

October 24: "We journalists, we are at sea," former New York Times reporter Doug McGill writes on mcgillreport.org, "because our Grand Old Professional Code is falling to pieces."

October 30: "There's a growing sense that this race may involve tectonic shifts in the landscape of political journalism," predicts Los Angeles Times media columnist Tim Rutten.

November 12: "We are moving away from a model of objective reporting," Alex Jones, director of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, warns in a speech. "We are moving from partisanship to something much worse." The same day, National Journal columnist William Powers tells The Hartford Courant, "There is so much change happening, and everyone feels a little lost and disoriented."

Jay Rosen crystallized the debate on November 3 with the provocative suggestion that some media outlets currently in the Objective camp might switch to a self-consciously Oppositional stance, treating the Bush administration more like Rush Limbaugh treats Hillary Clinton.

"The contraption [mainstream journalism] has...