ABSTRACT
Objectivity is one of the central ethical principles articulated by Stephen Klaidman and Tom Beauchamp in The Virtuous Journalist, one the most ambitious recent efforts to formulate a comprehensive theory of the ethics of journalism. Most defenders of objectivity have retreated from the claim that objective knowledge is possible in practice, taking the position that although complete objectivity can never be achieved in practice, the task of journalism is to come as close to objective truth as possible. More typically, objectivity is taken to rest in the elimination of any personal prejudice and the separation of facts from values and interpretation. Klaidman and Beauchamp, while defending the concept of objectivity, abandon the effort to ground journalistic objectivity in either "reality itself" or "a view from nowhere". The emphasis on facts in journalism is grounded, at least in part, in a desire to model journalism on science.
