ABSTRACT
Truth, according to a journalistic dictum, is the news reporter’s stock-in-trade. 1 Significantly, however, current research concerned with the ideological features of news discourse often tends to displace the problem of truth, generally preferring to prioritise in its place questions of ‘objectivity’ and ‘bias’. That is to say, debates over whether or not the news media accurately ‘reflect’ social reality, or the extent to which journalists can produce a ‘neutral’, ‘impartial’ news account, typically restrict the discussion to one regarding how best to separate ‘facts’ from ‘values’. As a result, the issue of what constitutes truth is often ignored, or otherwise simply dismissed as a philosophical matter of little consequence when the routine conventions of reporting are under scrutiny. To the degree that this conceptual orthodoxy is reproduced, then, rigid limits will continue to be placed on the types of research problematics which can be formulated.
