In any journalism school, you are always told that being objective and non-partisan is what makes you a good journalist. Once you graduate and start working, it's the same thing. Objectivity is considered sacred in journalism.

But honestly, can objectivity ever exist in anything we do, much less in journalism? In reality, journalists can only strive to be as objective as possible; or here's a much better phrase - strive their best to portray themselves and their stories as objectively as possible.

Naturally, as human beings, we are already subjective and partisan in our thoughts. It's just a human trait that enables us to survive. And everyone is affected by economic, political and social elements that surround us in our everyday environment.

I am a journalist and I did (eventually) go to journalism school and I have always declared myself to be non-objective and partisan. Yes, you could even say that I am a biased journalist. But one thing is for sure, at least I am an honest journalist.

I am of the opinion that you can be biased in journalism because that is what freedom of speech guarantees. But you cannot be a dishonest journalist. A journalist can persuade people but not through lying, fabricating facts and evidence or hide facts.

So I was particularly interested when I heard that veteran journalist and professor John Dinges from the United States was going to be in town as part of the Cooler Lumpur Festival 2016 to talk about the role of journalism in serving democracy.

According to Dinges, journalists and the news media need to always maintain objectivity because they are the ones entrusted with the responsibility of being the watchdogs for the public. They provide the right information for the people to make the right choices.

Without objective journalism, there won't exist a check and balance system that has the interest of the public in mind. So if anything, journalists and news media are really providing a service for the people.

So I laid out my point for Dinges to think about and respond. In an environment like Malaysia, we are hard-pressed to find any news organisation that is anywhere objective and in the middle. It is either a hard right or a hard left. You are either on one side or the other.

We have the many news organisations that are owned or controlled by the ruling party that would be perceived as biased to them, and we have the many alternative media that would be perceived as biased against them. You all know the examples.

We can't run away from the fact that ownership of the media, whether political or corporate, will affect objectivity. The same goes to revenue sources for these media organisations and also systematic laws and regulations that govern the media.

Build your own opinion

Now before you all start to roast me on this, I'm not saying there aren't any news organisations that are striving to be the middle ground. There are, and I listen and read those that are. All I'm saying is that it's really rare and hard to find.

And in a situation like this, the public will still be presented with the information they need. It's just that it is presented on very extreme sides and the responsibility to interpret and make sense of the information will fall on the public. They will then come up with their own conclusion.

My question that I wanted to get a response from is - wouldn't that be a democratic environment whereby people still obtain stories from both sides of the divide and then come to their own decisions based on the information that they have obtained?

Dinges agreed with me that news organisations and journalists can have their bias and they can have their leanings when it comes to their editorial content strategy. That is a part of freedom of speech, as long as it isn't hate speech or lies.

But if the media organisations are so polarised, that would only mean that the public will become polarised too because without any media organisations that are objective and in the centre, they have no other alternatives to show them that there is a middle ground.

The only option they have is to either be on the extreme right or left without any spectrum in between. It's basically saying that you are either with us or you are with them. A polarised media would only contribute to creating a polarised society.

So in essence, what Dinges is saying is that having the existence of an objective media and objective journalists is quite an important element in creating a proper and working democracy. And I guess I have no choice but to agree because I do see his point.

However, I still am of the belief that complete objectivity is just something impossible to achieve. I still think that human beings are naturally partisan and bias. Come on. It's almost impossible to turn a realist into an idealist.

But I can accept that the next best thing to being objective is that we as journalists and members of the media can just strive as much as possible to be objective, or at least to portray that we are trying to be objective as convincingly as possible.

ZAN AZLEE is a writer, documentary filmmaker, journalist and academic. His objectivity is quite subjective. Visit fatbidin.com to view his work.