Even when we refuse to believe what the media tells us, we still read their papers and watch their broadcasts and follow their viewpoints rather than our own. The media sets the agenda, defines what it is we must believe or disbelieve, accept or reject (Parenti 49).
Just as the media has the ability to influence what we read and hear, there is no shared understanding of news. David Shaw demonstrates this authority of the editor in a simple study. Shaw, for the first 155 days of 1977, compared the front-page stories of the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. Shaw discovered that, contrary to popular belief, the three papers had very little in common on the choice of front-page stories. Approximately one third of the days studied, the papers had different lead stories. On a fifth of the days, there wasn't a single font page story in common. Of roughly half the days studied, the three newspapers had only ten to fifteen percent of their stories in common. At least twenty five percent of the stories occupying the headline position of the one of the papers didn't appear anywhere in either of the other two (Weaver 125).
This further proves the point that the media is objective, but not in the "liberal" or "conservative" sense, but rather by what the editor deems appropriate or interesting.
Professor Jim Carey of the Columbia University said that, "All journalism is in some measure interpretive, virtually by definition. [And] yes, it can be impartial to the extent that any human endeavor can be impartial, which means imperfectly and with a margin of error (Carey).".
This quotation additionally demonstrates that objectivity in journalism is impossible. The moment an objective reporter begins to contemplate his or her assignment in the morning, that reporter has already opened the door to interpretative journalism. A reporter's job is to relate judgment to information, although not always is the judgment good, and decide all the facets of the assignment: where to go, whom to interview, what vocabulary to use to describe what he or she saw, what words to use for the lead, whom to quote, what to omit.