Anyone looking to report for The Varsity may take note during the onboarding process that there is a ‘News-Opinion divide’ they must adhere to. In accordance with The Varsity’s Editorial Practices, the paper prevents contributors from reporting on topics which “they have taken strong opinion stances on in the past,” and prohibits contributors who write more than one article for the News section from writing more than one article for the Opinion section during any given publication year, and vice versa.
According to The Varsity’s Editorial Practices, the News-Opinion divide is meant to ensure that any articles that make it to print “preserve the optics of impartiality,” or objectivity. At first glance, the policy appears rather straightforward and sensible; however, I believe that a closer examination of The Varsity’s ethos indicates that applying this policy may be difficult to justify because of the elusive nature of objectivity.
Objectivity can be misleading
On April 3, 2023, The Varsity’s Editorial Board published an article titled “Objective journalism shouldn’t be the goal.” In this article, the Board criticized the phenomenon of false balance, in which the media — in its pursuit of objectivity — often “presents opposing viewpoints as equal, even when that’s not supported by credible sources and facts.”
It went further to explain how this obsession with objectivity is not only harmful but also conceals the benefits of allowing people who have “specific personal experience with [a] topic” to report on that topic. These benefits could include locating sources or identifying issues that are not immediately “obvious to people coming from outside” of a certain community, embracing a sort of subjectivity that the News-Opinion divide aims to squash.
The Varsity — if it sees itself as a home for aspiring professional journalists — should acknowledge the contradictions of its policies in practice and allow contributors to write for both the Opinion and News sections simultaneously.
Indeed, it concedes in its Editorial that reporting on “underrepresented and marginalised communities” through an objective lens is problematic, so I suspect there should be little pushback from The Varsity against changing its ‘News-Opinion divide’ policies from this standpoint.
The real pushback, I think, will come from concerns about reporting on “politics and public organisations,” where, according to the Editorial, objectivity supposedly “has its place.” But I’d argue that this distinction makes very little sense given that “politics and public organisations” are precisely what contribute to the marginalization of communities.
Does objectivity even exist?
More recent contributions to The Varsity indicate that I am not alone in questioning this relationship between objectivity and the media we consume.
In a Varsity Opinion article titled “Flawed journalism is costing Palestinians their lives” published in November 2024, Ayesha Siddiqui argues, based on Western coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, that “journalists [had already taken] sides, whether we acknowledge[d] it or not,” and I agree. I believe it is wrong, therefore, to champion objectivity by pretending that a journalist does not have opinions simply because they have not published any in print.
Some states can act with impunity when targeting journalists, such as with Israel’s direct intimidation and assassination of Palestinian journalists covering the genocide in Gaza. I would therefore argue that to demand impartiality, objectivity, and neutrality — whatever you want to call it — within the field of journalism feels increasingly trivial.
This is especially unreasonable if these journalists are to voice concerns about such impunity and its effect on their own lives only to have their experiences discounted. Would their backgrounds as Palestinians render them too partial and discount their other reporting?
Contributors who write for both sections may fail at times to distinguish between opinions and facts, but this failure should be confronted, not avoided. I believe it is the job of editors to identify writers’ blind spots and to question if there are legitimate perspectives that have been ignored in their reporting.
The potential failure of editors to do so — whether at The Varsity or a nationwide outlet — should, in turn, be anticipated by a long overdue bigger campaign for increased media literacy. Readers need a deeper understanding of the way news conglomerates operate and enable them to identify potential blind spots or cynical narratives more easily.
If the media must hold those in power to account, who if not readers, will hold the media outlets to account when they falter? This task of holding the media to account becomes much easier once an outlet stops pushing so ardently the News-Opinion divide that gives readers the false impression that the objectivity of the News section is not impenetrable — or that it even exists.
Lina Obeidat is a second-year student at Innis College studying political science and English.
