Objectivity is defined as: not influenced by personal feelings or opinions; considering only facts. But the very act of deciding to cover a story and chalking up various points it must illustrate is subjective because an individual, the reporter, has chosen to do so – that choice is shaped by experience, ideologies and leanings, views accumulated over a period of time and so on. So, how do scribes ensure fairness — the one thing that distinguishes a work of journalism from PR activity or propaganda?



We’ll get to that in a bit. First, The Story: Narendra Modi’s maiden visit as Prime Minister to the US, a country that had denied him a visa even while he was third-term Chief Minister of India’s seventh-largest state, Gujarat. Journalists here knew the story they wanted and went after it with gusto: Modi the rockstar PM receives rockstar reception in the US. The brief, it seems in this case, was Modi’s “arrival” and how grand it was going to be. Reports in mainstream papers like this, this and this seem to suggest so – one of which was published on July 16, almost two months before the visit.