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When Barack Obama was named the next president by a JumboTron-size Wolf Blitzer, the crowd at Grant Park positively thundered with celebration. That was to be expected. What I didn’t expect was that half of the hard-nosed journalists around me would also simultaneously burst into tears of joy.
In the days leading up to the election, I practiced my poker face religiously. I’d miraculously gotten press passes when the news station I’d interned at in South Africa for my journalism residency announced it was coming to the U.S. to cover the election. Excited as I was, I dreaded letting a hint of emotion shine through on Election Day — I’d be denounced by the more-weathered reporters, ejected from the press box as a fraud.
I shouldn’t have worried.
All forms of bias showed through on Tuesday night. Journalists whooped and hollered when Obama won Pennsylvania. They wore “Change” pins on their jackets. They took pictures of Obama’s acceptance speech with their phones like preteen girls at a Hannah Montana concert.
Whatever emotion I was afraid of showing was replaced by something unexpected: utter bewilderment.
If there’s anything that I’ve learned in three and a half years of Medill classes, it’s that unbiased reporting is next to godliness. Journalism professors intone time and time again that personal opinion needs to be sacrificed for something called “truth.” When I was a freshmen, this sounded like a small price to pay.
Now in the middle of my senior year, this presidential campaign has made me realize what I’ve actually signed up for. I can’t wear candidate buttons. I can’t make campaign donations. I can’t even put a damn sign in my window.
It’s been a painful reeducation process: Journalism ideals demand that I switch off the part of myself that harbors a personal opinion. In a Medillian utopia, I can’t prefer peanut butter to jelly, let alone Obama to McCain.
It didn’t become apparent how difficult this would be until I tried to apply classroom theory to the real world. My first taste of real unbiased reporting came during a stint at a major news company in Washington D.C. this past summer. My first week on the job, I was sent to a political rally for Michelle Obama at an upscale hotel. When she walked onto the stage, the room erupted with applause. I lifted my hands to clap (it’s what everyone in the room was doing!) when I noticed all the reporters in the press box giving me dirty looks.
I had to sit on my hands for the rest of the event. It made taking notes difficult.
It took months of practice, but I eventually learned to talk politics without saying the word “I.” Not surprisingly, my incredibly political relatives gave up talking to me at family dinners. I had become a dispassionate robot that only spewed facts and numbers. My mother wondered aloud if I’d secretly switched political affiliations while at college.
I felt increasingly conflicted leading up to November 4th. The day before Election Day, I had a minor crisis of conviction, one of those “What am I doing with my life?” moments. I’m not sure what brought it on. Maybe it was all the Obama shirts on campus. On the verge of a meltdown, I burst into my roommate’s room.
“Am I doing enough for democracy?!” I shouted.
My roommate was fresh from canvassing all weekend in Ohio, three Obama stickers pressed to her vest. She looked at me like I was an idiot.
“Free press is incredibly important for democracy,” she said without hesitation.
And with that sentiment in my back pocket, I headed down to Grant Park.
It stuck with me until Pennsylvania went blue. That’s when I first heard sounds in the press section. Sounds of happiness. Forbidden sounds.
With battleground states quickly falling to Obama, the jubilant feeling from the crowd was infectious, and many of my fellow reporters seemed to have caught the bug. They pumped their fists in the air. They shouted. They cried. I was so surprised I could only gape.
But the surprise quickly dissolved into relief. Watching the blubbering reporters around me, I realized that journalists aren’t robots concerned only with the truth. They’re human too, and try as they might, they can’t just switch off the opinion part of their brain. The press corral on Tuesday night was definitely Obamaland, and when he won, the journalists wanted to celebrate, too.
Which isn’t to say that I approve of the reporters’ victory dance. Yes, what we learn in the classroom obviously gets bent in the newsroom. But the credibility of all journalists relies on the illusion that we’re impartial. “No bias” is just a smoke screen journalists hide behind to gain authority for the facts they report. When journalists let their masks slip, they’re not doing their jobs. And when they’re not doing their jobs, people don’t know who to trust.
I’m disappointed that some reporters at Grant Park couldn’t constrain themselves until they got home. But then again, I waited until the safe confines of my apartment before letting my emotions loose. And you know what? It was kind of lonely.