The Ethics of Journalism in an Era of Ideology

Dear Subscribers,

CBS just announced that I have been hired as an independent contributor to 60 Minutes, where I will be reporting and producing stories of my choosing. It was thrilling, on social media, to hear people express the hope that I and other independent journalists could return 60 Minutes to its venerable place in the journalistic pantheon. It’s no secret that the show has gone through tremendous turmoil in the last months, and many people on the political left fear that the Trump administration is effectively dictating stories and opinions to the network. So, it was not surprising that a few of my readers – not many – expressed shock that I would work for what they considered to be “the enemy.”

Their concerns are heartfelt and understandable, given the troubling events at 60 Minutes over the last months. But I would like to address those concerns, particularly because they go straight to the heart of journalistic ethics and independence. I am a lifelong democratic voter and liberal and have mostly written for left wing publications. Some of those – I won’t embarrass them by revealing who they are – tried to pressure me into changing my reporting because the facts fell outside their ideological goals. I refused, and one publication canceled my assignment. I have also written for conservative publications, including a piece assigned by the National Review entitled, “When Journalism Dies,” about the peril that awaits us if we lose touch with objective reality. The article contained right-wing heresies that prompted angry responses from their MAGA-aligned readers – but the Review didn’t care. And they didn’t touch a word of my prose, but if they had, I would have simply walked away. Its exceedingly easy to stand up to editorial pressure if you want to. I’ve reproduced the article in my Substack if you care to read it:

https://sebastianjunger.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-journalists-are

One of the sentences in the piece was: “A journalist is someone who destroys his own opinions with the facts.” Let’s think about how that works. One of the threats to democracy is an ideological self-sorting where liberals like me work for “liberal” outlets and conservatives work for “conservative” outlets, and neither group challenges the ideology of their own camp. Under that model, I should have turned down CBS because it’s supposedly a given that they are more likely to coerce me into lying than I am to force them into accepting the truth. The result of this kind of self-sorting are two echo chambers that have no opportunity to discover the rational and objective truth that lies between them.

Another model, though, are independent journalists who are more committed to the truth than to their own careers; these people will simply refuse a direct order to lie. That happens all the time in journalism, in academia, in government and in industry. The journalists I most admire are the ones who would rather quit than serve any ideological purpose - be it liberal or conservative. Those people are the cure to the dangerous radicalization that seems to be gripping this country. Those people are the tribe that I am honored to include myself in.

Before I was hired, I asked CBS to look at my Substack to see for themselves that I work very hard to be free of both liberal and conservative bias. I also asked them to look at a piece I just published in the Wall Street Journal that took forceful issue with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to test the entire U.S. military for testosterone deficiency. It’s possible that CBS has hired the most ideologically neutral, independent voices they could find precisely to counter the critique that they are doing the Trump Administration’s bidding. If that is the case, they will be depending on us to maintain the high standards that have always been at the heart of our careers.

Regardless, I’m very clear that I’m working for the truth, not for CBS or anyone else, and it is my great honor to do that. You may think this is all nonsense and that I’m lying through my teeth, and that is entirely your right. But I would still invite you to look at my past work, and then at my upcoming work for CBS, and try to detect any deviation from the truth. Real journalists don’t tell people what to think; they tell people what to think about. I look forward to continuing to do exactly that for 60 Minutes.

Best wishes,

Sebastian