With Reference to E.H Carr’s What Is History? Consider the Extent to Which Journalists and Historians Face Similar Issues of Methodology. in Particular, Assess the Importance and the Feasibility of ‘Objectivity’ as a Principle of Their Work.

E.H Carr’s What is History? observes the historian as the collector and interpreter of the facts of the past that constitute ‘history’. Similarly, the modern journalist can be seen as the collector and interpreter of the information and facts that constitute ‘news’. With particular reference to E.H Carr, this essay will outline this close relationship and the parallels between the methodology of the journalist and the historian. It will consider the complications of these methods, focussing on the complex relationship between objectivity and subjectivity, and why absolute impartiality is unfeasible. This essay will demonstrate how a symbiosis of subjectivity and objectivity is necessary in order for history and journalism to function, and conclude by arguing that journalism and history are intrinsically linked in their processes and pursuits.

‘The facts of history do not exist for any historian till he creates them’ (Becker, 1910, p.528). This statement by American historian Carl Becker in 1910 is a concise yet persuasive summary of E.H Carr’s deliberation on the subject of the provenance of ‘history’. Carr firmly rejects the empiricist school of thought and its notion of ‘a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian’ (Carr, 1961, p.12). Instead he argues that history is a subjective process of selection and interpretation carried out by the historian. It involves a ‘dual task of discovering the few significant facts and turning them into facts of history, and of discarding the many insignificant facts as unhistorical’ (Carr, 1961, p.15).

Here is the first clear parallel between the methodology of the journalist and the historian. Journalism assumes many guises nowadays, but in its purest form the gathering and selection of information and facts lies at the core: ‘The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing’ (Kovach &...