[O]n the one hand, our sense that an objective report is
disinterested, honest, reliable, impartial; and, on the other hand,
the sense that only something which is not subjective – which does not
partake of the individual human viewpoint – can be fully objective,
neutrally conveying things and events that are out in the world
without the distorting coloration of human consciousness. A good
newspaper reporter can be objective in the first sense (reliable,
honest, and so on), but only a machine, like a television camera could
possibly be onjective in that second sense. And even that possibility
seems remote… for in order to become a functional picture of reality,
even television’s images need to be absorbed by our particular minds.
The picture itself can have no meaning until viewers make something of
it… We depend on people to give objective – in the sense of
disinterested and impartial – interpretations to videotape…
Objectivity, in the first of the two senses, is a quality that only
the human mind can have.