In journalism school, we are taught that we need to be objective in our reporting and writing. 

I could go into a long tangent about how objectivity in journalism is a myth created by gatekeepers in legacy media who wanted to control both the stories that were told and how those stories got told.

The whole point of “objectivity” in journalism was to not offend the main readers of news, who were and still are white men. Features sections were later added for white women, but at no point were Black people or our stories were not the consideration in legacy media or the entire objectivity debate. White men and white women have always been the target audience, and it’s still that way now. 

This means that the way stories get told about Black people was historically told through a lens that satisfied the sensibilities of white people. 

New media – or the media spaces that have been created since the advent of the internet — changed all of that. 

With more and more Black publications and outlets entering the arena and telling our stories in a way that honors us and uplifts our stories specifically, legacy media has not had the same level of control over what is considered “objective.” 

In this day and age, who you are as a person is directly reflected in the way you write your stories and the stories you choose to write. 

Opinion writing is not objective; it is, in fact, the exact opposite. It’s subjective AF. 

Opinion writing is a subset of journalism in which journalists, commentators, critics, etc. share their personal thoughts on the topic of their choosing. 

Those topics can be movies, current events, albums, politics, racial justice issues, social justice issues and the list goes on. 

The writing in opinion pieces is a bit looser than the writing you see in reported pieces. Op-eds tend to lean more into the way a writer personally expresses themselves. They may use slang or jargon that may not otherwise appear in regular news pieces, and their personality tends to come out more in the writing because, again, it is an expression of their deep, personal thoughts. 

Taking all of that into consideration, let’s talk about Ben Bolch’s op-ed that was published in the L.A. Times prior to the UCLA-LSU matchup in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.

Ben Bolch’s LA Times column on LSU is the latest example of how legacy media perpetuates misogynoir