TIME managing editor Richard Stengel tells us this week he can’t understand why newspapers still endorse candidates. Those endorsements call the newspapers’ objectivity into question.

After extolling the virtues of objectivity, he drops this passage on us:

I want our writers and reporters to express a point of view in their
stories. They’re experts, they’ve done their homework, and I think it’s
fair for writers to suggest that after thoroughly reviewing the
candidates’ policies on health care, they find one more practical than
another. That’s transparency. Media outlets should publish editorials
and take positions….

Huh? What about that objectivity you prize so much? Wouldn’t it be better if reporters just … reported? And what makes them experts in any subject other than writing opinionated magazine articles?

Stengel is no wide-eyed cub reporter for a high school newspaper. He knows better. Every media outlet exposes its biases every day. The stories chosen for publication; the way in which those stories are written; the sources chosen (or actively ignored) for attribution; and the placement of those stories within the “news hole” (in TIME‘s case, who or what gets cover-story treatment) all demonstrate evidence of subjective choices.

We’d all be better off if TIME and other media outlets that profess objectivity would drop the pretense.