Objectivity – A fact or merely a word? Ladies and Gents, I give you my pride and joy… My one and only English dissertation. If you’re interested in THE TRUTH behind Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s criminal trial, and, more importantly, whether or not journalists are objectively truthful when reporting crimes against humanity, then this is the piece for you.
Introduction
The possibility of objectivity in journalism has been at the centre of critical debates for decades, but it is of pressing relevance when covering stories about national tragedies. Conventional journalism involves a detachment from the facts that are being reported, in order for the writer to present them from a neutral perspective. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “objectivity” in itself entails “the ability to consider or represent facts, information etc., without being influenced by personal feelings or opinions” (“objectivity”). In other words, the goal of an objective story is to provide an impartial account of an event, providing the public with both sides, in a balanced manner. However, in being commissioned for their work, there is a fear that journalists create captivating stories at the expense of veracity, by embellishing them with additional facts, words, or relatable emotions and feelings. Thus, with journalism being defined by its “performative nature” (Harbers and Broersma, 624) rather than its descriptive ability, it is conceivable that it has been widely regarded as an inadequate medium in reporting historical events, particularly those which have impacted the public on an international scale, namely World War II and its aftermath. The years of 1961 and 1962 witnessed the trial of Karl Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), one of Hitler’s head officers, responsible for the transportation of the Jewish people from the German Reich to the concentration camps. Captured by the Mossad (Israeli Security Service) in 1960, Eichmann was brought to Israel to stand trial for the charges he committed during the War. These judicial proceedings captured the public’s attention on an international scale, awakening its interest in both the emotional and the political ramifications of the Holocaust. In 1961, Eichmann was found guilty of murdering thousands of Jewish men and women, and subsequently in June 1962 he was executed by hanging. The trial itself brought the horror of Nazi crimes to the forefront of world news, and the charges were innumerable. David Landor, the Director of the Government Press Office at that time, was engrossed in dealing with one of the first issues raised after the capture of Eichmann in Argentina, namely the allocation of seats for journalists within the courtroom. Since media coverage was essential in honouring all future Jewish people, and in promoting historical preservation, cultural respect and political outcome, this was a prominent concern.
This dissertation focuses on the ways in which the Eichmann trial was reported in the 1960s, in order to determine the extent to which objectivity is truly possible when reporting crimes against humanity itself, or whether journalism is merely about bending the public’s opinion, and disregarding the truth. My thesis focuses on the writing of two women: Martha Gellhorn, an American travel writer and journalist, considered by many to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the twentieth century, and Hannah Arendt, an American political theorist, philosopher and writer. My argument thus proceeds in two steps. The first section focuses on Martha Gellhorn’s chapter “Eichmann and the Private Conscience” (1962), by exploring the ways in which her writing style pre-empts that of New Journalism, the scope of which is to reach a deeper truth by immersing oneself in to the situation, and offering a personal perspective to the reader. The second section explores Hannah Arendt’s approach in her piece “Eichmann in Jerusalem I” (1963), in which she distances herself from the human experience, as recounted by Gellhorn, in favour of a political ideology, as she claims that emotions are misleading, whilst facts are essential in attributing meaning to historical trials. In her opinion, experience cannot provide factual proof, as it is based on hearsay and self-deception, both of which make it an unreliable source when presented as evidence in court. By analysing the different ways in which both women report what they witnessed within the courtroom, I will examine which approach is more effective in terms of objectivity and conveying the truth to the public.
The Importance of Being Ernest:
Martha Gellhorn’s “Eichmann and the Private Conscience” (1962)
In 1962, during a time of peace, Martha Gellhorn wrote an article for the Atlantic, a cultural and literary American magazine, founded in 1857 as the Atlantic Monthly. In the article titled “Eichmann and the Private Conscience”, she recounted her experience during the infamous Eichmann trial, and the trauma she witnessed within the courtroom in 1961. Her first-hand description of the event is neither political, nor personal, it is, however, humane. “Humane” was originally synonym of “civil, courteous, or obliging towards others”, however, its later meaning was extended to “characterized by sympathy with and consideration for others; feeling or showing compassion towards humans or animals” (OED Online, “humane”), and it is strictly in the latter sense that the term will be used in this chapter. In descending from German Jews herself (Benfey, 105), Gellhorn’s writing is humane in that she connects with the victims on a personal level, and subsequently chooses to eulogize their innocence through her words, but also humane in that her writing shows no sympathy nor compassion towards the men responsible for such atrocities, namely Eichmann. Considered by many to be “one of the greatest war correspondents of her generation” (Benfey, 105), Gellhorn is remembered for her opinion that “journalism is simply the act of keeping the record straight” (Gellhorn, Interview by Pilger). But how simple is this task when emotions and compassion are involved? In response to this question, this section explores Gellhorn’s style of reporting the Eichmann trial, in order to examine the extent to which the line between objectivity and subjectivity is blurred, and whether or not the former is actually possible.
In an interview with John Pilger, Gellhorn was asked how she managed to report what she saw in the Dachau extermination camp objectively, to which she replied:
I wasn’t objective; I didn’t have to be objective. What was there to be objective about? It was a total and absolute horror, and all I did was report it as it was. I did not invent anything. I don’t even know what you mean exactly by objective, I mean if you suppress, I did neither suppress nor invent. I reported it, exactly how it was. And if you report what you see, unless your eyes are bad, I don’t see how you can be anything but objective. You don’t lie, you don’t make it different from what it was, you don’t conceal something, you don’t add something. It’s there in front of you, that’s what you see, that’s what you report. (Gellhorn, Interview by Pilger)
I quote this at length because it is crucial when thinking about her reportage of the Eichmann trial. The question that arises is whether objectivity is truly possible. In stating “what you see” is “what you report”, she is implying that all perspectives of objectivity are, in fact, subjective; “subjectivity” intended here as “not impartial or literal; [but] personal, individual” (OED Online, “subjectivity”). Impartiality during the trial was not possible for Gellhorn, due to her descending from the same social group as the victims and survivors, and her identification with the audience is clear in her article through the use of pronouns such as “we” and “us”. Immediately, within the first paragraph she places herself amongst the “people” (245), claiming “we have all stared, from time to time we stare again” (245). The use of “we” allows her to insert herself in to a comfortable intimate ethos frame with the audience, both in the courtroom, and out, allowing those who were not able to sit in on the trial to participate. In doing so, she identifies not only with the journalists present, but also with the survivors, thus pointing to her biasness, and consequently her subjectivity. In addition to the use of pronouns through which she identifies with the Jewish people who are present, her bias is explicitly shown by her use of rhetorical questions: “How is it possible? He breathes, eats, sleeps, hears, sees. What goes on inside him? Who is he. Who on earth is he? How can he have been what he was, done what he did? How is it possible?” (245). In a similar way to her former husband Ernest Hemingway’s article “Who Murdered the Vets?”, in which he uses a hostile tone to hold the government accountable for the death of hundreds of veterans, Gellhorn’s “Eichmann and the Private Conscience” is also looking for someone to blame for the so called “Final Solution”. By posing rhetorical questions as such, she is appealing to the conscience of whomever may be reading. Human “conscience” is, in fact, “the faculty or principle which judges the moral quality of one’s actions or motives” (OED Online, “conscience”), thus Gellhorn is challenging the readers to ask themselves what is moral and what is not. Gellhorn wanted to find out about the people, place herself among them and reach a deeper truth, rather than keeping to “the clichés of politics and statistics” (317), which she considers to be impersonal, superficial and uninteresting.
With these rhetorical questions the tone is set: utter disgust and shock, which she then expresses explicitly: “This man is exempt from our pity”, “we cannot understand him” (246). Again, she speaks for the whole of the audience by merely using pronouns such as “our” and “we”, thus transposing the issue on to a collective level within the courtroom, and giving the people a voice. Her style of writing reflects the structure of the courtroom itself: Gellhorn representing both victims and survivors, giving evidence of the ordeals they went through, and painting Eichmann in an inhumane light. In this way, the reader is positioned as the juror that must decide on what is right and what is wrong; whilst the accused and his defence attorney are on the other side of the room, ironically protected behind the “bullet proof glass dock” (245). Gellhorn provides evidence by contrasting her disbelief of Eichmann’s clean psychic evaluation with images of infant’s craniums being smashed against the pavement, gold being retrieved from corpse’s mouths, and how “occasionally in the slashed stomachs of corpses precious stones could be found” (247). When talking about Gellhorn’s book The Face of War (1959), Giovanna Dell’Orto claims that by using “fresh images, bare, visually powerful language and jarring juxtapositions, Gellhorn constructed a reality of war that was meant to eulogize its innocent victims, denounce its dehumanized perpetrators” (310). She uses her words like a camera to highlight the extent to which these atrocities were endorsed by the Nazis. However, her subjectivity creeps in again by steering away from the detached tone characteristic of objectivity, and inserting herself within the collective in saying “he stole lives, from us all”. The images she paints throughout the article can be seen as documents presented to convince the jurors of his guilt. However, these are not concrete evidence, but merely abstract pictures passed from one mind to the next, thus inevitably tainted by each individual’s subjective thoughts.
Trials can be difficult for the average person to interpret; they can be complicated and full of lawful words that are unknown to the public ear. Gellhorn offers a simplified version of the proceedings, one that is accessible to everyone, as she claims: “those of us who are only human beings and not law-givers can understand this: that a person driven by despair, hope or anger…changes his mood, wonders off, forgets” (98). This suggests that it is precisely through emotion that Gellhorn’s commonality with the audience is strengthened, and her credibility grows. Through her prose she attempts to connect with those in the audience on a personal level, thus providing them with a truth that they could understand and relate to, by reaching the emotions caused by the facts. The beginning of “Eichmann and the Private Conscience” presents a structure of a conventional fairy tale: “In the bulletproof glass dock … sits a little man with a thin neck” (Gellhorn, 245). The term “fairy tale” is here intended as “a story or narrative, true or fictitious, drawn up as to interest or amuse, or to preserve the history of a fact or incident” (OED Online, “tale”). Gellhorn’s article presents both sides of this definition: it intends to present the audience with evidence of the horrors that occurred during the Second World War, to teach and preserve; but its purpose is also to keep the fan base of The Atlantic amused, by whom Gellhorn was commissioned to report the trial. Fairy tales have existed for thousands of years, and still permeate general culture with their underlying life lessons. Known for presenting a pleasurable narrative to the reader, they also subtly endorse a moral lesson by which to abide. Although Gellhorn’s work does not commence with the conventional “Once upon a time”, and does not end with the “happily ever after”, it is there to educate and use Eichmann himself as “a fact, a symbol” (Gellhorn, 263) from which to learn. The purpose is not to be objective, but to transmit the loss and the pain caused by this simple man, sat “in the bulletproof glass dock” (245). Gellhorn claims that “the trial was essential, to every human being now alive, and to all who follow us… We are all desperately involved, all of us, everywhere… This is the best record we and our descendants will ever have (248).
In fact, Dell’Orto argues that by concentrating on the victims, Gellhorn makes “the reader see with abhorrence the absurdity of hatred, see with awe the endurance of life and hope” (310). This style of reporting, based on the subjective account of the victims and survivors, rather than on the objective crimes committed by Eichmann, can be defined as literary journalism, the purpose of which is “to portray the look of the world and at the same time to recreate its feeling from a subjective point of view” (Dell’Orto, 306). Gellhorn is arguably digging deeper, in order to reveal information not disclosed by others. According to Michael Schudson, “objective reporting is supposed to be cool, rather than emotional, in tone” (150), thus Gellhorn is clearly rejecting the “coolness” associated with objectivity, as her reactions, and those of the audience within the courtroom, convey the emotional reality of the event. However, just because she is steering away from the conventional tropes of objective reporting, does not mean she is rejecting objectivity in itself. Arguably, Gellhorn is pre-empting the subjective style of New Journalism, which in John Hollowell’s words “strives for a higher kind of ‘objectivity’” (22) by revealing what is beneath the surface, going beyond the facts, and commenting on what is both on and off the record.
Despite objectivity being the “norm” (Schudson, 149) of reporting during the 20th century, there was still “a reluctance to incorporate the mass media and journalism into accounts of different historical periods” (Williams, 343). In other words, journalism was not seen as an adequate means through which to report historical events and facts, because the physical and mental act of reporting is not a mechanical process, rather there is a creative side to it. Thus, full objectivity can never be obtained, as historical events and facts get twisted by the subjective view of whomever is reporting them. Gellhorn is purposefully integrating her perspective into her writing, and in doing so she blurs the lines between journalism and literature. She defends the dignity of the survivors by putting forward those who remain unheard in the witness box: “Behind me, like soft surf, I could hear women in the audience, an indrawn sob of horror and grief were the daily emotions in that courtroom” (255). In drawing attention to those who are not explicitly in the lime light, Gellhorn focuses more on the effect than on the cause, the former being the afflicted, and the latter being Eichmann, as if she were giving evidence to support his public condemnation, and she were doing so on the people’s behalf. This approach is similar, if not identical, to that of the New Journalism, as its style “is intimately bound to the extreme experiences of the social and political climate of the decade” (Hollowell, 41). In this case, the “extreme experiences” relate to World War II, which affected individual people just as much as entire countries.
By focusing on the “extraordinary resilience of the human soul” (Dell’Orto, 306), and not merely on the facts, she is immersing herself in to the situation, thus providing more security for the reader that she is, in fact, going to a greater length to uncover the truth. Towards the end of the article, she claims “the Nazis tried, as usual, to inflame the Danes into anti-Semitism by publishing obscene lies about Jews” (256). In contrasting these experiences with other media platforms, such as the radio and the newspapers, which allowed the Nazis to spread false information, she is implying that the content of both these platforms was not to be trusted. Schudson claims that objectivity goes against “partisan journalism in which newspapers are the declared allies or agents of political parties” (150), this kind of reporting rejects inaccuracy, but usually presents information “from the perspective of a particular party or faction” (150). Therefore, Gellhorn can be considered as a “partisan” journalist, in that she rejects inaccuracy, as stated in her interview with John Pilger, but she is not afraid to present the facts from a specific point of view, which in this case is her own, as she makes explicit references to her commonality with, and her belonging to, the survivor community. She writes for a magazine, rather than a newspaper, to get information across, in fact, Pauly states that “by the 1960s, some commentators were arguing that the magazine article, rather than the news story or editorial column, offered the best venue for in-depth reporting” (598). Magazines became the breeding ground for freelance journalists such as Gellhorn, and provided them with a medium with which to experiment with both style and form. According to Gellhorn, the “Great London Press… avoids scaring the readers and agrees heartily to the government policy” (36) in order to keep people calm. With this she is criticizing the Newspaper’s way of reporting by claiming that they purposefully reveal limited information as to not further damage public moral. For Gellhorn, this type of objectivity is not enough; it is the people who matter, and it is only by representing them that a deeper truth can be revealed, whether hurtful or not. The objectivity represented in her article is no more than the collective natural response to such atrocities, thus leaning away from political ideology in favour of a humanitarian one, and arguably reaching a deeper truth.
Politics of Compassion:
Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem I” (1963)
In a similar way to Gellhorn, in 1963, Hannah Arendt wrote a piece for The New Yorker, an American magazine known for its mixed content of reportage, originally published in 1925. Arendt’s report of the Eichmann trial originally appeared in five issues, published between February and March 1963. In May of the same year, these issues were compiled in to one book with the subtitle: “The Banality of Evil”. For the purpose of this dissertation, however, the focal point of this section will be the first report “Eichmann in Jerusalem I”, published on February 16th 1963[1]. Far from being a humane account, Arendt’s interpretation of the event is strictly political, in “relating to or [being] concerned with public life and affairs as involving questions of authority and government” (OED Online, “political”). The problem that arose from her political approach to the matter is what critics called her “lack of Herzenstakt” (Swift, 79), namely the lack of feeling for the suffering of others. However, Arendt’s tactlessness is arguably mimicking the de-sensitisation that totalitarianism inflicted on the “sensus communis” (Hyvönen, 572). Arendt’s work focuses on Eichmann’s crimes, rather than on the suffering caused by them, in support of her theory that truth can only be revealed through clear and objective judgement, and it is through the prosecution of the man responsible for the “Final Solution” that meaning can be attributed to the event.
Arendt’s opening paragraph describes the layout of the courtroom in minimalistic detail, and, like Gellhorn, within the first phrase she places herself amongst the audience by using the pronoun “us”. However, her presence within the room is not continuously emphasised in the way Gellhorn’s is, rather Arendt uses it to merely enforce the validity of her account of the event. This is implicitly shown in the impersonal and detached tone adopted by her in describing the positioning of the judges, the prosecution and the defence, in addition to “us” being evoked only once, in situating herself within the courtroom. Her neutral tone is interrupted, however, by her own insertion of criticism and irony, as she questions Israel’s failure in hiring an adequate German speaker to translate the Hebrew court proceedings for Eichmann and the prosecution. This points towards the biasness of the court in holding the accused at a disadvantage from the very beginning. However, the narrative swiftly returns to the description of the layout of the courtroom. This interruption is an early indication of her style striving for a more neutral narrative, as she limits her own thoughts to a subtle prose of two lines, thus clearly repressing her explicit subjectivity in favour of an impartial approach. For example, when describing Eichmann himself, her prose is concise, as she describes him as “medium-sized, slender, middle-aged, with receding hair, ill-fitting teeth” (Arendt, n.p). Unlike Gellhorn’s description of his personal features, to which she added her own thoughts and minute observations, Arendt takes a cinematographic approach in painting the courtroom and the accused party in a minimalistic way, focusing on the facts, rather than her perception of the facts. However, as political and impartial as her tone may attempt to be, when describing her surroundings within the courtroom, she cannot help but subtly insert her own opinions, thus subjectivity involuntarily creeps in. For instance, when describing the judges within the second paragraph, she claims: “They are so evidently three honest men” (Arendt, n.p), the key term being “evident”, as it implies that this is evident to her, therefore it is a subjective claim. She argues that experience is not a valid font of knowledge, yet her sporadic insertions of her personal opinion contradict her theory and demonstrate that, when reporting, complete impartiality is impossible.
Accordingly, Arendt claims: “On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews” (n.p); thus, she reiterates that it is the facts that are being judged, not the experiences of the people. In her opinion, experience is not a suitable font of knowledge when reporting historical events, because it is first retained in the individual’s memory, from which it is then extracted and brought in to the thought process (Hyvönen, 569), where it is tampered with by the individual’s own emotions and feelings. Thus, the raw information originally gathered from the individual’s experience is not the same when shared with others, as it has already undergone a twofold process, ergo it cannot be trusted to be authentic. Arendt presents herself as a pastor of the truth, and claims that certain appearances and facts said in court can be deceptive: “Eichmann gave the impression that he was a typical member of the lower middle classes… this was misleading; he was rather the déclassé son of a middle-class family…” (n.p). The key term here is “misleading”, a definition that strengthens her theory, according to which impressions and emotions are not sufficient in providing the truth. Arendt clarifies the “misleading” appearance with facts, specifically through a neutral description of Eichmann’s class background. This information is given earlier on in the article, when Arendt interrupts her essayistic political prose in favour of a writing style of a newspaper article: “Eichmann was born on March 19, 1906, in Solingen, in the Rhineland – a German city that is famous for its knives scissors, and surgical instruments…” (n.p). This is where Eichmann’s biography begins, subsequently including his own testimony being quoted on why he did not have a personal vendetta against Jewish people. This mimics the style of a newspaper article, as Arendt follows up the main facts with additional information pertinent to the reader. This sporadic change in style, that occurs more than once throughout the first issue, demonstrates how sharing all sides of the story is essential, jogging the reader in and out of complacency with each different perspective presented, so that he does not form a bias, and can judge all facts for himself with a clear mind.
To this effect, Arendt approaches the trial from a political point of view, taking in to consideration the government’s responsibility and the consequences it has on the public. This attitude causes critics such as Deborah Nelson to call her work “often ironic and, for many, scandalously insensitive” (220), but it is arguably precisely via her insensitivity that Arendt is attempting to reach the truth; by detaching herself from the situation and reporting from an isolated perspective. According to Arendt, the suffering of the Jewish people had no place within the trial because it was not in dispute, rather Eichmann’s responsibility was. Nelson states that Arendt’s style banishes “painful feelings from public life” (234), as she looks to the future instead of dwelling on the past. If Arendt’s account was meant to preserve what had happened, in order to better the future, experience and emotions had no place in the factual historicity of events because, in her opinion, they were unreliable, as they depended on individual experience. However, to refer back to Gellhorn’s opinion on public newspapers purposefully publishing restricted information as to not cause any further damage to public moral, Arendt’s detached perspective could arguably be considered as limited information.
Dawes James argues that the point of a criminal trial is to determine whether the accused party is guilty or not, “it is a forensic process rather than a truth commission” (James and Gumpta, 151). The point of a forensic process is to present cold, hard evidence to prove a particular point, and as such Arendt follows these proceedings by drawing upon other people’s declarations, such as quoting statements from the Prime Minister Ben Gurion and attorney general Gideon Hausner, in addition to providing the reader with physical evidence, such as Doris Lanken’s booklet on Israel’s legal system which was passed around the courtroom at the time. In a similar way to Gellhorn using the witnesses’ statements and reactions to form her argument, Arendt uses those of political figures; whilst Gellhorn plants horrific images in the reader’s mind by describing them in detail, Arendt provides hard evidence in the form of booklets and documents. Arendt’s is not a quest for objectivity, but rather that of giving meaning to the trial, a purpose that will serve future generations. However, to achieve this, she must be objective and not allow her personal bias to create a divide between her and the truth. This is precisely why she takes a political approach, because neither the testimony of Eichmann himself, nor that of the victims, suffice in providing the objectivity needed to reach the ultimate truth because of self-deception. Arendt claims that self-deception has become a “prerequisite for survival” (n.p), whether this be for the survivors themselves in forgetting or suppressing their experiences to move forward with their lives, or for the accused himself, in a last attempt to escape the criminal charges. Every individual is subjective in what they think and what they say, thus Arendt strives for meaning, and this can only be attributed to the trial by analysing the objective details, and reporting in a factual way. Even the trial transcripts themselves cannot be considered as objective, because the memory and knowledge used to testify can be self-fabricated, and information provided to the court can be selective or false. Arendt canalizes the traumatic experiences in to reflective ones so that they may gain political and juridical value, and form a meaning to the event, because “a sentimental response to another’s claim of justice … blocks the chances of that other finding his way to what justice is” (Swift, 90), ergo ethical softness is not an option. Eichmann’s defence at trial was that he was merely following orders, as a loyal member of the Third Reich system, and that he abandoned morality in the face of something bigger than himself. It is because of this that Arendt abandons the individual accounts, and concentrates on bettering the political system that is bigger than herself.
According to Arendt, there is a limit to human reason. Therefore, the suffering experienced by the Jewish community was likely to obscure the seriousness of the Nazi crimes against humanity. Thus, she is merely shifting the meaning from an individual and subjective perspective, to a collective and objective one. She mainly problematizes the issue of statelessness, reflecting her own life in that “she was not an Israeli citizen, nor a concentration camp survivor … she became an American citizen in 1941 and had practically abandoned Jewish politics” (Benhabib, 41). It is her statelessness that evokes authenticity and neutrality in her writing; her point of view was that of an outsider, willing to give both sides of the story, regardless of the audience’s feelings. For Arendt, being stateless meant being without rights, and any issue regarding human rights called for political attention. Critics call this approach insensitive, however it arguably points to her impartiality, and allows her to present both sides of the story in an even-handed manner, as called for by the norm of objectivity evoked by Schudson (150). Nelson argues that “Arendt’s conception of facing reality depends on common sense … [the] complex sharing of a necessarily partial view of the world” (89). Rationality is subjective; common sense, however, in being collective, can be characterized as objective, because it is shared by everyone.
Arendt writes of the courtroom being set up like a theatre, in which the judges were the actors and “the audience was supposed to represent the whole world” (n.p). The audience was composed of journalists from all over the world, pointing to how the trial played a significant part in raising awareness about the Holocaust, and incited interest in the persecution of Nazi crimes. She claims that “for the first time since the close of the war, German newspapers were full of reports on the trials of Nazi criminals, all of them mass murderers” (Arendt, n.p), highlighting the importance of justice being served in order for the trial to gain official meaning. When the criminal trials increased in persecution of other Nazis, as an effect of the Eichmann trial, Arendt stated: “The truth is, of course, the exact opposite of what Dr. Adenauer asserted” (n.p), in saying that only a small percentage of Germans were Nazis. The purpose of the trial was to prosecute Eichmann and to “ferret out” (Arendt, n.p) other men like him, which it succeeded it doing. It made justice possible and challenged the theory that one man could not possibly pay for the crimes of hundreds of men. There was no point in concentrating on the individual conscience, because it applied to one man, whilst true justice was to be served on behalf of many. The fact that Eichmann felt his crimes were justified, in that he was just obeying Hitler’s orders, does not help the community, because what is justifiable to one person, is not to the next. Therefore, according to Arendt, it is important to be objective and impartial when considering the facts so that decisions can be made on a collective level, to truly help the community as a whole. Arendt realised that moral principles needed to descend in to a political and philosophical discussion to gain meaning, which could then be applied to the collective.
Conclusion
In conclusion, objectivity in itself is a subjective matter. Neither Gellhorn nor Arendt explicitly pursue objectivity as their ultimate goal, but merely use their perception of it in order to achieve something greater, namely to reach the unguarded truth and share it with the public. Gellhorn writes about the victim’s experiences and testimonies to honour all future Jewish people, whilst Arendt strives for justice by forming a meaning to the trial. After a brief description of the event in question, two ways of reporting the trial were examined. First, Gellhorn’s article “Eichmann and the Private Conscience”, and its focus on the victim’s traumatic experience during the Holocaust, and their emotional reactions in court. According to Gellhorn, a greater truth was to be reached by explicitly immersing oneself in to the situation and giving the unheard people a voice, one that is overlooked by other media platforms such as newspapers, which provided the public with restricted information. Her perception of objectivity goes beyond mere facts and statistics, reaching a deeper truth on the level of emotions, showing how these events truly impact individuals. In doing so she pre-empts the arising era of New Journalism, which combines literary devices and journalistic techniques in order to reach a hidden truth; thus, Gellhorn’s perception of objectivity is explicitly subjective because presented from her perspective, as she identifies with the audience and represents their interests towards the accused. According to Gellhorn, when a journalist simply reports what they see, by neither suppressing nor inventing, they are achieving objectivity. She claims that if one reports what they see, they cannot help but be objective, thus objectivity is subjective, as dependent on the individual reporting at that moment. Secondly, Arendt’s piece “Eichmann in Jerusalem I”, in which objectivity entails factuality and impartiality; two key stepping stones in the pursuit of the ultimate truth. Arendt claims that experience is not a valid font of knowledge if the purpose of the report is to teach and preserve, it is unreliable and tainted with the emotional status of the individual which clouds their judgement, and poses an obstacle in providing a clear and fair meaning to the event. Self-deception is a big issue when it comes to being a witness at trial, thus their statements have no place in the pursuit of truth. However, despite her effort to be as objective as possible, she cannot help but insert subtle ironic comments, or personal opinions, confirming that complete objectivity is not possible.
Critics claim that objectivity is essential in providing the public with the truth, however, the concept of truth itself is subjective, thus the path to it is different for each individual. Gellhorn’s perspective embodies that of a defence lawyer, in that she defends the audience with whom she identifies, and denigrates the accused party. Arendt’s perspective is from both the defence and the accused, as she attempts to offer both sides of the story in an even-handed manner, though on occasion inevitably steering more towards one than the other and vice versa. They both offer different kinds of evidence to prove their point, but it is precisely this that makes their reporting subjective. In other words, objectivity is not possible when reporting criminal trials because the reporter’s unconscious bias will always show in their work. They choose what aspect of the trial they want to analyse and represent in writing, and what evidence to use to prove their point, as I have done to prove my point in this dissertation. Both Arendt and Gellhorn were commissioned by the magazines to write their articles, but essentially, they were the ones who decided in what way to write them. For instance, Gellhorn gives limited information, as she gives it only on behalf of the victims, whilst Arendt provides limited information, in that she recounts the facts. Reporting is merely the act of persuading the public to engage in your own unconscious view, and no matter how big the attempt to be objective, it is simply not possible because we are human. Human beings are a flawed species, and there will always be an overwhelming number of external factors which will impact and influence what we do and say, therefore everything we produce is subjective, and open to interpretation, excluding the possibility of ever achieving absolute objectivity.
Bibliography
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[1] Arend’t online article does not contain page numbers, therefore throughout this section I will reference it as “n.p”, which stands for “no page”.