Just a couple of points. At issue here is a very basic philosophical problem. What IS perception, and can we be objective at all? In practice, it proves the pudding, or doesn't. I agree in many ways with what both DFC and 2F say, but are we being a bit theoretical? Maybe? I think there are many issues that define the problem and these issues are specific to the person, the publication, the type of story or project, and many, many other factors.
Journalism. If you are a journalist, you need to publish in order to receive that check. I spent years counting my credits and adding them up. There was a number, a variable number of images appearing in each months issue, and the product, plus my processing, proofs, prints, less the costs, yielded my take. Let's be real and admit that this number was extremely important to me, month after month. Let's see, day rates previously billed, printed images over and above prior billings at $x, current day rates.... I would go through the magazine, one, two, three, four.... I could add it up with unbelievable precision. Of course, also, there was reimbursement from the expense account. That was really great -- IF I could afford to take advantage of it, because essentially, it amounted to lending the company money to keep me travelling, entertained, and well fed. If I didn't have it, no expensive bottles of wine, just cold sandwiches...
Anyway, from the point of discussion, which is NOT theoretical but actual, it is impossible for a journalist to be objective for a variety of reasons, but fundamentally it devolves to the dollar. If you are going to sell a picture or a story containing more pictures than one, each has to have an "angle" that conforms to an intersection of the publication's policies with the expectations of the readership and with what you can do. This is pretty subtle, and involves both knowledge and a sort of 6th sense. Hard news? What's that? Hard news is what the publication defines hard news to be. I mean, don't expect to sell foreign affairs to National Enquirer. If you get what I mean.
So there is always a point of view. The successful journalist knows how to work honestly within a matrix of apparent contradictions. In order to do this, the publication with its rules (both spoken and unspoken), its readership (how much income, how many children -2.3? or 3.2? - how many cars, age, etc.), its circulation (200 or 2 million?) and its peculiar editorial makeup in persons as well as policies... all of this must form the background upon which honest and maybe even heartfelt work must be constructed.
I've never been attracted to doing documentary work, particularly, but I have friends who have done a great deal of it and it is work I respect greatly. I'm too much interested in enlarging experience into ever expanding energy states. You know, putting ecclesiastical garb on monkey skeletons. Or dinosaurs. Now, is that even close to documentary? No. It is somewhere in the opposite hemisphere. Documentary is a broad region. In relation to writing, documentary might be considered "non fiction". One of my documentarian friends defines it precisely as that. So, if you look at writing, is John McPhee objective, does he have a point of view, a bias? How about Barbara Erenreich? Both are very interesting researchers, but it could be argued that their work is biased even though I think they are right on for the most part. The CEO of a large energy corporation might not agree. I suppose in one sense, the journalist has to fit the act into a form that will live ok in the client's bias, the documentarian has to sell his/her own bias, and if one needs to make a living then it has to be something presentable and marketable. Would it were not so. One of my buddies got nominated for a Oscar for his documentary work in film, and now is doing interactive advertising - very far out stuff. Is there a contradiction? I think he's big enough for both to live in him, but it seems pretty interesting to me just how these things can live compatibly in the same person. I have to admit some discomfort, but if I think about it, why not? Just know what you are doing.
The question of objectivity is a very tricky one because in order to establish an objectivity, we have to stand somewhere in relation to the context that includes us. We may think we are objective, but if we move out even a small step and include a bit more (like the next layer of the onion) our so called objectivity dissolves. Within our own sphere, we may have a certain claim on objectivity, but when our sphere is transcended, we lose it altogether.
Regarding Gene Smith as an example (I have the most profound reverence for him) was he objective? I really don't think so. He had an agenda, and his agenda, for myself, was precisely on track (his OPINIONS agree with my own), but (some or many) others might not agree (his OPINIONS don't agree with theirs). His amazing skill was not just to make pix that conveyed what he felt needed to be printed, but he had the ability to sell it. Had he not been able to do so, he couldn't have continued to do it. He'd have had to take on a real job. The key to his work is that word "feeling". His work is full of that. Fortunately, he had the number of someone at LIFE he could call up and get a listen.
