To journalists, like social scientists, the term ’objectivity’ stands as a bulwark between themselves and critics. Attacked for a controversial presentation of ’facts’, newspapermen invoke their objectivity almost the way a Mediterranean peasant might wear a clove of garlic around his neck to ward off evil spirits.

— Gaye Tuchman, ’Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen’s Notions of Objectivity’, American Journal of Sociology, 77/4 (1972), 660-679.