A cornerstone of twentieth century journalism is the concept of objectivity. This experimental study explores psychological pressures on the reporter in a theoretical framework of balance theory and social perception. Specifically, it deals with reporters' attitudes toward their sources, their expectation of a future meeting with the sources, and the type of stories they write. It also seeks to determine whether perceptual screening, resulting from the journalist's attitude toward the source, is a factor in reportorial performance. Objectivity for this study is defined as fairness or balance in decision making, information seeking, and presentation of information. The most important finding of this study is the evidence that attitudes of reporters toward the source seemed to have little impact on news stories or editorials. The data also provide evidence indicating that selective perception is not a particularly strong restraint on reportorial activity. (TO)