Contextual objectivity is a principle with roots in quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...

 that was adapted and applied to explain and describe the operations of news media

News media

The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...

 organizations during times of war

War

War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...

. Proposed by Adel Iskandar

Adel Iskandar

Adel Iskandar is a British-born Middle East media scholar, postcolonial theorist, analyst, and academic. He is the author and co-author of several works on Arab media, most prominently an analysis of the Arab satellite station Al Jazeera...

 and Mohammed El-Nawawy in their analysis of Al-Jazeera as a case study, the term expresses the attempt "to reflect all sides of any story while retaining the values, beliefs and sentiments of the target audience". The concept has been applied by some scholars to explain Fox News Channel

Fox News Channel

Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...

's news programming in the 2002-2003 run-up to the Iraq war. Other studies used contextual objectivity to describe differences between mainstream media

Mainstream media

Mainstream media are those media disseminated via the largest distribution channels, which therefore represent what the majority of media consumers are likely to encounter...

 and alternative ethnic media's coverage of post-Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

relief efforts.