The Ethics of Point of View in Nonfiction
Launch library · evergreen read
Choosing whose perspective anchors a true story shapes what a reader ultimately sympathises with, and that choice is never entirely neutral, since privileging one vantage point over another can quietly tilt an otherwise accurate account toward one particular reading of events over an equally valid alternative.
This does not mean every story requires a strictly balanced, view from nowhere approach, which is often impossible and sometimes dishonest in its own way, but it does mean a writer should be conscious of whose point of view has actually been centred in the piece, and why.
Naming this choice explicitly, at least in the writer's own private reasoning, protects against the quiet drift toward whichever perspective happens to be most accessible, most articulate, or most sympathetic to the writer personally, rather than the perspective the story actually needs. Revisiting this choice deliberately during editing, after the initial draft has cooled, often reveals a drift that was invisible while the piece was still being actively written and shaped.