“Fair and Balanced” Isn’t Fair

Posted on May 23, 2005 in Campaign 2004 Journalists & Pundits

Balanced may mean unfair when it comes to reporting. Fair means accuracy, the truth as it is, the world as it can be measured. Balancing demands that you attempt to trim off facts until the “two sides” of an argument appear to be even. This comment by USA Today’s Susan Page (found at the FAIR website) gets at the problem of demanding “fair and balanced” reporting:

When you do the really serious attempt at balance and accuracy, it often looks more imbalanced, because often times one side is at fault, is truly misrepresenting. It’s a tricky thing. I remember, for instance, we did a story on negative advertising and it said, “on the one hand, on the other hand”—“the Bush people had done this and then the Kerry people had done this”—and then the Times did the same story a couple days later that said, “The Bush campaign has engaged in much more negative advertising than the Kerry people—most negative campaign in the history of American politics,” or something powerful, which looked more powerful and was a better story than we did. But our story is the one you would look at and say was the balanced one. Because it had a one-hand/on-the-other-hand quality to it.

Think of it like this: you are comparing an apple and a raisin. You put them both on the scale and read off the actual weight. That’s fair. Then you put them on a balance. Because the apple weighs so much more than the raisin you have to make an adjustment. Either you just cut a piece of the apple and put that on the scale or you add weight to the raisin side. That’s balanced. The trouble is that people will come away with the belief that the raisin weighs as much as the apple.

Fair and balanced is impossible. What you the media consumer should ask for is fairness and accuracy.

The rest of the transcript includes other interesting exchanges. I wonder if Page still has her job?

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Not surprisingly, when it came to guarding us from voting irregularities, the media let us down. The media only covers these stories in the last weeks before an election. Yet the 2004 election may have been stolen as surely as the 2000 election and we can only guess what will come down in 2008 when Jeb Bush is slated to become the new Caesar. But don’t be distressed. The world is watching:

Unaddressed electoral system problems will continue to plague us, regardless of who won the White House last year, and the press would do well not to wait until 2008 to notice them again. Democrats and bloggers aren’t the only ones paying attention: A November 4 report by international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expressed concern about “significant delays at the polling station” that were “likely to deter some voters from voting and may restrict the right to vote,” as well as “considerable confusion and varying approaches from one state to another regarding the use of provisional ballots.”