Why Blaming “Both Sides” is Failing the Press
Just about everyone with a pulse has an axe to grind with journalists these days. Republicans have been shouting from the rooftops for year about how corrupt the “liberal media” is. Democrats are livid that we give Republicans such free airtime. It is getting harder to convince people that we are not all conspiring with George Soros and his sinister agendas of open borders and hell on Earth as we know it. However, the media has steadily been colliding with a raging headwind of a guy like Donald Trump for decades, a man who despises the press despite his need to constantly be talked about by them. While reporters have been doing their due diligence as ever in reporting facts, the issue they have still not addressed is in how they report facts. Journalists have made their jobs harder for decades by enabling bad faith of others with false balance. Trying to cover “both sides” of controversial subjects without ever pinpointing the root cause of a problem because you think it’ll upset a certain demographic is not only bad journalism; it is bad for the health of the media and for the consciousness of our country.
False balance is born out of false equivalency, a fallacy where two different arguments and points of view are given the same weight when they truly are not comparable to one another. Using a false equivalency in any argument is a lazy form of debating anything because not every subject is comparable to another, nor are the justifications for them similar in every instance. False balance is a form of false equivalency where journalists present issues as being more balanced than they actually are.
When the Republicans in the Wisconsin and Michigan legislature voted to severely limit the power of the state’s new Democratic governors, Chuck Todd said “Democrats have done this in the past to Republican governors” without citing specific examples and spend all of his interview with Governor-elect Tony Evers criticizing his tone for describing the alleged attempts of limiting his power as a “coup”. The New York Times covered the story with the headline “Wisconsin Republicans Defiantly ‘Stand Like Bedrock’ in the Face of Democratic Wins”, before changing the headline after backlash.
Partisan gridlock during much of Barack Obama’s presidency was hard to cover as a result of this; when Republicans stonewalled Democrats from passing anything while Obama was in office in the effort to make him an ineffective president, the media shied away from explicitly pointing blame at those responsible for the friction, leading them and the public to say “both sides are responsible”. In turn, it led to a slippery slope of one group trying to work around another as it became more extreme and irrationally hostile towards them. It fostered a culture of whataboutisms and deflections.
Whataboutism, a common Soviet propaganda tactic aimed at defusing opposition by highlighting their perceived wrongdoings as justification for one’s actions, leads to the muddying of facts that let people weasel their way out of responsibility. When subjects we interview, journalists or commentators use the phrase “but what about…” to justify bad behavior without being challenged on it, it essentially lets bad actors off the hook because everyone thinks that their actions or thoughts are always justifiable.
Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes interviewed Margarita Simonyon, head of the Russian television network RT or Russia Today. “Let’s talk about Russian Interference in our election which our intelligence agencies tell us happened”, Lesly asked. Before she even finished, Simonyon angrily responds by saying, “You believe them like you believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Didn’t you believe that?!”
Wall Street Journal language columnist Ben Zimmer believes that whataboutisms deflects away from genuine criticisms about political leaders. “I think it’s something we have to be on guard about and journalists by recognizing this whataboutism ploy can hold people in power accountable for their actions rather than letting them wiggle out of by using this rhetorical tactic,” Zimmer said.
While the media did not engage with absolving them, Trump used whataboutism to lay blame on both sides of the racist attacks in Charlottesville, Virginia last year. When Trump was asked his thoughts on the man who killed Heather Hayer and wounded dozens of others, Trump simply asked why the counter protestors were not also being scrutinized. He placed the blame on “both sides” and it ended up being a dog whistle to neo-Nazis and white supremacists that the President of the United States accepted their behavior.
False balance has been used by pundits and commentators that try to obfuscate dangerous and salacious details of events they do not want discussed. Fox News was running segments asking why Antifa weren’t also being labeled as dangerous as the Unite the Right organizers were. Sean Hannity and numerous other anchors on the network will often deflect to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats when it comes to Trump’s alleged misdeeds in order to point the media as biased against Trump, but to highlight that others do wrong and that they should also get equal scrutiny. Not every case of false balance will be that controversial, but actually reporting of facts will get worse if journalists keep being afraid of reporting the truth if certain people take issue with what’s being covered.
A major issue of false balance the media takes part in are areas of science, particularly with climate change and vaccinations. Despite overwhelming consensus from 97 percent of the scientific community, news organizations frame coverage of it to appease those who are skeptical or downright deny it happening, and do a very poor job of getting scientists on record to explain key issues about it.
Rick Santorum, a prolific energy lobbyist and climate change denier, frequently parrots talking points that go against scientific consensus earlier in November on CNN. When Trump denied his administration’s climate report once again linking climate change to human activity, Santorum applauded Trump and blasted the scientists for the report.
″I think the point that Donald Trump makes is true, which is ― look, if there was no climate change, we’d have a lot of scientists looking for work,” Santorum said, without citing any evidence for this statement. “The reality is that a lot of these scientists are driven by the money that they receive.”
CNN put no climate scientists or anyone with a science pedigree on their panel when discussing climate change at all during that segment. Last October, US Ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft said that she believes in “both sides of the science” about climate change. Craft’s husband, Joe Craft, is a billionaire coal-mining executive for the third-largest coal producer in the eastern United States.
The issues of people doubting the health benefits to vaccines were piqued in 1998, when Andrew Wakefield claimed that MMR vaccines could cause a child to develop autism. While healthcare professionals laughed it off, journalists lacking scientific backgrounds spread these claims further without realizing it. In 2002, over 10 percent of science articles were vaccine related and 80 percent were written by those with no scientific background. His claims have long since been proven to be false and his credibility has tanked and no longer works in the medical field as a result of this, but his claims still live on and have caused devastating consequences.
The United States is not the only country to face difficultly with false balance. After British politician noted climate skeptic Nigel Lawson went unchallenged in an interview about the issue, Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s director of news and current affairs, issued a statement of BBC editorial policy that begins: “Climate change has been a difficult subject for the BBC, and we get coverage of it wrong too often. Man-made climate change exists: If the science proves it we should report it.” They warn the staff not to fall for false balance by saying “to achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage.” Unsworth mentioned “common misconceptions” used to deny man-made climate change, including that “not all scientists think man-made climate change is real” and “climate change has happened before”.
During the EU referendum “Brexit” campaign in 2016, 82 percent of coverage was in favor of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union compared to 18 percent in favor of remaining. Given that the overwhelming conclusion of political and economic experts say that leaving the EU would have devastating consequences for the country, it highlights a lapse in judgement in trying to highlight voices and opinions that would lead the public to make uninformed decisions about the fate of their country.
By far the most egregious example of false balance in recent memory is the coverage of Hillary Clinton compared to Donald Trump, particularly the email server issue, during the 2016 elections. The disproportionate coverage of it and failure of the media to address the lack of an issue with it (she was cleared by a Republican-led FBI for no wrongdoing) was matched up by the media’s lack of serious reporting’s on the numerous conflicts of interests and controversies surrounding Donald Trump for decades. According to MediaMatters, Clinton’s emails took three times as much coverage than the policy issues of both candidates.
The mistake of that email server hounded Clinton and took full stage to a leading Presidential candidate accused of sexual assault, cheating people out of $125 million with a fraudulent university, cases of fraud with his charity organization, ties to Italian and Russian organized crime syndicates and countless racially charged outbursts. Clinton’s controversies with the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One also ate up a large chunk of air time despite Clinton being cleared of wrongdoing numerous times in those cases as well.
To add insult to injury, this problem arises from people pushing their own agenda and those trying to maintain neutrality. Since much of news media is deathly afraid of being labeled as biased towards liberal ideology and censoring of one particular point of view, journalists have been going out of their way to find angles to cover wrongdoing of others, many times conservatives, to avoid drawing their ire. News organizations, out of trying to avoid bias, end up doing themselves a disservice by refusing to point out a particular problem or conflating one lesser problem to another.
The only sensible way to combat this issue and collectively helping the public conscious is putting truth over trying to be balanced. Christiane Amanpour, leading CNN International anchor, has said that journalists are harming their credibility trying to differentiate between balance, objectivity, neutrality, and reporting the truth.
“We cannot continue the old paradigm — let’s say like over global warming, where 99.9% of the empirical scientific evidence is given equal play with the tiny minority of deniers”, Amanpour said.
The publication where these issues are the most prevalent are ironically where the issue of false balance has been the most prevalent has ironically been the left-leaning New York Times in recent years has been panned for several headlines and stories that absolve both the Trump administration and more particularly, try painting his supporters as sympathetic, in an effort to try and “understand” them. Even worse, the criticism they’ve received from readers and their colleagues seems to never bother them as they never take into account their mistakes. Most of these puff pieces try giving a more nuanced view to Trump voters reasons for sticking with him, but their coverage of them is widely the same reasons with little deviation; a rural white voter picked Trump for a short-term economic gain but also out of long-term demographic changes (race, sex) they see around them. Often their views are xenophobic, racist and misogynistic but they fundamentally betray that fact by never making it a central focus and instead try honing in on the economic implications.
This is massively misleading to the readers since most of Trump’s voters were largely wealthy to begin with. It betrays the more conclusive studies done that show that the largest reason people voted for Trump is to preserve their way of life and perceived that minorities and women were starting to become more influential and successful than them. At its worst, it paints a sympathetic picture of often bad people for the sake of “balance” and gaslights its readers into thinking that their beliefs about certain people are acceptable and perfectly normal. They recently caught a lot of criticism for their headline “The Rise of Right-Wing Extremism and How We Ignored it”, insulating themselves from their coverage of the extreme elements of the alt-right.
It in turn makes other publications follow suit as well; since The New York Times yields so much power in the industry, others begin ignoring signs and analysis that contradict their coverage of these things. Jeremy Burke, a professor at the University of Southern California, explains that by taking this approach, journalists risk leaving out key information relevant to their stories when trying to seek balance.
Journalists are going to have to live with the fact that certain demographics are going to dispute their reporting and react with hostility no matter how accurate or even balanced they attempt to be. If your reporting doesn’t end up getting someone mad, then that work has failed. Journalists need to make less of a concerted effort in trying to be liked and relying on access and what connections can do for them. Access journalism, where journalistic integrity is secondary to one-on-one time with influential figures, contributes to false balance. Trying to be friends with and cozying up to specific sources or even reporting about them in way that insulates them from harm or criticism is an infuriating, mediocre way of reporting.
Where The New York Times once again does itself a disservice is in trying to cover for those in power in order to get closer to those in the Trump administration, and often its reporters will speak up in Trump and his cabinet’s defense for the sake of “decorum”, particularly with Maggie Haberman. Despite winning a Pulitzer for her coverage of Trump, she has been long criticized for her toothless coverage of him and his officials and is reluctant to call him out as a liar in her pieces and in person. Haberman uses her connections to the Trump White House to report on him to great effect at times but she only does so out of capitulation and self-righteous eagerness to be seen as a more diligent reporter, even though she clearly had a bias against Hillary Clinton during the election that she was not afraid to share at any point, with her most extensive work in 2016 being the coverage of Clinton’s email server. Her defensive, reflexive reaction to those that criticized Mike Pence when he was called out during a Hamilton performance, where she said the cast had “disrespected” him, clearly indicates a bias towards certain authority figures.
Those who rely on access journalism, such as Haberman or Fox’s Sean Hannity, cede much of their power in a story to their subjects that they feel like a PR statement from a friendly face. Often, they scrub any damning stories they may share with them, remove them from context of any bad press to shield them from responsibility, and at their worst will let the subjects control over how the interview will be edited and which parts will be reported. This harms the integrity of your reporting by making every situation they’re in comfortable and acceptable.
None of this is to imply that opposing viewpoints are not welcome, however. In fact, those with opposing ideas to something create conflict necessary to journalism’s existence. Without a sense of multiple ideologies or different ways of life, there would not be anything left to report on. Where journalism makes its mistakes is in trying to create conflict where one should not even exist in the first place. With journalists either digging for a counter to justify a falsehood or dangerous idea or burying facts in their reporting to give something a more favorable impression, it cheapens their work and emboldens the worst people to act and spread dangerous ideology and absolve those in power doing wrong that we are meant to hold accountable.
Good journalists are not meant to entertain everything simply because a person is saying it. Our obligation is to the truth first and not to those we seek to gain validation and prestige from. Without responsible, ethical reporting, journalists are simply amplifying dangerous nonsense that goes unchallenged.