The idea of balance

[one...two...tree 2,762]

hmmm....very interesting...

The idea of balance

In 1996, the Society of Professional Journalists removed the term "objectivity" from its ethics code (Columbia Journalism Review , 7-8/03). This reflects the fact that many contemporary journalists find the concept to be an unrealistic description of what journalists aspire to, preferring instead words like "fairness," "balance," "accuracy," "comprehensiveness" and "truth." In terms of viewpoints presented, journalists are taught to abide by the norm of balance: identifying the most dominant, widespread positions and then telling "both" sides of the story.

According to media scholar Robert Entman, "Balance aims for neutrality. It requires that reporters present the views of legitimate spokespersons of the conflicting sides in any significant dispute, and provide both sides with roughly equal attention."

Balanced coverage does not, however, always mean accurate coverage. In terms of the global warming story, "balance" may allow skeptics—many of them funded by carbon-based industry interests—to be frequently consulted and quoted in news reports on climate change. Ross Gelbspan, drawing from his 31-year career as a reporter and editor, charges in his books The Heat Is On and Boiling Point that a failed application of the ethical standard of balanced reporting on issues of fact has contributed to inadequate U.S. press coverage of global warming:

The professional canon of journalistic fairness requires reporters who write about a controversy to present competing points of view. When the issue is of a political or social nature, fairness—presenting the most compelling arguments of both sides with equal weight—is a fundamental check on biased reporting. But this canon causes problems when it is applied to issues of science. It seems to demand that journalists present competing points of view on a scientific question as though they had equal scientific weight, when actually they do not.

We empirically tested Gelbspan's hypothesis as we focused on the human contribution to global warming (known in science as "anthropogenic global warming"). In our study called "Balance as Bias: Global Warming and the U.S. Prestige Press"—presented at the 2002 Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change in Berlin and published in the July 2004 issue of the journal Global Environmental Change —we analyzed articles about human contributions to global warming that appeared between 1988 and 2002 in the U.S. prestige press: the New York Times , Washington Post , Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal .

Using the search term "global warming," we collected articles from this time period and focused on what is considered "hard news," excluding editorials, opinion columns, letters to the editor and book reviews. Approximately 41 percent of articles came from the New York Times , 29 percent from the Washington Post , 25 percent from the Los Angeles Times , and 5 percent from the Wall Street Journal .

From a total of 3,543 articles, we examined a random sample of 636 articles. Our results showed that the majority of these stories were, in fact, structured on the journalistic norm of balanced reporting, giving the impression that the scientific community was embroiled in a rip-roaring debate on whether or not humans were contributing to global warming.

More specifically, we discovered that:

53 percent of the articles gave roughly equal attention to the views that humans contribute to global warming and that climate change is exclusively the result of natural fluctuations.

35 percent emphasized the role of humans while presenting both sides of the debate, which more accurately reflects scientific thinking about global warming.

6 percent emphasized doubts about the claim that human-caused global warming exists, while another 6 percent only included the predominant scientific view that humans are contributing to Earth's temperature increases.

Through statistical analyses, we found that coverage significantly diverged from the IPCC consensus on human contributions to global warming from 1990 through 2002. In other words, through adherence to the norm of balance, the U.S. press systematically proliferated an informational bias.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978

[GaryC 7]

This is just another way of suppressing opposing views. They are in effect saying that if an opposing view is presented then the story is biased. This story is biased. It is starting off with the idea that global warming is fact and if someone says something different then the story is biased. Nice.

[Ban Hammer 13,345]

This is just another way of suppressing opposing views. They are in effect saying that if an opposing view is presented then the story is biased. This story is biased. It is starting off with the idea that global warming is fact and if someone says something different then the story is biased. Nice.

your view has been spiked.

[Henia 11]

[Henia 11]

Ye that is one way of balancing things out!

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

wheres the punch line?

[Ban Hammer 13,345]

This is just another way of suppressing opposing views. They are in effect saying that if an opposing view is presented then the story is biased. This story is biased. It is starting off with the idea that global warming is fact and if someone says something different then the story is biased. Nice.

your view has been spiked.

for those that didn't understand, spiked in the context used above means:

to reject (as a story) for publication or broadcast for editorial reasons

definition 3b link