I heard it explained like this. If one person says it’s raining outside, and another person says it’s not. The job of the reporter is to look outside to see if it’s raining or not. Their job is not putting them in the same room asking them to debate each other about whether or not it’s raining.
That only makes sense when the reporter can easily verify the central premise of the controversial issue. For something like climate change at best they can report that there is a very large academic consensus that greenhouse gases released due to human activity are causing an increase in average global temperatures. They can’t themselves examine the very large body of data that leads to that conclusion. Public understanding of not only the scientific method but the scientific process is crucial, but the press themselves can’t do that.
It is extremely possible to explain the evidence for and against an issue, if not for the phony standard of “balance” which doesn’t exist in science. Scientists don’t feel the need to “balance” overwhelming evidence against phony baloney. It’s a completely reasonable expectation from anybody who’s not in the propaganda business.
![Balanced news reporting [@twisteddoodles]](https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/beaa8a80-02fa-4127-8997-8e47246b369b.jpeg){kind=link}
I heard it explained like this. If one person says it’s raining outside, and another person says it’s not. The job of the reporter is to look outside to see if it’s raining or not. Their job is not putting them in the same room asking them to debate each other about whether or not it’s raining.
That only makes sense when the reporter can easily verify the central premise of the controversial issue. For something like climate change at best they can report that there is a very large academic consensus that greenhouse gases released due to human activity are causing an increase in average global temperatures. They can’t themselves examine the very large body of data that leads to that conclusion. Public understanding of not only the scientific method but the scientific process is crucial, but the press themselves can’t do that.
It is extremely possible to explain the evidence for and against an issue, if not for the phony standard of “balance” which doesn’t exist in science. Scientists don’t feel the need to “balance” overwhelming evidence against phony baloney. It’s a completely reasonable expectation from anybody who’s not in the propaganda business.
The real job of a reporter is to ask the capitalist who owns the media (eg. rupert murdoch).