The balance chimera

Lloyd Shepherd picks up the John Lanchester article I referenced yesterday, and highlights yet another excellent passage:

"The problem with ‘balance’ is partly a problem with the way science is reported. ‘Balance’ works, sort of, as a way of discussing politics in a two-party system. (Though it has to be said that the remorseless polarisation, whereby I say yah because you said boo, is one main reason for the decreased interest in party politics.) Since the climate debate has been polarised on left-right lines in the US, it has seemed appropriate to the media to treat it as a polarised issue, one on which there are two schools of thought, which, in respect of the science, it isn’t: there is one school of thought, and a few nutters."

I liked that bit too - it reminded me of a tale my geography-studying friends used to tell at university. Apparently one lecturer would begin his course on glaciation with the statement that were "nominally two schools of thought concerning glaciation - the extreme views of Kelloway, and the truth", and go on to demolish the former in short order.

Whenever I'm confronted by this "balance" chimera in news reporting - especially as it pertains to the willingness of journalists to pander to the agenda of the (let's face it, unremittingly evil) global warming deniers - I remember that lecturer, and reflect that that's what "balance" really looks like, when the commentator has the expertise and the confidence to cut through the fog of dissenting views and present the audience with an accurate picture of the current expert consensus. (Or as we say more commonly in English, "the truth".)

"Balance" is what you default to if the reporter, commentator, anchor or other journalist simply doesn't have the expertise to adjudicate between two ostensibly plausible points of view and call "bullshit" on the one that's wrong. "Balance" is a chimera to disguise the fact that while a global-warming-denying pseudo-scientist knows a lot less about global warming than a real scientist, he still knows plenty more than the guy on the TV who gets to interview him. Enough, say, to pull the wool over the eyes of that interviewer and by extension the public for more than a decade with the pretence that there's still a debate going on about man-made climate change. There simply isn't a debate - there is, as Lanchester reminds us, "one school of thought and a few nutters".

I pointed earlier in the year to Jeremy Burke's research showing that "the desire to appear unbiased leads to information loss". It's still true. Better than balance, we need the news presented to us by people who, like the geography lecturer of yore*, have the expertise and confidence to get the extreme minority view out of the way in a couple of sentences and go on to explain to us what legitimate experts consider the truth.

*1994 doesn't feel like yore really. Not yet, anyway.

Comments

[R N B]

Well said. I completely agree.

And maybe we should give equal air time to the holocaust denier as to the holocaust survivor? Equal time to astrology as to astronomy? Seriously, I've seen it happen.

[Seamus McCauley]

RNB - Thanks. I find holocaust denial a particularly odd point of view. Presumably the only people who deny the holocaust are nazi apologists, and therefore nazis - but nazis like killing jews, so you's expect them to boast about it rather than pretend they never did it. And it's not as if my (or I assume anyone's) sole objection to nazism is the holocaust - even if someone persuaded me it never happened, I'd not then sign up to that futile, vicious, failed ethos. I wonder why they bother.

[laceydave]

Randomly commenting on a post from a while back, but never mind.

I agree with you on this. I hate the psuedo-objective idea of balance in journalism nowadays. My view is that it is an example of another phenomenon: striving for the measurable even if it makes no sense.

It is hard for you to convince management/regulators etc. that your reporters are intelligent, insightful, objective people but much easier to show that are "balanced" (look they showed view A *and* view B).

[Seamus McCauley]

Hey Laceydave! Long time no see. You well? And thanks for commenting.