We can’t hide the truth behind ‘fair and balanced’
You cannot declaim that Hitler, despite the war and the Holocaust, made the trains run on time and was good with small children
In the aftermath of Charlottesville and U.S. President Donald Trump’s unhelpful, contradictory remarks, it’s time we confront one of the most pernicious, intellectually dishonest expressions in our public discourse: “fair and balanced.”
The president used a version of this when he described the violence at a white supremacist rally in Virginia as being the result of “many sides.”
He later cited an “alt-left” movement as a counterpoint to the neo-Nazis, equating one with the other, like equals on a playing field.
Using that figure of rhetoric, to employ an ancient phrase, Trump was superficially brilliant. He conflated “fair” and “balanced” in a way that was easy on the ears.
One supporter tweeted that Trump was “fair and down to earth.”
He was nothing of the sort. The media are often criticized for failing to be “fair and balanced,” or for doing stories that are “biased,” as Trump complained during the U.S. presidential campaign. These terms need to be better understood, lest the abuse of them continue.
When an event happens, reporters are dispatched to get as much information as they can under tremendous deadline pressure.
They seek out all sides, get comments from as many angles as possible. They know they are writing the first, and very rough, version of history. There are no judgments made or implied in the best of their work.
Almost by definition, what they produce is “balanced.” They seek the view of, say, an aggrieved landlord and his/her tenant, or the opposite. This is Reporting 101. The problem comes when people and politicians assume that this is the sumtotal of journalism, as if those in the media, well-paid and hailing from elite universities, are a species of stenographer, there to record the thoughts of some worthies.
Newspaper features, essays and magazine stories are not the first draft of history. They are the second, third or, at their best, the fourth.
If as a writer you have been given weeks to research a story, you have gone through hundreds of pages of documents and interviewed dozens of people.
You have done extensive research, and you owe it to your readers to reach some sort of conclusion, however preliminary or contingent. You have done all this work on their behalf.
You cannot come out of this process and declaim that Hitler, despite the war and the Holocaust, made the trains run on time and was good with small children, as a matter of “fairness and balance.”
Arizona Sen. John McCain, possessed of a fully functioning ethical compass, rightfully denounced the “moral equivalence” in Trump’s remarks.
Which brings us to bias. Some, including Trump, will claim that a negative story about him is biased. This is just logically wrong.
Bias is an input, not an output. If someone sets out to discover only the worst of Trump, then he or she is obviously opposed and running against the scientific method of examining all the evidence.
But if the evidence is all examined, the result isn’t biased. It’s honest.
Campbell R. Harvey Martin E. Thall Elaine B. Berger Daniel A. Jauernig Alnasir Samji Paul Weiss Linda Hughes Dorothy Strachan Daryl Aitken John Boynton Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar Corp.