Fair and Balanced

As The Onion has observed, a huge amount of print space has lately been devoted to the fact that newspapers are quickly becoming obsolete as a news medium. Circulation at most major newspapers has dropped continuously over the last decade as Internet news sources have drawn readers away. Most online news outlets do not require paid subscriptions; they provide articles in a torrent throughout the 24-hour news cycle; for what it's worth, they save all the resources used in printing and distributing newspapers, which is environmentally friendly and gives them a significant financial advantage.

One trend which others have considered troubling is the prominence of ideologically slanted news sources on the Internet. Personally, I rely on The Nation and alternet.org, and the only columnists I read regularly are the liberals at the New York Times. Reputable newspapers have stringent standards of fairness; journalists are expected to present both (or all) sides of any story with equal emphasis. Online news purveyors such as WorldNet Daily, alternet, and the entire blogosphere often have explicit biases. Consumers taking the path of least resistance to their information gravitate towards sources which tell them what they want to hear.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Alternet carries articles on topics which few other sources (and likely no conservative sources) touch upon. All of their authors write from a leftward perspective, but only sometimes only liberals are concerned with certain political and economic issues. There aren't always two perspectives on issues like water shortages or human rights; conservative writers just make those things less of a priority.

In some cases, the existence of two "sides" on an issue is entirely fictitious. There are empirical matters in science and history which are not debatable. Evidence weighs insurmountably toward one conclusion. Anyone who claims that a thousand innocent people were rounded up in the Salem Witch Trials, for instance, is just wrong. He or she would not deserve equal time with those who correctly report that eighteen were hanged and one pressed to death with stones during that incident. An important example of a debate in which one "side" is given undue credence by the standards of balance in news reporting is the Creationism movement.

In reality, there is no question as to whether humans and other animals evolved from a common ancestor over millions of years. Evolutionary theory is the basis of modern biology; it is based on a massive body of archaeological, genetic, and anatomic evidence. There is little or no evidence to support the Creationist position, by contrast. That Creationism is so often given equal time with science is due partially to the extraordinary deference our culture gives to religious beliefs, but it is also a result of a misplaced priority on balance.

I hope there will be a revision of the current standard in journalistic ethics to account for this problem, but I do not know what, precisely, I would propose. I can predict that the methods which will prevail will be determined by the financial realities of the Internet. News sources which can generate more advertising revenue will survive in the competitive marketplace. If news consumers desire certain standards of accuracy and ethical behavior in their reporting, sources which meet those standards will thrive. If consumers prefer sensationalism and biased reporting to sobriety and objectivity (whatever that means), that is what they will get. The structure of news organizations in coming years may be derived from old newspaper practices, or it may be radically different. The outcome will not be determined by the preferences of ethical thinkers but by those of consumers.