False balance
Presenting two positions as equally supported when the evidence overwhelmingly favors one, so that the audience concludes the question is open.
Journalistic balance is a defense against bias: give both sides, let the reader decide. The device turns the defense into an attack. Where the evidence is lopsided, presenting one voice from each side implies a fifty-fifty contest, and the audience, who cannot weigh the research, weighs the speakers instead. A single dissenter opposite a field of thousands looks like half the argument.
Interested parties learned to exploit the norm: supply the dissenter, insist on the right of reply, and let the format do the rest. Boykoff and Boykoff showed in 2004 that American prestige papers had covered climate science this way for fifteen years, giving the impression of a scientific debate that did not exist among scientists. Exploits Anchoring and Equiprobability Bias.
Historical examples
Boykoff and Boykoff analyzed coverage of climate change in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal and found that a majority of articles gave roughly equal attention to the scientific consensus and to the view that warming was natural or uncertain. The balance norm, they wrote, had produced "informationally biased" coverage: the format implied a scientific disagreement the science did not contain.
Boykoff, Maxwell T., and Jules M. Boykoff. "Balance as Bias: Global Warming and the US Prestige Press." Global Environmental Change 14, no. 2 (2004): 125–136. Source
The industry's press strategy was to ensure that every story on smoking and health carried an industry scientist's doubt, so that the format itself said "two sides." The 1954 Frank Statement was the opening move; the Tobacco Institute's speakers' bureau kept the second voice supplied for four decades.
Brandt, Allan M. The Cigarette Century. New York: Basic Books, 2007; Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of Doubt. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.
A review of the BBC's science coverage commissioned by the BBC Trust found that the corporation's commitment to impartiality had led it to give "undue attention to marginal opinion" on settled scientific questions, and recommended that balance be weighed by the evidence rather than by the number of sides. The report is the clearest institutional recognition of the device.
Jones, Steve. BBC Trust Review of Impartiality and Accuracy of the BBC's Coverage of Science. London: BBC Trust, July 2011.
Find a story that gives "both sides" of a scientific or factual question. Look up the question. Are the sides the same size?
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
A panel on vaccine safety seats one pediatric immunologist opposite one blogger, and the host says "we'll let you decide."
What to notice. The format presents a settled question as an even contest by giving each side one chair.
"Scientists remain divided over whether the bridge is safe." One retired engineer disagrees with the inspection report.
What to notice. "Divided" describes one dissenter against a field; the proportion is hidden by the word.
"In the interest of balance, we now hear from the company's own laboratory."
What to notice. A funded voice is given equal standing with independent evidence under the banner of fairness.
Sources
- Boykoff, Maxwell T., and Jules M. Boykoff. "Balance as Bias." Global Environmental Change 14, no. 2 (2004): 125–136. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2003.10.001
- Jones, Steve. BBC Trust Review of Impartiality and Accuracy of the BBC's Coverage of Science. BBC Trust, 2011.
- Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of Doubt. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. ISBN 978-1596916104
- Brandt, Allan M. The Cigarette Century. New York: Basic Books, 2007. ISBN 978-0465070473