Re: Columnist: What we need here is a bias in favour of truth
- From: Desertphile <desertphile@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 16:45:46 -0600
On Sat, 05 May 2007 15:33:58 -0400, Jason Spaceman
<notreally@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From the article:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The pressure to present balanced accounts of controversial issues shouldn't
extend to nonsense
Peter McKnight
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, May 05, 2007
"Journalism itself is a science, and ... a properly qualified, responsible
journalist is a practicing scientist."
Physicist Lawrence Cranberg (1989)
Two years ago a Scientific American editorial announced that the magazine
would institute a sweeping policy change, a change so radical that it would
completely reorient the magazine's approach to science journalism.
Noting that "good journalism values balance above all else," the editors
said they owed it to their readers "to present everybody's ideas equally,"
because "to do otherwise would be elitist and wrong."
The editors then admitted that they had been guilty of elitism in the past
in that they failed to present a "balanced" presentation of issues like
creationism, missile defence and global warming. Indeed, in response to the
many letters they received from creationists, the editors described the
magazine's coverage of evolution as "hideously one-sided."
But those bad old days would soon be over, the editors promised, as they
advised readers to "get ready for the new Scientific American," which "will
be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the
science that scientists say is science."
Some readers were delighted with the policy change, others were appalled.
And more careful readers realized what was going on when they read that the
editorial was posted on the Scientific American website on April 1, 2005 --
April Fools Day.
The editors were, of course, not really suggesting that they intended
henceforth to put science and non-science -- and nonsense -- on equal
footing; they were, rather, ridiculing those who demand that journalists do
so, those who argue that good journalism involves merely presenting both
sides of an issue and letting readers decide the truth.
Certainly, there is considerable pressure to offer a balanced presentation
of controversial issues. This is nowhere more apparent than in the case of
global warming. Witness Mike Chernoff's recent attempt to get copies of The
Great Global Warming Swindle into high school classrooms to "balance" Al
Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and his statement that "without balanced
information on a subject, an unbiased decision is difficult."
Similarly, when I write about evolution and creationism, I am invariably
accused of bias -- a lack of balance -- for explaining that evolution is a
scientific theory and creationism is not. To repair this problem, certain
letter writers tell me that I should simply present both positions equally,
without editorial comment, and let my readers decide the truth.
Doing that would amount to an abdication of my role as a columnist, since I
have a responsibility to offer an opinion. It would also represent an
affront to science, but I understand where my letter writers are coming
from; journalism has long promoted the view that journalists ought to
present both sides in a dispute and keep their opinions to themselves.
Ironically, this most unscientific approach to journalism arose in an
attempt to make journalism scientific. While newspapers were originally
explicitly partisan, the rise of scientific positivism in the 19th century
led journalists to believe that they too could seek truth unencumbered by
their political persuasions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read it at
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=6eee65fa-01f0-4983-9285-2c55e3b90cda
or http://tinyurl.com/22bzrw
A good part:
"And the problem became evident as early as the late 19th century,
shortly after journalists began their quest for fairness. In Just
the Facts: How "Objectivity" Came to Define American Journalism,
David Mindich reviewed the coverage of lynchings in American
newspapers and found that this "false balance" -- this attempt to
balance pro- and anti-lynching views, even though one side was
right and the other wrong -- diminished the horrors of lynching
and helped normalize the practice."
That is exactly what the Creationists want to do with science. A
few days ago a Creationist was quoted in a Christian occult
newspaper complaining about the "bias towards evolution" that
scientists have.... as if such a bias were unfair. It seems
unfathomable to me that they can actually believe, or even claim
to believe, that valid answers to scientific questions are unfair
to those who hold invalid, erronious, false, and/or absurd
beliefs. Damn right scientists are biased: THAT'S THEIR JOBS!
--
http://desertphile.org
Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water
"We destroyed the mall? I fought on the wrong side." -- Dawn
.
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