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False balance

Reporting on a fringe assertion as if it were legitimate debate

False balance

Reporting on a fringe assertion as if it were legitimate debate

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False balance, known colloquially as bothsidesism, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports. Journalists may present evidence and arguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side's claims as baseless. False balance has been cited as a cause of misinformation.

False balance is a bias which often stems from an attempt to avoid bias and gives unsupported or dubious positions an illusion of respectability. It creates a public perception that some issues are scientifically contentious, although in reality they are not, therefore creating doubt about the scientific state of research. This can be exploited by interest groups such as corporations like the fossil fuel industry or the tobacco industry, or ideologically motivated activists such as vaccination opponents or creationists. False balance can be the result of viewpoint discrimination or political bias. Political bias can be evaluated relative to the median voter for particular topics.

Description and origin

False balance emerges from the ideal of journalistic objectivity, where factual news is presented in a way that allows the reader to make determinations about how to interpret the facts, and interpretations or arguments around those facts are left to the opinion pages. Because many newsworthy events have two or more opposing camps making competing claims, news media are responsible for reporting all (credible or reasonable) opposing positions, along with verified facts that may support one or the other side of an issue. At one time, when false balance was prevalent, news media sometimes reported all positions as though they were equally credible, even though the facts clearly contradicted a position, or there was a substantial consensus on one side of an issue, and only a fringe or nascent theory supporting the other side. In the 2020s, in contrast to prior decades, most media are willing to advocate for a particular viewpoint which they regarded as better evidenced. For instance, claims that the Earth is not warming are regularly referred to in news (vs. only editorials) as "denial", "misleading", or "debunked".

Prior to this shift, media would sometimes list all positions without clarifying that one position is known or generally agreed to be false. Unlike most other media biases, false balance may result from an attempt to avoid bias; producers and editors may consider treating competing viewpoints fairly—in proportion to their actual merits and significance—as equivalent to treating them equally, giving them equal time to present their views, even though one of the viewpoints may be overwhelmingly dominant. Media would then present two opposing viewpoints on an issue as equally credible, or present a major issue on one side of a debate as having the same weight as a minor one on the other. False balance can also originate from other motives such as sensationalism, where producers and editors may feel that a story portrayed as a contentious debate would be more commercially successful than a more accurate (or widely-agreed) account of the issue. Science journalist Dirk Steffens mocked the practice as comparable to inviting a flat Earther to debate with an astrophysicist over the shape of the Earth, as if the truth could be found somewhere in the middle. Liz Spayd of The New York Times wrote: "The problem with false balance doctrine is that it masquerades as rational thinking."

Examples

Examples of false balance in reporting on science issues include the topics of human-caused climate change versus natural climate variability, the health effects of tobacco, the disproven relation between thiomersal and autism, alleged negative side effects of the HPV vaccine, evolution versus intelligent design, and immigration.

Climate change

Main article: Media coverage of climate change

Although the scientific community almost unanimously attributes a majority of the global warming since 1950 to the effects of the Industrial Revolution, there are a very small number – a few dozen scientists out of tens of thousands – who dispute the conclusion. Giving equal voice to scientists on both sides makes it seem like there is serious disagreement within the scientific community, when in fact there is an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change that anthropogenic global warming exists.

MMR vaccine controversy

Main article: MMR vaccine controversy

Observers have criticized the involvement of mass media in the MMR vaccine controversy, what is known as "science by press conference", alleging that the media provided Andrew Wakefield's study with more credibility than it deserved. A March 2007 paper in BMC Public Health by Shona Hilton, Mark Petticrew, and Kate Hunt postulated that media reports on Wakefield's study had "created the misleading impression that the evidence for the link with autism was as substantial as the evidence against". Earlier papers in Communication in Medicine and the British Medical Journal concluded that media reports provided a misleading picture of the level of support for Wakefield's hypothesis.

References

References

  1. (23 October 2013). "Fox News defends global warming false balance by denying the 97% consensus". [[The Guardian]].
  2. (2004). "Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press". Global Environmental Change.
  3. (July 22, 2022). "False balance in news coverage of climate change makes it harder to address the crisis". Northwestern Now News.
  4. (June 2022). "When fairness is flawed: Effects of false balance reporting and weight-of-evidence statements on beliefs and perceptions of climate change.". [[Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition]].
  5. Grimes, David Robert. (2019). "A dangerous balancing act". [[EMBO Reports]].
  6. (2025). "Viewpoint Diversity, Balance, Deliberativeness: Assessing the Media Performance of Migration Coverage Multi-Dimensionally Based on Deliberative Democratic Theories". Mass Communication and Society.
  7. (2015). "The Balanced US Press". Journal of the European Economic Association.
  8. (2 March 2020). "A Trump Insider Embeds Climate Denial in Scientific Research". [[The New York Times]].
  9. Krugman, Paul. (30 January 2006). "A False Balance". [[The New York Times]].
  10. (11 November 2021). "Dirk Steffens zu Umgang mit Corona- und Klimaleugnern: 'Falsch, Verblendeten das Wort zu erteilen'".
  11. Spayd, Liz. (10 September 2016). "The Truth About 'False Balance'". [[The New York Times]].
  12. Gross, Liza. (2009). "A broken trust: lessons from the vaccine—autism wars". [[PLoS Biol]].
  13. (February 2017). "False Balance in Public Health Reporting? Michele Bachmann, the HPV Vaccine, and "Mental Retardation"". Health Communication.
  14. (2009). "Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction". [[Greenwood Press]].
  15. Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, National Research Council. (2006). "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years". [[The National Academies Press]].
  16. (23 February 2010). "Attribution of climate forcing to economic sectors". [[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America]].
  17. (2014). "Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change: Working Group III contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change". [[Cambridge University Press]].
  18. (6 July 2010). "Expert credibility in climate change". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  19. Oreskes, Naomi. (3 December 2004). "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change". [[Science (journal).
  20. (20 January 2009). "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change". Eos.
  21. America's Climate Choices: Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change; National Research Council. (2010). "Advancing the Science of Climate Change". [[National Academies Press]].
  22. Andrew, Moore. (December 2006). "Bad science in the headlines: Who takes responsibility when science is distorted in the mass media?". [[EMBO Reports]].
  23. (March 2007). "Parents' champions vs. vested interests: Who do parents believe about MMR? A qualitative study". [[BMC Public Health]].
  24. Roger, Dobson. (May 2003). "Media misled the public over the MMR vaccine, study says". The BMJ.
  25. Jackson, Trevor. (June 2003). "MMR: more scrutiny, please". [[The BMJ]].
  26. (September 2004). "Journalists and jabs: media coverage of the MMR vaccine". Communication and Medicine.
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