Journalism and Personal Bias

Journalists are supposed to report the news in a balanced fashion, reporting both sides of a story regardless of which one they agree with. That way, regardless of their own bias, they can still give the public a chance to make up it's own mind. I have long questioned the capacity of a biased individual to produce an unbiased report, but I ran into an blog entry that brought the problem sharply into focus.

In googling Richard Lindzen, the scientist whose Wall Street Journal global warming op-ed I blogged last week, I ran into a blog entry from CBS news. The author interviewed the people behind 60 Minutes' three pieces this season on climate change, including one that tied into Katrina. He notes that they "did not pause to acknowledge global warming skeptics, instead treating the existence of global warming as an established fact." The response: "If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?"

This is a good question. At some point in a public debate, the only people who haven't become convinced of the truth may be classified as kooks and the debate may be considered over. The debate over whether the Holocaust actually occurred has long since reached that point, and journalistic balance should not force a report to consider the dissenting "side".

However, the question as to whether a debate still exists is a judgment that must be made by a reporter. The people at CBS "tried hard to find a respected scientist who contradicted the prevailing opinion in the scientific community, but there was no one out there who fit that description." One would think that the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT would fit the bill, but Richard Lindzen was not quoted. So either the research team at CBS doesn't have the contacts that the Wall Street Journal does, or the decision was made that Lindzen was not a "respected scientist".

Therein lies the rub: even given their best efforts, today's big media outlets could not be unbiased because the job of a journalist requires judgment, and the personal views of most journalists lie far to the left of the average American's. So perhaps the exodus of mainstream media viewership to more conservative sources may be explained thusly to their mystified leaders: the "kooks" are leaving.


CBSNews.com Blog: ...Global Warming Coverage


filed: media; politics