[bsder]

Personally, I think a bigger journalistic sin is:

> Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.

A journalist should check whether there is another side that they missed. However, there sometimes isn't. Sometimes the other side is simply flat-out wrong. More often, the "other side" is maliciously wrong.

This journalistic assumption that there are always multiple sides that are on equal footing needs to DIE.

[teflodollar]

But stories do have multiple sides, even if one side is flat out wrong.

I don't think anyone on the right or left would say that the present problem with Journalists is that they present both sides too well.

That's not to say that there's never a correct position. Assuming there is another version is different from assuming all versions are on multiple footing.

[bsder]

My standard argument about this is: vax vs anti-vax.

There are NOT two equal sides. There is a correct side and an outright fraudulent side and bunch of easily swayed morons.

Journalists tend to cover this with "balance" instead of calling one side flat-out wrong. "Fair" means occasionally calling out liars and pissing people off.

[thu2111]

Disagree completely. Journalists to a great degree aren't smart enough to determine the correctness of a viewpoint. When they try they make themselves look foolish and reduce trust in not just themselves but institutions more greatly.

For instance, they keep reporting the results of dodgy scientific studies as if it's the unquestionable truth. Their evaluation of "is it true" is nothing fancier than "does the person telling me this have a PhD from a university I've heard of". Then more studies that come out and contradict the first set, and they get reported in the same way. Pretty soon people figure out that these stories can't all be right.

If journalists insist on interpreting the news to try and give context, which they don't have to do, then they should be far more skeptical than they really are, and give far more time to people who disagree with any given idea of view. That would pretty quickly put a stop to things like this:

http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/

NB: this site tries to make the Daily Mail look stupid because some objects are classified as both cures and causes cancer. But if you check the stories, they're all reporting on actual scientific results. The problem is the underlying medical science isn't reliable enough to determine truth.