False balance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
False balance is a term used to describe a perceived or real media bias, where journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence actually supports. Journalists may present evidence and arguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may even actually suppress information which would establish one side's claims as baseless.
An example of issues sometimes handled with false balance are pseudoscience, as when a national nightly news program in the United States gave coverage to a backyard inventor who claimed to have invented a perpetual motion machine; the program presented scientific authorities to explain why such a device was impossible, but since they gave equal time to the claims of the inventor, it may have created a false impression with audiences that his claims might be credible, which they are not. Other issues sometimes handled with false balance are Holocaust denial, Global Warming, and Intelligent Design creationism.
False balance can sometimes originate from similar motives as sensationalism, where producers and editors may feel that a story portrayed as a contentious debate will be more commercially successful to pursue than a more accurate account of the issue. However, unlike most other media biases, false balance may actually stem from an attempt to avoid bias; producers and editors may confuse treating competing views fairly -- i.e., in proportion to their actual merits and significance -- with treating them equally, giving them equal time to present their views even when those views may be known beforehand to be based on false information.
