Guest Post by Morbo
The United States entered World War II after Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. Victory in Europe Day was celebrated in May of 1945, and Victory in Japan Day occurred the following August.
We can safely say that World War II, at least as far as the United States’ military involvement is concerned, took place from 1941-45. If I began arguing that World War II actually occurred in the 1920s, you’d say I was crazy.
No journalist in his right mind would write something like, “Most historians believe World War II occurred between 1941-45.” Yet how many times have you seen a story about the supposed conflict between evolution and creationism that portrays the two as rough equivalents when in fact the former is well established scientific fact and latter is a ton of horse manure?
This drives me crazy. Why does it keep happening? In part because journalists are trained to give both sides of an issue. If Mr. Jones is accused of robbing a bank, a reporter might write, “Police say Jones robbed the bank on Thursday, but Jones insists he was at home during the robbery.” A court will sort out which side is correct eventually, but for the time being the story must be written this way because not all of the facts are known.
Journalists don’t need to write like this when the facts are known. Recently, Leonard Steinhorn and Charles Steinhorn wrote a great column on the History News Network, a site run by George Mason University, pointing this out.
Leonard Steinhorn is a professor of communication at American University and Charles Steinhorn is a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. The two are brothers. In their column, they smack down the idea that journalistic balance requires evolution and creationism to be treated equally.
The two write:
Recently we conducted a newspaper database search of the phrase ‘believe in evolution’ and found nearly a thousand citations from the last five years. Typical is a New York Times article that describes a married couple as “Christians who believe in evolution,” which suggests that scientific evidence and facts, like religion, can be true or false based on whether we believe in them or not. […]
Compounding the problem is the he-said, she-said style of journalism so prevalent today, which leaves media vulnerable to a trap set by proponents of the latest attack on evolution, “intelligent design,” which is little more than an artifice devised to inject religion into the biology classroom.
Bingo. You see, I can really, seriously, strongly and sincerely believe that World War II occurred in the 1920s. No matter. It still occurred in the ’40s. My belief that it occurred in the 1920s need not be respected by the media or portrayed as plausible, as it is simply wrong.
This has implications for political reporting as well. When Candidate A accuses Candidate B of having raised taxes 12 times as governor, when in fact Candidate B raised them only 10 times, that is a distortion, the kind of thing that happens during campaigns. The record can be easily corrected. When Candidate A accuses Candidate B of being a Muslim when Candidate B has never in his life been a Muslim that is a made-up-out-of-whole-cloth, huge, honking, outright lie and should be labeled as such.
Being “fair and balanced” is important for news organizations, but some things are just facts and some beliefs, even those sincerely held, are just wrong. There is no need to balance truth with falsehood.