Blog prompt #8

To get at the question of “balance” that Dean Winegar posed to the class yesterday, I’d like to return to the Chris Mooney piece we read in the second week of class (http://www.thenation.com/article/unpopular-science#).  As you’ll recall, it covers the decline of the newspaper, media conglomeration, and the development of new media, among other things.  In this article, Mooney also brings up what he believes to be one of the huge failings of the current state of science reporting in the media.  He says:  “Then there's the problem of "balance"--the idea that reporters must give roughly equal space to two different "sides" of a controversy. When applied to science, especially in politicized areas, this media norm becomes extremely problematic. Should journalists really grant equal time to the small band of scientists who deny the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS when the vast majority of researchers accept the connection between the two? Should they split column space between the few remaining global warming "skeptics" and scientific experts who affirm the phenomenon's human causation? Again, experienced science journalists will know best how to cover such stories and will be aware of the scientific community's very justifiable abhorrence of unthinking "balance".

Reflect on Mooney’s quote for this week’s blog post.  Is Mooney right?  Or is “balance” always something to strive for in science journalism?

It is our responsibility as science writers to inform the readers, one way or another. Our perspective and the track which we decide to take in the long run is, one way or another, going to reflect our truthiness on the subject, which means that if there are two sides of an issue, we are going to already be aligned with one of them. But that doesnt mean that we can simply ignore the existence of one side and one school of thought entirely. We cannot waffle and simply give equal space to two sides of an issue, unless we are inherently uncertain and ourselves conflicted on the truth of one side or the other. We may even think that both sides are right. But all this combines to cement our responsibility to make the attempt to put both sides positions, and at least some of their information forward. 

Its been said in class a few times; "Its almost impossible to prove things with science, our only recourse is to dis prove things." Or something along those lines, anyway. In this, its a failing of liberal arts educations, where most journalists stem from - in liberal arts practice, especially in papers, we have to support our papers and construct them by showing, showing understanding of, and sometimes disproving the counterpoint to our own arguments. This is a good trait in a paper doing a critical analysis of a text or expounding a philosophical question. Less good when we are charged with writing a factual, informative article. 

So yes, I would say that it is our responsibility to show at least some balance, but not to the point of giving equal article space to both. Rather, we should make our argument and our intent clear, and, for example, with global warming and such, say "there are some who place the causes of global warming at different sources, as well as some who deny the existence of the phenomena." All that needs to be said on the topic, and it gets the point across. We do not need to be the scales of justice, perfectly weighting the heart of the issue against a feather. We simply need to let it be known that there is an opposing school of thought, and that they may eventually be able to prove something about their hypothesis, if they ever get so far as formulating one.