PRESS ROOM: The Critical Balance Reporting TEST - Academic Foundation
A deeper look at a new draft tool to help combat Misinformation by Omission
[The list of sources was missing when this was first posted, it has now been added.]
What if we had an easy tool to assist news-writers and news-followers to see almost at a glance whether a piece of journalism is truly deserving of its name, or whether it should better be called a marketing promo piece, a personal opinion piece, or simply a a report of events from a single perspective?
What follows is a longer explanation of how the Critical Balance Reporting Test came to be. To see how the test can be applied using actual media reports, please see
Figure 1: The requirement of broadcasters and journalists to present diverse opinions in their coverage.
A number of journalistic standards and ethics guides exist in Canada. These include the
Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Code of Ethics
The Canadian Association of Journalists Ethics Guidelines (2023)
The Canadian Association of Journalists Principles for Ethical Journalism
Recently, the Global declaration on information integrity online was added to the mix.
What all these documents have in common, is the requirement that journalists and broadcasters ensure that a diversity of perspectives is included in their publications.
For the news consuming public and the news generating journalists, these guidelines seem vague and disconnected from the everyday realities of providing news content under pressure. While they specify the need to include “a diversity of voices”, there is little frame of reference as to how exactly that should be done.
BACKGROUND & RATIONALE
The simple existence of these media ethics guidelines and codes has not helped prevent the erosion of public trust in the media. There is little in these principles and codes that addresses the actual CONTENT of what a journalist is presenting in written or other forms. How much intellectual work a journalist needs to put in to follow the arguments being given by sources being cited is certainly not addressed. Nor are there indicators that in the case of contentious matters, good journalists ensure that supporting arguments from both sides of a debate are identified and weighed against each other. What would help increase public trust in journalism would be some critical evaluation of the data and the arguments being referenced in the reporting, along with clarity on the thought processes the writer goes through in this critical evaluation.
For example, the new ‘Global declaration on information integrity online’ states:
Support initiatives that strengthen civic education online, especially to improve digital, media and information literacy so that individuals are empowered to think critically about the information they are consuming and sharing, and enable societies to become more resilient to the negative impacts of misinformation and disinformation, and online harms more generally.
But without guidance to journalists about what is actually meant by “think critically about the information they are consuming and sharing”, in other words, which thinking steps make up “critical” thought, there is little in the aforementioned guidelines for journalism to ensure that citizens too, will be able to think critically about the information being provided by journalists.
Increasingly, citizens who follow the news, as well as those who have become news avoiders, articulate scepticism and distrust toward journalists and media outlets. This often occurs when they perceive covert agendas and a lack of freedom given to journalists to cover the news objectively. A recent study on journalistic autonomy by Constanza Gajardo and Claudia Mellando outlines this dilemma. (5)
The proposed Critical Balance Reporting Test proposed addresses the gap left by the various ethics guidelines regarding the CONTENT of news reporting. It provides a means to help support CRITICAL THOUGHT among both news generators and news followers, and, if it becomes the norm for news reporting in newsrooms everywhere, it has the potential to allow media outlets to regain the TRUST that has been lost over time.
The Academic Underpinnings of the Critical Balance Reporting Test
GLEANING INSIGHTS FROM SWISS MEDIA SCHOLARS
Existing journalistic codes provide little guidance for journalists. There is little to let them know whether their reporting is providing the news-following public with the needed insights to participate in the democratic process. One team of media scholars, led by Philip Bachmann, of the Universität Zürich, in Zurich, Switzerland, investigated the Swiss media system from 2017 to 2020, collecting and assessing over nearly 21,000 news articles and 18,000 broadcasting items from 50 news outlets and surveying over 4,300 online participants in the course of their work. (2)
Explaining the rationale for their research in 2021, the team of Bachmann, et al. relayed that they had found the construct of “media quality” to be elusive. They cited “a lack of agreement concerning the elements of news media quality” that exists among media scholars. “There are simply no universal evaluative criteria to hand and many of those chosen often owe their relevance to change and passing circumstances of time or place”. In the introduction to their study, they summed up the situation as follows:
Summing up, the conceptual literature reflects on the many facets of news media quality (actuality, balance, clarity, etc.) to the detriment of operationalizability and measurability, while the empirical analyses obtain great precision by focusing on specific media types (e.g., television) or using specific indicators (e.g., amount of hard news), but tend to neglect theoretical considerations. So far, no study has evaluated the news media quality of all news media outlets of different types (e.g., print, online, radio, television) in a media system from both an audience and a content perspective based on a holistic definition that includes the construct's different dimensions.
In response, Bachmann et al. created a working definition of ‘news media quality’ to read:
A media entity's journalistic content (object, e.g., media system, media organization, news media outlets, news items) is superior or inferior in contributing to a better society (ideal, e.g., liberal, participatory, deliberative democracy) in comparison with media entities of a similar kind (class, e.g., media systems, media organizations, news media outlets, news items) as measured by specific normative dimensions (criteria, e.g., diversity, relevance, professionalism).
By situating their work in Switzerland, Bachmann et al were working within a unique context, which they introduced as follows:
Switzerland is a consensus democracy with direct democratic elements, a fragmented political party system, four official languages, and strong federalism with many semi-professional and part-time politicians. Direct democracy, with its potential for popular initiatives and referendums, requires a strong respect for minorities, and the formation of a plurality of considered public opinions is seen as essential in Switzerland (Kriesi 2001; Rauchfleisch and Metag 2016). Accordingly, the ideal of deliberation is particularly relevant in Switzerland.
… [Switzerland is] characterized, among other things, by strong newspapers, a strong public service media, and a strong journalistic professionalization.
Switzerland is partially a direct democracy. This means that alongside of an elected Federal Council and a Federal Assembly, up to four times a year, various matters are put up to a public vote. On the other hand, Canada’s system of representative democracy allows Canadians to outsource policy making to the representatives they elect at all levels of government approximately every four years. Ideally, Canadians choose someone to represent them on the many issues up for discussion, and assume that the representative will align with the voters’ priorities on as many of the issues that matter as possible.
Yet even though we are a representative democracy with no ability to directly vote on matters of importance, there is much Canadian law makers, journalists and the general public can learn about and apply from deliberative theory described in this Swiss study, including when it comes to political decision making and the media.
The notion of deliberative democratic theory can be traced to the writings of two key individuals. The American political philosopher John Rawls “advocated the use of reason in securing the framework for a just political society” (2) and German philosopher Jürgen Habermas who “claimed that fair procedures and clear communication can produce legitimate and consensual decisions by citizens. These fair procedures governing the deliberative process are what legitimates the outcomes.”
For Rawls: “reason curtails self-interest to justify the structure of a political society that is fair for all participants in that society and secures equal rights for all members of that society.” Accordingly, issues that affect the public, should be up for public debate. Processes within democratic institutions must be public and subject to public scrutiny. And citizens must be provided not only with information, but must ensure that decisions are grounded in reason, that they themselves have engaged in and contributed through open debate. They are not to rely on some form of transcendent reason “available only to a segment of the population” in the words of US political philosophy professor Jennifer Eagan as she writes on deliberative democracy for Encyclopedia Britannica. “Even when the exchange of reason, arguments, and viewpoints does not seem to produce a clear outcome, many deliberative theorists suggest that the dissent produced, and the continuing debate, enhances the democratic process.” (4)
Eagan explains how critics of deliberative democratic theory point out that reason alone is not the driving motivator for many people, that one must account for personal self interest. Just because there was a robust debate in a country on an issue, this does not mean that decisions are truly based on consensus. Critics also point out that for many people socio-economic factors such as poverty, low literacy levels, time constraints, etc. can prohibit a full engagement with the exchange of reason, arguments and viewpoints.
This is clearly where journalists come in. I believe their contribution to the democratic functioning of the nation lies in carrying out their responsibility to accurately relay the arguments and viewpoints to those not actively participating in debates.
Bachman et al set up a rating system to analyze the content of the news items originating from the various news media outlets. And they found that their results correlated with the views of the readership they had surveyed. “The higher a news media outlet is rated in terms of news media quality from our scholars' perspective (based on a content analysis), the better its quality is perceived from the audience perspective, and vice versa.”
They scored news items on four dimensions:
RELEVANCE “…focuses on socially relevant topics in their reporting”
CONTEXTUALIZATION “…presents substantial background information on current topics”
PROFESSIONALISM “…focuses on arguments over emotions in their coverage”
DIVERSITY “…covers various perspectives in its reporting”
rating each on a scale of 1 to 10.
Bachmann et al determined RELEVANCE based on two considerations - topic relevance and actor relevance. Topic relevance depended on how a news item contributed to ‘the democratic opinion-formation processes’ and how it contributes ‘to the integration and cohesion of a society’. News items about politics, economics and culture received higher scores than sports stories, which in turn received higher scores than so-called human interest stories. On the other hand,
A news item scores highest in the actor relevance dimension if it is about society as a whole or its functional systems (macro level, ten points) and highly if it is about organizations or institutions (meso level, eight points). Contrastingly, a news item scores lower on actor relevance if it is about individuals (micro level) in their functional roles (six points) and lowest when the coverage is solely about private aspects of a person (one point).
Interestingly, the team of scholars chose to multiply the two relevance ratings and divide the total by 10 to arrive at the relevance score. For the purpose of the audience survey component of their study, Bachmann et al devised these questions: The news media outlet “… focuses on socially relevant topics in their report,” “… reports about relevant societal processes rather than about individuals,” and “… concentrates on important occurrences rather than featuring miscellany.”
Likewise, Bachmann et al. distinguished two dimensions of CONTEXTualization:
First, news media content should embed events in longer-term developments and contexts, that is, provide the audience with sufficient background information (thematic orientation). Second, news media should also be a source of orientation by providing interpretations (interpretative performance).
A news item scored higher on ‘thematic orientation’, if it provided a cause-effect relationship whereas items that only reported “singular events without embedding them in context” scored much lower (10 vs 2 points).
To arrive at an ‘interpretive performance’ score, Bachman et al looked at what journalists did with a news topic and started with the genre of item being produced:
News stories and reportage where the focus is on research, interpretative presentation, and analysis, and opinion-oriented formats such as commentaries or editorials, where subjective points of view are presented and justified, both support the democratic opinion-formation process and receive a high score (ten points). Interviews (score 9), and news reports (produced by staff members) (eight points) also contribute to understanding the interpretations and opinions of those actors in a news item. Finally, a news item shows a low level of interpretation if it contains external material which is only partially edited (five points) or consists entirely of external content such as agency copy (one point).
The authors gave a slightly higher weighting to thematic orientation (0.6) than to interpretive performance (0.4) to arrive at their contextualization score. When it came to the audience survey, contextualization was rated with these questions “picks up on socially relevant topics early on,” “gives extensive background information,” “places occurrences within a wider context,” and “presents substantial background information about current topics.”
Their PROFESSIONALISM score was broken down into three dimensions: ‘source transparency’, ‘independent reporting’ and ‘objectivity’. To score high on source transparency, a journalist would need to fulfill their professional requirement of disclosing and clearly indicating the sources used to create the news item. The score for independent reporting reflected the degree to which a journalist relied upon pre-written materials such as news agency (wire service) copy versus how much independent work was done to prepare the news item. Bachman et al indicated that “Journalism can only fulfill its democratic functions if it proves to be independent of the external services of communicative suppliers.”
Meanwhile, objectivity reflected the dominant style of argumentation used by the journalist.
The dimension objectivity captures a news item's dominant style of argumentation. A news item in the cognitive–normative style corresponds to an important measure of deliberative democracy theory in that arguments must be objectively weighed against each other. Such a news item is scored accordingly high (ten points). Contrastingly, moral–emotional messages focusing on emotions that are detrimental to a rational discourse, or written in the form of polemics and thus distracting from civil and respectful dialogue, are classified as low (two points).
For Bachmann et al, objectivity stands above the other two variables, such that if a news item shows a low degree of cognitive-argumentative value and yet shows source transparency and independence in writing, it should still be rated as showing low professionalism. Audience survey questions relating to perceived professionalism of a news media outlet included: “stands for independent reporting,” “clearly distinguishes between news and opinions,” “focuses on arguments over emotions in their coverage,” and “presents their news sources transparently.”
In contrast to the other scores, the DIVERSITY score was not measured at the news item level but rather at the news outlet level. The authors looked at ‘regional diversity’ (which areas of Switzerland were generally reported on by a news media outlet) and ‘content diversity’. In keeping with the understanding that the content delivered by a strong media is essential in contributing to a liberal, participatory, deliberative democracy, the authors also looked at the topics on which the media outlets reported. To start with, they set up an ‘ideal distribution’ in which micro, meso and macro-level political and micro and macro-level economic stories would feature as prominently on the content list of a news agency as sports stories, arts & culture stories and human interest stories. They found this not to be the case, as sports and human interest stories combined took up a full 39.5% of the bandwidth in the news outlets they studied, followed by arts & culture stories at 15% and only then macro-level political and current events stories following with 11% and all others figuring even lower.
THE CANADIAN CONTEXT
To return to the current Canadian context, ever fewer Canadians feel they can trust the reports coming out of the government-funded, ‘mainstream’ media outlets. These are increasingly referred to as ‘legacy media’ or even ‘dinosaur media.’ The term ‘legacy’ refers to media that have been in existence before the advent of the internet. Yet nowadays, increasingly modern internet-based features are being added to the so-called legacy media. And new media outlets are being started, some with the aim of being truly independent of any government, corporate or think tank funds that could bias their editorial neutrality. Others are being set up to appear independent, but on closer examination, appear (intentionally or unintentionally) to be propaganda organs for the various interests at play within the country.
Prominent among the ‘mainstream’ media outlets is the official state broadcaster (The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or CBC). It is joined by the major corporate broadcasters who also receive significant amounts of government funding (including CTV, GlobalNews and others). Many news outlets pull their stories from the various corporate news wire services, US based Associated Press and Reuters, alongside of the Canadian Press.
Over the 40 weeks of reporting via the CanadianShareableNews project, and in the four years through which I have been following the COVID science, I have been astounded about the number of topics that have not made a single recent appearance on any of the three major news wires services which, in turn are relied upon by what seems to be a majority of Canadian news outlets. At some point, I was inspired to write about the phenomenon of ‘Information by Omission’ the ONE form of ‘Disinformation’ that is never addressed by the one-sided ‘misinformation gurus’ that have been given ever more prominence of late. (7) My earlier attempts to track COVID-19 related news reports coming from outside the mainstream news bubble can be seen here:
under the LATEST tab on this site: https://followingthecovidscience.8b.io/page13.html where from October 25, 2021 to May 16, 2022 I posted three new headlines a week - items of crucial importance rarely covered in ‘mainstream’ media
in a collection of many headlines from 2021 unreported (in the mainstream press) compiled in the “Free Press” section of a slide show presentation seeking to “Build Common Ground” found here https://followingthecovidscience.8b.io/page19.html and https://followingthecovidscience.8b.io/page20.html.
When referencing any of these headlines to mainstream news watchers as examples of media censorship in Canada I was met with disbelief. Watchers of mainstream news found it totally sensible for their trusted news sources to CENSOR OUT DISINFORMATION, not realizing that it is precisely that action which is causing such an imbalance in reporting which then leads to policy makers around the country instituting one-sided and harmful policies without much visible citizen pushback.
Increasingly, Canadians are becoming aware of what seems to be a stubborn, willful blindness on the part of all of these once respected major go-to sources of news. Despite many citizen efforts to share breaking news and expert analysis on key topics, these ‘mainstream’ news outlets have yet to report honestly on matters related to COVID-19 prevention and treatment, along with the scientific discoveries as the true nature of the gene-based mRNA injections known as ‘COVID-19 vaccines and boosters’. Additionally, there is nearly zero coverage on the activities of international and local peace activists. New revelations in climate science, and on the impacts of toxic climate engineering projects also appear to be disallowed in Canadian mainstream newsrooms, along with honest geopolitical and economic analysis. Thus, similar to the citizens of communist East Germany prior to 1989, Canadians only receive the ‘government narrative’ on matters of crucial importance from the various ‘mainstream’ outlets. Open debate, the interchange of ideas, non-narrative positions all appear verboten (forbidden) on public airways. Conversely, the many independent new media, often founded by single citizen journalists who start with a YouTube or Rumble channel and add on volunteer or paid tech support as their following grows, are not in a position to devote precious airtime to a rehash of the ‘official’ position in order to purposely demonstrate balance. Instead, they devote their efforts to elucidating the ‘alternative’ argumentations and topic areas that appear to have been suppressed on the ‘mainstream’ news outlets.
Soon, the nomenclature for media outlets will need to change in Canada, as the ‘mainstream’ media is being abandoned for the ‘alternative’ media and the ‘alternative’ breaks down into many, many tiny parts. Ideological terms like ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’ are no longer useful, as a close look at many of the independent platforms reveal an ‘anti-corporatist’ ‘anti-globalist’ ‘pro-local’ ‘pro-human’ ‘communitarian’ focus in their reporting regardless of political labels. This stands in strong contrast to the ‘official’ media narratives which end up reciting the talking points of transnational corporations.
Figure 2 shows a developing pattern:
Figure 2: A comparison of two approaches to contentious topics in Canada divided by media ‘type’.
MY RESEARCH QUESTION
The news cycle has a direct impact upon the citizens who then lobby the politicians to take this or that action, as well as directly on the politicians themselves along with the top decision makers in our places of employment, institutions of learning, of justice, etc. So the key to better decision making at all levels is better quality journalism.
As a former teacher with plenty of experience coaching high school students to become better writers of paragraphs in Second Language classes, or essays in Social Studies class, and personal resumes in Career and Life Management classes, etc. I have long been seeing serious shortcomings in the writing that has been passing for journalism in Canada these days. The reports in September 2024 on Health Canada’s authorization of the latest Moderna COVID-19 injections are a case in point.
For anyone familiar with the different roles media outlets can take, i.e. reporters as activists, amplifiers, analysts, casual commentators, questioners or actual journalists who aspire to be the ‘paragon of objectivity’, it is clear that such uncritical, one-sided writing can only be classified as amplification of a pre-set narrative, not as journalism.
It is not just a matter of ‘ethics’. Other criteria related to the academic work of the journalist themselves must come to the fore. Other media scholars might follow the lead of Bachmann et al to do a full scale analysis of Canada’s media system as a whole. I, on the other hand, chose to tackle the problem one news article at a time, with the help of some of the insights presented by Bachmann et al. and a few others.
My research question was: What if we had an ‘easy to use’ list of indicators of quality against which to measure news reports being generated by any journalists in Canada?
The descriptors that most interested me in the Bachmann paper were:
Contextualization
“Journalistic contents should further be contextualized because public discourse benefits from news media that do not merely report but place information in a larger societal or political context. Besides providing facts, news media should explain and contextualize events”
Independent Reporting
A higher rating of media quality if the reporting focuses little on external services such as agency copy [or materials provided by the entity being reported on]. Journalism can only fulfill its democratic functions if it proves to be independent of the external services of communicative suppliers.
Objectivity
“The dimension objectivity captures a news item's dominant style of argumentation. A news item in the cognitive–normative style corresponds to an important measure of deliberative democracy theory in that arguments must be objectively weighed against each other.”
Source Transparency
“The source transparency dimension refers to journalism's professional requirement to disclose the sources that will be used for news items. Source transparency is credited when the news item's source is clearly indicated, be it with author name, abbreviation, or reference to a news agency. News items lacking these transparent indications do not meet the requirements for source transparency and are, accordingly, scored low.”
I was particularly thrilled by the indicator of CONTEXTUALIZATION, as weak news items all seem to arrive hodgepodge, totally devoid of references of the larger context in which they arise. As well, in my view, the three aspects that Bachmann et al grouped together as indicators of ‘professionalism’ (independent reporting, objectivity and source transparency) should each stand on their own.
I found a companion statement for the indicator of CONTEXTUALIZATION in the paper by A. Abbas & K. Khan (1) entitled ‘Ethical Challenges in Journalism: Balancing Objectivity and Sensitivity in Reporting’.
“Ethical journalism demands a commitment to truth, accuracy and empathy, as well as an understanding of the broader societal impact of media reporting.”
When a journalist puts out a piece of writing, can they see the broader impact of what they are adding to the mix on the whole of society? Can, for example, someone writing uncritically about the so-called authorization of the latest Moderna product perceive the impact their naive, uninformed remarks so blithely stated would have upon those Canadians who were deeply injured by previous Moderna shots? Or upon those medical and scientific advocates who have devoted the bulk of the last few years trying to educate Health Canada on the total lack of validity to any so-called safety data being referenced?
I then returned to the The Canadian Association of Journalists Ethics Guidelines (2023) to see whether any of those guidelines could be applied to the actual intellectual work that goes into the creation of a news item. This led me to identify these indicators.
Diversity of Opinion
“when seeking expert opinion and analysis, we seek to incorporate a diversity of sources”
Accuracy
“We seek documentation to support the reliability of those sources and their stories”
“We are careful to distinguish between assertions and facts.”
Given all of the laziness inherent in recycling claims that people behind this or that source are “purveyors of misinformation” without any efforts at all on the part of journalists, so-called ‘fact checkers’ and others, to actually identify how and where particular information is errant, I chose to take the following statements from the ethics guidelines, and place them under my own interpretation of Professionalism.
Professionalism
“We avoid reinforcing stereotypes and negative tropes and narratives.”
Given that “Diversity recognizes the essential dignity and human rights of individuals who experience the world in different ways” journalists exhibiting professionalism write respectfully about the views of others. They do not use ad hominem attacks in their writing. They also do not claim charges of ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’ or ‘malinformation’ without clearly identifying valid evidence demonstrating errors in information being presented.
In consideration of the recent Moderna article and how favourably the company was being treated, I also pulled this statement from the ethics guidelines:
We do not give favoured treatment to advertisers and special interests. We resist any outside efforts to influence the news.
I added it as descriptor to the indicator INDEPENDENT REPORTING.
Looking further at the article by Nicholas Lehman entitled The journalistic method: Five principles for blending analysis and narrative, (6) I pulled this indicator:
Data Evaluation
“Evaluating the data. Never accept a conclusion from an expert at face value. Instead, you should follow the steps that led to the conclusion, and you should make some judgment as to whether the methodology and presentation are sound. You should also find out whether somebody else has drawn a different conclusion about the same subject.”
Second only to CONTEXTUALIZATION, this indicator excited me the most. It reminded me of my attempts to teach students to follow the logic of the information they were pulling from sources they referenced in their Social Studies essays. Does what you are citing make sense? Does it support your argument? Can you understand what the authors mean, what their intentions and biases are? Can you make a determination on the validity of their assertions as you choose to refer to them in your writing?
Thoughts on testing the Test
To be able to share my list of indicators with other people, I need to test run it on a few different samples of different lengths. Is it possible to address all indicators in a short, 300-400 word news article? Or even a longer one? Not every reporter can write an essay on every topic, no editor would even want that. What about in video broadcast news? Would it take a full 15 minute time slot to ‘meet’ all of my criteria? What does it mean if someone meets half of the indicators but not the others? Are some more crucial than others? Do I grant points for meeting a criterion well, like Bachmann et al did? Do I use a scale of 1 to 3 or 1 to 5 giving a higher mark to someone who put in more context? Yet, given the word count limits inherent in the media world, that does not seem fair. I chose not to do the teacher thing and not to ‘give grades’ according to quality of writing, but simply to indicate if an author ATTEMPTED to do what the indicators indicate. Yes or No. Even simply trying to address this or that indicator would indicate that the journalist was aware of the need to include this or that element in their work. That would be a great start!
And should I find a journalist who could benefit from a gentle reminder that by addressing more of the indicators, their writing could be more helpful in our wider societal context, what should I call my ‘test’? What is my overall goal? What am I trying to accomplish here in the first place? I want media reports to be balanced. And I want journalists to demonstrate critical awareness. They are more than ‘photocopy machines’ so they should not just take their sources’ word for something, shouldn’t copy out statements point blank, particularly if the sources stand to benefit in some way from someone uncritically amplifying their message.
‘Mainstream’ Warnings against ‘False Balance’
I have recently become aware of guidance to journalists to avoid ‘false balance’ in their reporting - apparently journalists are now being discouraged from providing ‘both sides of a story’, something that for decades I assumed was the bread and butter of news reporting. In this piece of guidance to health journalists, published in the KSJ Science Editing Handbook, for example, journalists are told to “to get a sense of where the scientific consensus lies”. (8) This completely flies in the face of the scientific method. Consensus is fleeting as over time, new critical observations are made regarding previously held positions, new hypotheses developed, new premises tested out, new insights gathered.
The person giving this advice, Melinda Wenner Moyer, contributing editor at Scientific American, writes “They should only report scientifically outlier positions if solid evidence supports it, not just because someone is shouting it from their own tiny molehill.” She seems unaware that the voices shouting from the mole hill might very well be those finding the PROBLEMS with current consensus and leading their field to new, improved methods or other changes.
Her comments demonstrate the result of years of effective censorship of scientific findings. I find it astounding that someone who works in the scientific publishing industry would hold this very unscientific view:
False balance often arises in stories about controversies that persist among the general public even though the science on the issue is clear-cut — such as climate change and vaccine safety. When journalists cover the ongoing societal debate over human-caused climate change, and they quote scientists on “both sides of the issue,” presenting them as equal in merit and in number, they fail to communicate to readers that there is, in fact, a clear scientific consensus on the issue. Likewise, when journalists cover vaccine safety and they quote parents who are concerned about childhood vaccines alongside experts who study vaccine safety, they frame these opposing opinions as equally valid, when the science clearly shows that childhood vaccines are safe.
Could a decade of purposeful avoidance of balanced and critical reporting truly lead a science editor to be so unaware of the preponderance of peer reviewed and published data that in one paragraph she shares misinformation in two fields?
The journalistic profession needs to take the Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online seriously as it reminds us to "Promote and respect pluralistic media and journalism, and protect access to media content as one measure to counter disinformation.”
Wenner Moyer also presents this perplexing piece of advice:
It’s crucial for science reporters to ensure that the people they interview have appropriate expertise, are devoid of major conflicts of interest, and reflect different racial and gender identities. Sometimes the difference between a good science piece and a bad science piece is one additional question asked at the end of an interview or five extra minutes of online research. If you’re not sure that the voices in a piece truly reflect the scientific consensus, keep digging until you are
So as a counterpoint to the term ‘false balance’ and to summarize my two main objectives, I am calling my ‘test’ the Critical Balance Reporting Test. Yet the term ‘test’ is being used unofficially. Journalists can use the indicators to test their own writing, to see how it stands up to the indicators drawn from the work of international media scholars, along with certain components of the ethics guidelines that govern their profession. And citizen news-followers can test a news item to check for its validity beyond simply identifying the source of the information cited. In the case of contentious news stories with life and death consequences, for example, knowing that data comes from a government agency is not a sufficient indicator of media quality. Rather, understanding how a news story is embedded into a larger societal context, seeing how the data that supports the story has been evaluated, along with whether and how respectfully the considerations of those with contradictory data have been taken into consideration, all of these are crucial to a quality news item.
What to do with Missed Indicators?
And finally, when finding that a journalist’s attempt at news telling falls short of meeting the Critical Balance Reporting Test, what can we do?
We can gently remind the author of this commitment expressed in the Canadian Association of Journalist Ethics Guidelines: “Although we make every effort to avoid mistakes, we know they might still happen. When we make a mistake – whether in fact or in context, and regardless of the platform – we correct it promptly, prominently and in a transparent manner, acknowledging the nature of the error.”
Ethical Guidelines “provide a framework for maintaining journalistic integrity and ensuring the public's trust”. (4) The Critical Balance Reporting Indicators can, hopefully, become an easily accessible verification tool that assists both writers and readers in knowing whether they are dealing with reporting that both maintains journalistic integrity and ensures the public trust.
In the previous post, I trial the 8 Critical Balance Reporting Indicators with two articles - one that was essentially recopied and reprinted with slight variations in multiple news outlets across Canada, and another written for a local community paper in a remote part of the country.
The result so far show that IF at the planning stage, journalists do not seek out a diversity of perspectives upon which to base an article, they will not be able to ‘score’ on at least 4 of the indicators in the ‘test’.
Perhaps, as investigative topics are assigned for the day, newsroom staff can jointly brainstorm how and where their fellow journalists can access sources that reflect a diversity of perspectives before they all depart in pursuit of their own stories.
Next Steps
To return to my research question: What if we had an ‘easy to use’ list of indicators of quality against which to measure news reports being generated by any journalists in Canada?
I should now ascertain:
a) whether this list of quality indicators (aka Critical Balance Reporting Test) is in fact ‘easy to use’.
b) whether it can be used to measure news reports presented via any media type, or whether its use is best left for print media
c) whether some indicators should be removed, or whether others should be added
d) what kind of information gaps would first need to be filled in order to allow anyone to use this test. By this I mean, if Person A wishes to assess an article by Person B, can Person A adequately do so without getting out of ‘the mainstream news bubble’? Would Person A need to know the arguments from ‘the other side’ of an issue in order to ascertain if they have been omitted? Or can people be taught to identify the EXISTENCE or ABSENCE of other potential arguments simply by looking at word choice and sentence structure?
To discover whether indeed the Critical Balance Reporting Test can be used to measure high quality reporting, it needs to be widely shared and trialed.
I have two hopes - one is that this test can spark productive conversations in newsrooms. classrooms and living rooms across the country. And the second is that by this time next year, we have redirected media organizations back to their original principles and ethics. As I outlined on December 28th at the end of this opinion piece:
journalists should follow a story where it leads and purposely seek out voices whose interpretations of events contradicts the ‘mainstream’ until an expectation for balance and for diverse perspectives is once again a hallmark of what it means to be a ‘MAINSTREAM’ journalist. One-side reporting that leaves out opposing viewpoints and does NOT ‘follow the money’ and is often plagued with conflicts of interests should be called out as propaganda only.
Your comments are greatly appreciated!
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SOURCES:
SOURCES
Abbas, A & Khan, K. Ethical Challenges in Journalism: Balancing Objectivity and Sensitivity in Reporting
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Canadian Association of Journalists Ethics Guidelines. November 2023 https://caj.ca/wp-content/uploads/Ethics-Guidelines-v2023.pdf
Eagan, Jennifer L. Deliberative Democracy in Britannica.Com. (undated) https://www.britannica.com/topic/deliberative-democracy
Constanza Gajardo & Claudia Mellado (17 Oct 2024): “journalists are just employees”: Examining Journalistic Autonomy from an Audience Perspective, Journalism Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2024.2416062bK: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1461670X.2024.2416062
Lemann, Nicholas. The journalistic method: Five principles for blending analysis and narrative. The Journalists’ Resource.
Noerenberg, Hannah L. Recognizing & Calling out ‘Information Omission’. Canadian Shareable News. April 10, 2023. https://canadianshareablenews.substack.com/p/recognizing-and-calling-out-information
Wenner Moyer, Melinda. Avoiding False Balance. KSJ Science Editing Handbook. (Undated) https://ksjhandbook.org/sources-experts-where-to-find-them-how-to-vet-them/avoiding-false-balance/