Factual Versus “Balanced”: The L.A. Times and Climate Change Deniers

A few weeks ago, the Letters Editor for the L.A. Times wrote an explanation of why letters repeating a falsehood about the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) did not get printed in their paper. He noted: “Letters that have an untrue basis (for example, ones that say there’s no sign humans have caused climate change) do not get printed.” Not surprisingly, the parenthetical example of letters that would not be printed because they were untrue had climate change deniers frothing at the mouth. The editor made a response to their criticism in which he concluded: “Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying 'there’s no sign humans have caused climate change' is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.”

It seems that in most news reports nowadays journalists bend over backwards to be balanced by presenting both sides of any argument or controversy. While this may be the proper approach in many situations, there is often a difference between being "balanced" and being objective. Simply put, in many debates to give both sides equal time is to create a false equivalence between an argument based on facts and one based on falsehoods. When that happens, the media is not doing its job of informing the public; if anything it is confusing it. Admittedly, there are some "debates" where one side is so blatantly spouting nonsense that most media sources will not attempt to be "balanced". For example, only extreme right wing news sources would present assertions that Barack Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya as anything other than false. But many of them do allow those that assert that climate change is unrelated to human activity or even that it is not occurring at all equal time. But in reality, while it is possible to debate how much the climate is changing and to what degree humans are responsible, the L.A. Times editor is absolutely correct to say that the statement that there's no sign (i.e., evidence) humans have caused climate change is factually inaccurate. There is plenty of such evidence, no matter how much some people may like to deny it.

Climate change is not the only issue that suffers from such efforts by the media to be "balanced". For example, as with the original issue that the L.A. Times editor was discussing, many right-wing falsehoods about the Affordable Care Act have been printed unchallenged by the media. Likewise, implications that Social Security is in part responsible for the US government budget deficit are often not called out for the untruths that they are. Another example that irritates me is when articles about Tibet will say something like "China says that Tibet has been part of its territory for centuries, but Tibetans say it was independent for much of that time". If the journalists would bother to do a little historical research, they'd know that what the Tibetans say is true and what the Chinese government says is false. Similar example appear in articles about other disputes that involve history. While in some cases there really is room for interpretation, in others one side's claims are simply false and should be treated as such.

Since the L.A. Times case involves letters to the editor, some right wingers have called the paper's editorial position a suppression of freedom of speech. This is absurd. Again, we are not talking about opinions here, we are talking about facts. If someone writes a letter to the editor claiming that Obama was born in Kenya, or that the so-called face on Mars is an artificial construct, or that aliens crash-landed in Roswell, or that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old, or that the Moon is made of green cheese, why would any self-respecting newspaper print it? Those who really want to hear arguments based on blatant falsehoods can find plenty on the Internet or on shows hosted by people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. But, as I noted earlier, the real media's main purpose is, or at least ought to be, to inform the public, which in turn allows the latter to develop informed opinions about important issues. At least in the case of climate change, this move by the L.A. Times is a small step in the right direction, and I'd encourage people to sign this petition urging other newspapers to follow suit. Only a public well informed as to the actual facts, rather than just opinions of varying reasonableness, can choose the leaders and policies needed to solve the important problems we face.