The Truth About False Balance.

mobile.nytimes.com

Read it. I know it’s not a popular thing to point out: namely that the media does have the duty of attempting to strike up a balance.

Spayd does mention the fact that what makes this election more difficult is the obviousness of the Republican ticket’s departure from the norm. It’s much easier, however, to display that in an op-ed or on a Maddow segment. In hard news, it is important to give both sides even if the other side is for our partisan purposes, nuts.

The problem with false balance doctrine is that it masquerades as rational thinking. What the critics really want is for journalists to apply their own moral and ideological judgments to the candidates. Take one example. Suppose journalists deem Clinton’s use of private email servers a minor offense compared with Trump inciting Russia to influence an American election by hacking into computers — remember that? Is the next step for a paternalistic media to barely cover Clinton’s email so that the public isn’t confused about what’s more important? Should her email saga be covered at all? It’s a slippery slope.

It’s important that a free media - even as negligent as the networks can be - are allowed to do their work. Whether confirming biases, or generating anxieties, it’s not altogether bad that there is balance, even if it serves evil.
I think this is what Sergey is getting at when he refers scaldingly to the use of a variation of the Lügenpresse. The ‘lying press’.
You’re not being Nazis for seeing that the media is giving equal time to the enemy. That is the function of a free press. That it can be critiqued at all it a good thing.
Finally, when the charge is made that the media shall be at fault for leading us to the disaster of a Trump presidency, I must admit that I shrink away.
Certainly, since all information is gleaned from the media, the information brokers will always be at fault.
I insist, rather, that it is the people who have demanded pap for their 24-hour news cycles. A horse race is the inevitable result.
Donald Trump is a danger to the Republic. In this particular election it is awful that he ought to be given equal time. It is disgusting that he ought to be treated with at all.
But do you really want to create a precedent in which one candidate must be treated as beyond reproach just because the other is irredeemably deplorable?

Sorry, just been weighing on me lately. It’s a pre-bed thought-dump so I apologise if I can’t respond.