"Both sides" redirects here. For the album, seeBoth Sides.
You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in German. (September 2021)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consideradding a topic to this template: there are already 2,407 articles in themain category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Falsche Ausgewogenheit]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template{{Translated|de|Falsche Ausgewogenheit}} to thetalk page.
Amongclimate scientists in 2013, 97% of peer-reviewed papers that took a position on the cause of global warming said that humans are responsible, while 3% said they were not. AmongFox News guests in late 2013, this topic was presented in a contrarian way, with 31% of invited guests believing it was happening and 69% not.[1]
False balance, known colloquially asbothsidesism, is amedia bias in whichjournalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than theevidence supports. Journalists may present evidence andarguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side's claims as baseless. False balance has been cited as a cause ofmisinformation.[2][3][4]
False balance is a bias which usually stems from an attempt to avoid bias and gives unsupported or dubious positions an illusion of respectability. It creates a public perception that some issues are scientifically contentious, though in reality they are not, therefore creatingdoubt about the scientific state of research. This can be exploited by interest groups such as corporations like thefossil fuel industry or thetobacco industry, or ideologically motivated activists such asvaccination opponents orcreationists.[5]
False balance emerges from the ideal ofjournalistic objectivity, where factualnews is presented in a way that allows the reader to make determinations about how to interpret thefacts, and interpretations or arguments around those facts are left to the opinion pages. Because many newsworthy events have two or more opposing camps making competing claims,news media are responsible for reporting all (credible or reasonable) opposing positions, along with verified facts that may support one or the other side of an issue. At one time, when false balance was prevalent, news media sometimes reported all positions as though they were equally credible, even though the facts clearly contradicted a position, or there was a substantialconsensus on one side of an issue, and only afringe or nascent theory supporting the other side.
More recently, in contrast to prior decades, most media are willing to advocate for a particular viewpoint which they regarded as better evidenced. For instance, claims that the Earth is not warming are regularly referred to in news (vs onlyeditorials) as "denial", "misleading", or "debunked".[9] Prior to this shift, media would sometimes list all positions without clarifying that one position is known or generally agreed to be false.
Unlike most other media biases, false balance may result from an attempt toavoid bias; producers and editors may consider treating competing viewpointsfairly—i.e., in proportion to their actual merits and significance—as equivalent to treating themequally, giving them equal time to present their views, even though one of the viewpoints may be overwhelmingly dominant.[10] Media would then present two opposing viewpoints on an issue as equally credible, or present a major issue on one side of a debate as having the same weight as a minor one on the other.[11] False balance can also originate from other motives such assensationalism, where producers and editors may feel that a story portrayed as a contentious debate will be more commercially successful than a more accurate (or widely-agreed) account of the issue.
Although the scientific community almost unanimously attributes a majority of theglobal warming since 1950 to the effects of theIndustrial Revolution,[13][14][15] there are a very small number – a few dozen scientists out of tens of thousands – who dispute the conclusion.[16][17][18] Giving equal voice to scientists on both sides makes it seem like there is serious disagreement within the scientific community, when in fact there is an overwhelmingscientific consensus on climate change that anthropogenic global warming exists.[19]
Observers have criticized the involvement of mass media in the MMR vaccine controversy, what is known as "science by press conference",[20] alleging that the media providedAndrew Wakefield's study with more credibility than it deserved. A March 2007 paper inBMC Public Health by Shona Hilton, Mark Petticrew, and Kate Hunt postulated that media reports on Wakefield's study had "created the misleading impression that the evidence for the link with autism was as substantial as the evidence against".[21] Earlier papers inCommunication in Medicine and theBritish Medical Journal concluded that media reports provided a misleading picture of the level of support for Wakefield's hypothesis.[22][23][24]
^Boykoff, Maxwell T; Boykoff, Jules M (2004). "Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press".Global Environmental Change.14 (2):125–136.doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2003.10.001.
