Abstract
In this chapter, I explore some interesting similarities and differences between journalistic balance (i.e., the journalistic practice of presenting in a balanced manner different sides of an issue) and Pyrrhonian balance (i.e., the balanced presentation of the reasons for and against any given proposition p). In particular, I explore how some important criticisms of journalistic balance suggest that it has an unintended Pyrrhonic effect. I also consider some fascinating empirical work concerning how the balanced treatment of the pros and cons on matters of disagreement leads (surprisingly) to increased hardening and polarization of views, and not to a suspension of belief as one might have expected.
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Notes
- 1.
Sextus Empiricus (ca. 160–210 AD) and Aenesidemus (ca. first century BC) were the two most prominent of them.
- 2.
I am indebted here to the succinct encapsulation of Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Sosa (2013, p. 2). While later followers of Pyrrho were intentional in seeking ataraxia via epoché, Sextus Empiricus (1994, pp. 10–11) relates that it was an accidental discovery that epoché putatively leads to ataraxia: “A story told of the painter Appeles applies to the Sceptics. They say that he was painting a horse and wanted to represent in his picture the lather on the horse’s mouth; but he was so unsuccessful that he gave up, took the sponge on which he had been wiping off the colours from his brush, and flung it at the picture. And when it hit the picture, it produced a representation of the horse’s lather. Now the Sceptics were hoping to acquire tranquility by deciding the anomalies in what appears and what is thought of, and being unable to do this they suspended judgement. But when they suspended judgement, tranquility followed as it were fortuitously, as a shadow follows a body.”
- 3.
Richard Nunan has related to me his impression that, in recent years (particularly since the Trump administration), reporters in the mainstream media have been less prone to the balancing tendency of the “political model of reporting” and more prone to point out lies on a routine basis and to report reasons to disbelieve some reported claims. They often do so, he acknowledges, by simply citing and summarizing contesting narratives, but Nunan adds that reporters tend to be selective in that they do it primarily for political agents they regard as liars, and not for all political agents. Nunan may indeed be right, and like him, I have the impression that journalistic practice has changed and is changing in recent years in the very ways Nunan suggests. Howbeit, two points are in order here. First, it would be good to have this impression confirmed (or disconfirmed) by some rigorous empirical studies; to my knowledge, no such study has (yet) been conducted. Second, even if practiced to a lesser degree today than it once was, the kind of journalistic balance under discussion here can still be found in the media on a pretty widespread basis.
- 4.
As to whether these criticisms are correct, two important points are worth bearing in mind. First, as we will later see, an interesting empirical question concerns whether the kind of balanced presentation of competing positions found in journalistic balance actually does lead to epoché. More on this issue in the next sections. Second, these criticisms imply a psychological link between (i) belief about controversy on a question and (ii) belief about there being no right answer to the question; as Mark Navin has remarked to me, it may very well be the case that some people (such as those with high information on a question) may be less inclined to go from (i) to (ii) than other people (such as those with low information on a question). Moreover, as Navin notes, the analogy with Pyrrhonism seems to require (ii) rather than (i). Navin is correct that (i) and (ii) are distinct and ought not to be conflated. Whether he is also correct about the psychological relationship between (i) and (ii) is an empirical question that I unfortunately cannot pursue here. It would certainly be an interesting question for experimental philosophy.
- 5.
In his analysis of media reporting on maverick scientific theories (namely, unorthodox scientific theories that are believed by one or few scientists), Dearing (1995) conducted studies that found that balanced reporting on maverick theories functioned to create an appearance of controversy where no genuine controversy existed, and thereby made fringe claims more credible or believable to readers.
- 6.
Christensen relates for instance how, in one of the earliest examples of a tobacco industry complaint appealing to journalistic balance, a telegram was sent to Henry Luce, the editor of Life, following a June 11, 1956, article on cancer and cigarettes, complaining of a “one-sided discussion of the cigarette-lung cancer issue.”
- 7.
This squares with the findings of Ditto and Lopez (1992) concerning how information consistent with a preferred solution is examined less critically than information inconsistent with a preferred solution, and therefore less information is required to reach the former rather than the latter conclusion.
- 8.
Cf. Trouche (2016) on the selective laziness of reasoning.
- 9.
As Strickland et al. (2011, p. 935) observe: “Citizens, especially those who know and care the most about public policies, are not open-minded. They are not inclined toward balance or evenhandedness when thinking about and discussing politics. Rather, they are motivated reasoners who seek out congenial sources of information and defend their attitudes and beliefs when challenged, and as a consequence they tend to polarize in the face of both confirming and disconfirming information.”
- 10.
As Richard Nunan has remarked to me, indiscriminate “evenhandenness” can itself be a failure of journalistic balance insofar as it advantages an unpersuasive side by affording it more credibility than it deserves, and such evenhandedness is not a conceptually straightforward goal to implement or articulate.
- 11.
And as Grimes (2016) notes: “Impartiality lies at the very heart of good journalism – avoiding bias is something on which respectable media outlets pride themselves. This is laudable, as robust debate is vital for a healthy media and, by extension, an informed society. But when the weight of scientific evidence points incontrovertibly one direction, doggedly reporting both “sides” equally can result in misleading coverage.”
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Le Morvan, P. (2020). Journalistic Balance, Unintended Pyrrhonism, and Political Polarization. In: Navin, M.C., Nunan, R. (eds) Democracy, Populism, and Truth. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43424-3_8
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