Saturday Sermon: Opposing Viewpoints Versus Outside Perspectives

Most people who follow the interaction between science and politics are well aware of the problem of 'he-said, she-said' reporting, the attempt to grant equal time to opposing views, no matter how stupid those ideas are (An aside: I've always imagined a Monty Pythonesque TV anchor turning to a guest, and saying, "And now, for the stupid and incorrect viewpoint, we turn to..."). With that being said, I like how Ivan Oransky rephrases the problem:

The other day, a tweet by Maggie Koerth-Baker, a freelance science journalist in Minneapolis, caught my eye. In it, she bemoaned the fact that editors and producers often encourage their reporters to go find an "opposing viewpoint" to make a story balanced. She said her journalism school professors -- she graduated in 2004 -- always told her the same thing.

That troubled me.

I've been teaching medical journalism at New York University's Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program since 2002, and I taught a similar course at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism for three years. As I told Maggie and the others having the conversation on Twitter, I never tell my students to get "opposing viewpoint" but to get outside perspective -- one that may agree with the study or the main idea being put forward by a source.

Rephrasing the issue this way makes it much clearer. Now if only political reporters would do the same....

More like this

The Republicans are asking the party faithful to fill out a biased poll. The purpose is not to get a snapshot of public opinion, but to mislead people by presenting leading questions. Or, as Mike Haubrich explains it:
And this one again involving a Good News Club, this time in Maryland. The Montgomery County Public Schools has a Good News Club chapter that uses school facilities for their meetings.
Today's the day, everyone.
At least in this accidental viewpoint.

New Scientist articles do this frequently. Very often, even in pretty non-controversial reports, there is "So-and-so, who was not part of the study, said . . ." where the comments vary from "Gee. wouldn't it be nice if it were true" to "I think that most unlikely because . . .".