Yesterday, I wrote about false balance in reporting on vaccines in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak. For those who've never encountered this blog, what I mean by false balance is when journalists, in a misguided belief that there are "two sides" (i.e., an actual scientific controversy) about the safety of childhood vaccines and whether they cause autism and all the other ills blamed on them by antivaccinationists or not, interview an antivaccine activist, advocate, or sympathizer for "balance" and to "show both sides of the story." The problem with that technique, so deeply…
Advertisment
