It's one thing to show both sides of an argument – but sometimes impartiality doesn't tell the whole story
Pause and consider this era of what American commentators call "post-truth politics". They mean politicians (Democrats as well as Republicans) standing on party conference podiums and spraying the hall with phoney facts, which pass into history unchallenged. They mean convenient glosses rather than inconvenient admissions of failure. They mean relentlessly evasive television blah – and they surely reflect a new, narrow-eyed insistence on accuracy heading our way as the British conference season gets going. But, before you cheer, look who's in the firing line? No: not the usual suspects.
Barack Obama adjusted his critical compass a few weeks ago (via a piece in the New York Times). The president doesn't watch much TV, apparently, but he reads loads of newspapers. And the thing that gets him down most is "false balance", where reporters give equal weight to both sides of an argument "when one side is factually incorrect". That means "some journalists are more comfortable blaming both parties, regardless of the facts", his press secretary says. "To be saying that 'they're both equally wrong' or 'they're both equally bad', then you look high‑minded."
It's a line of attack well brought out in media reaction to Paul Ryan's post-truth Republican harangue in Tampa. Did anyone from the left or the centre berate Fox News for its predictably starry-eyed coverage? No. Fox enthusiasm was more or less taken as read. All of the wrath descended on Wolf Blitzer and his CNN team playing high-minded men in the middle.
They could have fact-checked Ryan as he slithered along, it was said. Fact-checking is what American journalism is all about. The guy with the microphone has a duty of trust, just like the reporter at his terminal. But, apart from a pursed lip or two, CNN let Ryan carry on uncorrected. The media transmitted his message: it did not monitor, explain or test it. And all in the pious name of real "fairness and balance".
But balance is one thing – an opportunity to rebut, an editorial insistence on giving contrasting perspectives – while fairness is rather another. Is it "fair" to broadcast stories that are just not true, fair to disseminate information you know merely deludes, fair to endorse evidence that is only self-serving fiction? Whatever "fair" means – and it's a mush word, to be sure – it doesn't mean knowingly cheating. Its meaning goes way beyond mere mechanical balance.
At which point in this debate, a slight wince becomes inevitable: for F and B is British broadcasting's habitual, Ofcom-endorsed posture of choice. "Audiences want coverage that is engaging, easy to follow and up to date – but none of these (attributes) is expected to come at the cost of accuracy or impartiality," as the latest BBC Trust report on the Arab Spring, would have us believe.
It's a ridiculous prescription, when you stop to think. Keep us interested. Avoid banging on for more than 2 minutes 30 seconds. Leave the complexities of history to one side. But don't betray a view formed by knowledge or experience. Impartiality and the Middle East must sanctimoniously share the same lumpy bed, along with Paul Ryan, Bill Clinton, old Uncle Bin Cobley and all. If one crucial media imperative now is telling truth to power, is it fair to stop us – or you – deciding where that truth lies?