There’s something strangely remarkable about this simple news story. Even as we’re used to bothsides coverage, the context reveals why it stinks.
News directors of a Grand Rapids TV station were fired for making the staff take a “both sides” approach to Pride Month.
What is remarkable:
- In a certain way, the direction seems logical. We think of this as wanting to get the whole story.
- And in a different way, it is both offensive and ridiculous to apply a “both sides” way of looking at the story.
- For many people, both of these ways of seeing it are true at the same time.
That third piece is what I think is most remarkable.
Exposing the bothsides problem
The fundamental conceit of bothsidesism is that there are always two sides and only two sides. The famous phrase “there are two sides to every story” is rarely true.
Virtually every story has multiple sides.
If two people get divorced, for instance, we might logically think there are two sides.
If we were tasked with the job of covering this very significant news story, we might think of it as simply that. And yet most of us also have experience with this not being the best way to look at it.
One set of parents doesn’t adopt one side and not the other. They adopt their own side. So do kids. Friends and coworkers. Because each of these is impacted by it. They, too, are the story. Even a story like this one, that seems to have two logical sides, has many more than two.
The reason we are obsessed with restricting stories to only two sides is primarily the political binary. This, after all, is what caused the news directors to expect this in the first place.
They were concerned that “one side” would be upset if they didn’t consider their interest in stories about LGBTQ+ issues. To them, bothsides coverage is natural. Because everything is one or the other.
In other words, to go back to the divorce example, it is like saying that covering both sides of the divorce isn’t really about the two parties involved (how we normally understand the “two sides to every story” idea) but how the two major political parties feel about that divorce.
This amounts to running every news story by the local Republican Party.
Bothsides coverage distorts the truth
We can see how this practice already happens in certain places. When a federal agency changes its accounting procedures, journalists often call up a conservative economic think tank for comment.
Journalists don’t seek comments from political actors when it comes to covering parades or other public events. But this? This gets the veto.
Rather than encouraging neutrality, the news directors were imposing a political narrative onto the story. Bothsides coverage isn’t neutral because it is about politics, not the facts of the story.
The reason some can’t see the problem
Bothsidesism views the world as dividing everything into two political territories. Which means there can be no such thing as neutral. Let alone multiple view points. Or apolitical news.
Therefore, neutral and apolitical positions are de facto “a side” (nearly always “the other side,” but sometimes it is rendered as “our side”).
The hypothetical conservative viewers the news directors feared would therefore assume neutral coverage of a Pride event would, by definition, be liberal. So, to create neutrality in the minds of those viewers, they would need to offer a so-called conservative take on the event in their coverage.
This renders the “sides” as monolithic and singular.
While most of us can put together some ideas of what a conservative response to Pride might be, there isn’t actually a singular response. Nor is there a genuine authority figure to quote.
So what most journalists would do is call up a famously homophobic or transphobic figure. Perhaps someone running a nonprofit think tank with zero employees, but who gave them a quote for their last story involving the LGBTQ+ community.
And while this practice seems fair to people who practice bothsidesism, it isn’t honest.
These supposedly balancing quotes so often represent unrepresentative members of the community. Which un-balances the story.
There is no “other side”
It is an illusion. A fabrication. It is a means of furthering certain opinions when they aren’t warranted. Nor is it a practice that gets applied equally or across most political issues, let alone general issues.
Perhaps the best example of this occurs in the coverage of inflation. The news coverage of inflation always begins with labor. And then shifts to other factors. But, as we’ve seen, once all of those factors are exhausted, it then finally shifts to corporate exploitation.
What we do see, however, is a convincing narrative about how things work, who is responsible, and what we can expect as normal. Now, bothsides coverage is suddenly absent and we’re trusting how it’s always done.
Ignore what proved the old arguments wrong. Because this isn’t a side, of course. It is just what some people believe.
Partisan isn’t permanent. It’s particular.
We get why bothsides coverage isn’t needed.
- Our brains hear it and know it isn’t right. It misses something.
- But we also get what it is trying to solve.
- So then we don’t know how to do it better.
We experience this as a conundrum. A problem to solve. Seeking objectivity, integrity, honesty, and respect. We want all voices to be accounted for and the news to be authentic.
And sometimes the answer is obvious. I suspect most people can intuit why bothsides coverage of Pride doesn’t work.
But we’re also being played.
Bothsidesing Pride itself is a political project. It isn’t an attempt to bring neutrality; Pride is no less neutral than the VFW and the 4th of July.
Bothsides coverage is the creation of partisanship with free marketing. In other words, it indulges free riders. And un-balances coverage.
What we want and need is a better coverage. With honest telling.
Here’s another example of the distorting effect of avoiding partisanship in journalism with bothsides coverage. So by trying to avoid it, we actually create it.