I was going to send this to you via DM, Jonathan, then just figured I'd share it here. It's a small snippet from my Defusing American Anger book on the same topic, towards the end in a 'News and social media' chapter. (Book was only ever in ebook so it isn't as polished as it could be.)
EXCERPT:
One criticism of modern news media is that it suffers from a “bias towards fairness,” which is referring to the tendency of news outlets to cover politics as a sports event, with two equivalent teams competing, even when one side may not deserve that equal treatment. This is explained well in a scene from Aaron Sorkin’s TV show The Newsroom:
TV PRODUCER: The media’s biased towards success and the media’s biased towards fairness.
TV NEWS WORKER: How can you be biased towards fairness?
TV PRODUCER: There aren’t two sides to every story. Some stories have five sides, some only have one. [...]
TV NEWS ANCHOR: Bias towards fairness means that if the entire congressional Republican caucus were to walk into the House and propose a resolution stating that the Earth was flat, the Times would lead with ‘Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on shape of Earth.’
Here we can get a sense of the frustration and anger that can drive journalists and news creators in both political groups. When we’re polarized, the views of the other side on some issues can be perceived as entirely without merit. And this awareness of the “bias towards fairness” means that some journalists will avoid covering the other side’s beliefs, or will cover the other side’s beliefs with thinly veiled derision. This can lead to practices that can be criticized as bad, biased journalism. And smart and well meaning journalists can end up doing those things because they firmly believe they’re on the right side of the debate. They can see the noble path as avoiding falling victim to the “bias towards fairness” and see their responsibility as reporting the truth, as they see it.
But there we can see the problem. When we’re polarized, our version of the truth will be very different from other people’s. People can genuinely believe many things we see as wrong and without merit. And sometimes they’ll have valid points that we aren’t able to see. And, even if we are actually entirely correct on whatever topic, people’s beliefs are real things: there are reasons for their beliefs, and their beliefs have immense power in shaping the world. In many ways, beliefs are much more important than facts. Our beliefs will always influence us; whereas facts and truth may have minimal or no impact on us.
Journalists should see it as important to take people’s beliefs seriously. They should do that if only because, when they don’t take people’s beliefs seriously, that can counterintuitively serve to strengthen people’s us-versus-them emotions and actually make them more likely to believe the things we think are absurd. Our disrespect towards some commonly held beliefs, and our instinct to ignore them and not engage with them, may be precisely what makes people more committed to those beliefs over time.
“Representing the other side’s view, no matter how foolish or reprehensible, opens up many pathways for increased trust, more accurate perception, superior evidence, clear political strategy, and better conflict.”
So true. Thank you for your insightful and practical post.
Representing the other’s side can be a powerful way for them to hear and see things from a new vantage point. This is critically important in mediation practice, where the mediator’s reflection of what was just said lets all parties hear things in fresh light. They may see a need to find a clearer way to say what they meant. Or they or the other party may find a new way back from conflict to dialogue. Feeling heard (even incompletely) empowers people to listen better and converse better; they lose some of their fear and become better at working through conflict.
I covered part of this in a post https://danielechlin.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/160739182 one point is that a lot of the problem goes away by moving the frame from "misinformation" to "disagreement." Misinformation might be there but it's relegated to a supporting character role. Other contributions to disagreement are sometimes significantly more important than misinformation, like "I don't trust the government" is a valid attitude and one that might govern a mask or vaccine decision more than any one item of fake news.
Bunk. You're trying to figure out why snake oil isn't curing your illness, and trying to tweak it to work "better".
*Outside of the self-correcting scientific method*, anything uttered from a podium is propaganda, and without a boring, complex, complicated source for "the whole truth and nothing else" stupid and lazy tldr audience will always, as their predecessors 10 millennia ago, ponder 2x2 eq 17. Many think that cov2, or some ebola is the new plague without noticing the " social media". Humanity will get through, just not soon.
Here's an exercise: prove to a sceptic that Earth is round. You can't, and it's not simple, in fact it's utterly difficult.
These make sense. It is a good baseline rule. You have me curious about what in the modern world reveals the limits of the bothsideism, or, reveals it needs to be done differently. I think each of these premises are great things to preserve in themselves - the question is what in modern discourse is delivering vs. derogating from these values.
Like yes, it makes sense to have evidence and pros and cons around, say, trans issues. But there are Great and Powerful actors who can strongly line that evidence up for harm, or enforce substandard evidence as extreme and pervasive party lines. Then at some point in that mess it… matters which detrans person you talk to, about what, and how broadly you generalize what they say to their peers. A lot of people use both-sides attitudes to justify amplifying rather marginal voices; or will use both-sides attitudes to state one side’s simple (and bad) argument against the other side’s nuanced (and strong) opinion. And simple arguments are incredibly salient, as the federal government is currently forcing us to face.
So no one is actually succeeding at being non-partisan, in my opinion.
I'm working on saying more about how pluralist newsrooms with the specific goal of maintaining a diverse audience could work, but for a preview of some ideas see my interview with Tangle editor Isaac Saul.
It certainly matters which dertransitioners you talk to. In general it matters which sources media talks to and includes when trying to understand and represent the perspective of a particular side on a particular issue. These are choices that can be criticized by the other side, or defended as valid.
I agree there is a point at which a faction is too marginal to be included. Conversely, there is a point at which a large enough minority of people hold an opinion that it's essential to include it.
And if one side really does have a more nuanced and strong opinion, then let's see that laid out versus the strongest form of the bad argument.
I was going to send this to you via DM, Jonathan, then just figured I'd share it here. It's a small snippet from my Defusing American Anger book on the same topic, towards the end in a 'News and social media' chapter. (Book was only ever in ebook so it isn't as polished as it could be.)
EXCERPT:
One criticism of modern news media is that it suffers from a “bias towards fairness,” which is referring to the tendency of news outlets to cover politics as a sports event, with two equivalent teams competing, even when one side may not deserve that equal treatment. This is explained well in a scene from Aaron Sorkin’s TV show The Newsroom:
TV PRODUCER: The media’s biased towards success and the media’s biased towards fairness.
TV NEWS WORKER: How can you be biased towards fairness?
TV PRODUCER: There aren’t two sides to every story. Some stories have five sides, some only have one. [...]
TV NEWS ANCHOR: Bias towards fairness means that if the entire congressional Republican caucus were to walk into the House and propose a resolution stating that the Earth was flat, the Times would lead with ‘Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on shape of Earth.’
Here we can get a sense of the frustration and anger that can drive journalists and news creators in both political groups. When we’re polarized, the views of the other side on some issues can be perceived as entirely without merit. And this awareness of the “bias towards fairness” means that some journalists will avoid covering the other side’s beliefs, or will cover the other side’s beliefs with thinly veiled derision. This can lead to practices that can be criticized as bad, biased journalism. And smart and well meaning journalists can end up doing those things because they firmly believe they’re on the right side of the debate. They can see the noble path as avoiding falling victim to the “bias towards fairness” and see their responsibility as reporting the truth, as they see it.
But there we can see the problem. When we’re polarized, our version of the truth will be very different from other people’s. People can genuinely believe many things we see as wrong and without merit. And sometimes they’ll have valid points that we aren’t able to see. And, even if we are actually entirely correct on whatever topic, people’s beliefs are real things: there are reasons for their beliefs, and their beliefs have immense power in shaping the world. In many ways, beliefs are much more important than facts. Our beliefs will always influence us; whereas facts and truth may have minimal or no impact on us.
Journalists should see it as important to take people’s beliefs seriously. They should do that if only because, when they don’t take people’s beliefs seriously, that can counterintuitively serve to strengthen people’s us-versus-them emotions and actually make them more likely to believe the things we think are absurd. Our disrespect towards some commonly held beliefs, and our instinct to ignore them and not engage with them, may be precisely what makes people more committed to those beliefs over time.
END EXCERPT
Restating someone else's views can often reveal that you didn't understand them at all.
“Representing the other side’s view, no matter how foolish or reprehensible, opens up many pathways for increased trust, more accurate perception, superior evidence, clear political strategy, and better conflict.”
So true. Thank you for your insightful and practical post.
Representing the other’s side can be a powerful way for them to hear and see things from a new vantage point. This is critically important in mediation practice, where the mediator’s reflection of what was just said lets all parties hear things in fresh light. They may see a need to find a clearer way to say what they meant. Or they or the other party may find a new way back from conflict to dialogue. Feeling heard (even incompletely) empowers people to listen better and converse better; they lose some of their fear and become better at working through conflict.
I covered part of this in a post https://danielechlin.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/160739182 one point is that a lot of the problem goes away by moving the frame from "misinformation" to "disagreement." Misinformation might be there but it's relegated to a supporting character role. Other contributions to disagreement are sometimes significantly more important than misinformation, like "I don't trust the government" is a valid attitude and one that might govern a mask or vaccine decision more than any one item of fake news.
https://substack.com/@themidnightmanuscripts/note/c-108225617?r=k9lb9
Bunk. You're trying to figure out why snake oil isn't curing your illness, and trying to tweak it to work "better".
*Outside of the self-correcting scientific method*, anything uttered from a podium is propaganda, and without a boring, complex, complicated source for "the whole truth and nothing else" stupid and lazy tldr audience will always, as their predecessors 10 millennia ago, ponder 2x2 eq 17. Many think that cov2, or some ebola is the new plague without noticing the " social media". Humanity will get through, just not soon.
Here's an exercise: prove to a sceptic that Earth is round. You can't, and it's not simple, in fact it's utterly difficult.
https://open.substack.com/pub/kalorduna/p/the-guilt-free-american-dream?r=1sw9hy&utm_medium=ios
Being heard is more important to more people than being right.
These make sense. It is a good baseline rule. You have me curious about what in the modern world reveals the limits of the bothsideism, or, reveals it needs to be done differently. I think each of these premises are great things to preserve in themselves - the question is what in modern discourse is delivering vs. derogating from these values.
Like yes, it makes sense to have evidence and pros and cons around, say, trans issues. But there are Great and Powerful actors who can strongly line that evidence up for harm, or enforce substandard evidence as extreme and pervasive party lines. Then at some point in that mess it… matters which detrans person you talk to, about what, and how broadly you generalize what they say to their peers. A lot of people use both-sides attitudes to justify amplifying rather marginal voices; or will use both-sides attitudes to state one side’s simple (and bad) argument against the other side’s nuanced (and strong) opinion. And simple arguments are incredibly salient, as the federal government is currently forcing us to face.
Thanks!
As for the limits of bothsidesism: generally, American media is pretty polarized right vs. left in terms of their audience. I discuss this a bit here https://www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/is-it-a-problem-if-a-newsroom-serves
So no one is actually succeeding at being non-partisan, in my opinion.
I'm working on saying more about how pluralist newsrooms with the specific goal of maintaining a diverse audience could work, but for a preview of some ideas see my interview with Tangle editor Isaac Saul.
https://www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/isaac-saul-doing-journalism-thats
and my ideas about how to build politically neutral LLMs
https://humancompatible.ai/news/2025/02/04/a-practical-definition-of-political-neutrality-for-ai/
It certainly matters which dertransitioners you talk to. In general it matters which sources media talks to and includes when trying to understand and represent the perspective of a particular side on a particular issue. These are choices that can be criticized by the other side, or defended as valid.
I agree there is a point at which a faction is too marginal to be included. Conversely, there is a point at which a large enough minority of people hold an opinion that it's essential to include it.
And if one side really does have a more nuanced and strong opinion, then let's see that laid out versus the strongest form of the bad argument.