How ‘both sides’ journalism undermines impartiality and is a disservice to democracy
Reporting both sides of an issue is a basic requirement of journalism – but this doesn’t mean giving both sides equal weight, regardless of the facts.
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“Bothsidesism” is a term of disparagement against a form of journalism that presents “both sides” of an issue without any regard for their relative evidentiary merits.
The term has been used to describe media reporting on Donald Trump and in relation to coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. For some, mentioning Israel’s ongoing occupation of Gaza in the context of last year’s October 7 terror attacks by Hamas will be a form of bothsidesism.
Yale history professor Timothy Snyder has described bothsideism as “suicide for democracy”.
If journalists just say “there are two sides to everything and I am going to find my way into the middle”, he said earlier this year in relation to reporting on Trump’s rallies, “you are always going to give the people who want to overthrow the system an advantage” because you are sharing your legitimacy with theirs.
Earlier this month, former publisher Louise Adler criticised the lack of attention paid, on the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, to their consequences for Palestinians, but clarified she wasn’t calling “for bothsidesism”. She continued, quoting writer Jacqueline Rose: “balance is a corrupt term in an unbalanced world”.
Balance, properly understood, is not a corrupt term, but what Adler is alluding to is a well-deserved critique of a kind of reporting that perverts the concept of...
