The "Balance" Fallacy

Of the many baneful effects of the rise of Fox News, the perversion of the word "balance" must be at or near the top.  Rather than forthrightly declaring their conservative perspective, they disingenuously insist that their news coverage is "fair and balanced."  They sometimes allow a milquetoast and ineffective figure like Alan Colmes on air to weakly present a liberal perspective, and then pretend that makes for "balance."

This has been true for years now, but two recent news stories pointedly drove home for me the pervasive distortion of the idea of "balance."

On the ninth anniversary of 9/11, the Portland Press Herald in Maine ran a front-page story about the end of the Muslim observance of Ramadan.  The editor subsequently apologized for running the story because many readers found it "offensive."  He went on to say: "We have acknowledged that we erred by at least not offering balance to the story."

The logic of this is curious to say the least.  What exactly required "balance" here?  The implication is that it was wrong to cover the peaceful religious celebrations of American Muslims on 9/11 without acknowledging the awful thing 19 other (mostly Saudi) Muslims did nine years ago.  I defy anyone to find anything in the article itself that is offensive.  The focus of the story is a religious community gathering to raise funds for the needy.  But somehow it lacks "balance" because there was no mention of the terrorist attacks in 2001.

This is the same collective guilt mentality that pervades the opposition to the Islamic center in lower Manhattan.  The idea that "positive" coverage of any Muslim event requires "balance" in the form of acknowledgement of 9/11 carries the clear implication that the crime of 9/11 is something that all Muslims carry, like original sin.

There is nothing "balanced" about that.  Quite the contrary, it is inherently imbalanced.  That mindset insists that the murderous acts of a small group of religiously motivated fanatics must forever weigh down one side of the scales.

The Texas Board of Education this week passed a resolution to curtail references to Islam in world history texts.  According to a New York Times article, 

“The purpose of this resolution is to ensure there is balanced treatment of divergent groups,” Gail Lowe, the chairwoman of the board, said. “In the past, the textbooks have had some bias against Christianity.”

According to an AP article, this charge is ostensibly based on the fact that a text (no longer in use) "devoted more lines of text to Islamic beliefs and practices than Christian ones."


In this case, "balance" is defined quantitatively, and "more lines" equals imbalance.  It seems blindingly obvious to me that schoolchildren in Texas, an overwhelmingly Christian state, might need to read more "lines" about Islam than Christianity to gain an equal knowledge of both, given that they are highly likely to already know quite a bit about the latter.


The resolution makes clear, however, that it is not just about space.  It denounces both "significant inequalities of coverage space-wise" and "demonizing or lionizing one or more of them over the others." Though this language seems to call for equality, the chairwoman's statement above makes it clear that they believe that only Christianity is being demonized and Islam lionized.  Not surprisingly, they seem to offer no specific examples of this beyond the "space-wise" reference.


So what does "balance" mean here?  Conforming to the ideological preferences of the board.  The author of the resolution, Randy Rives, inadvertently exposed the real agenda: "If you can control or influence our education system, you can start taking over the minds of the young people."  He thought he was talking about his phantom enemies, but he was truly talking about himself.


"Balance" does not mean ensuring one's preferred outcome in a discussion.  It does not mean mechanically giving equal "space."  It does not mean finding one "pro" and one "con" perspective and presenting both (no good historian would "balance" a discussion of the Holocaust with a Holocaust denier's point of view).  It means honestly airing material with a focus on facts and a dedication to divining the ever-elusive truth.  But the word has become so debased today that people rarely seek true balance.  Is it any wonder that our political discourse is so out of balance?

Low Standards

For the past week I've been mulling over this article on the Texas school board's revision of the state's history standards, trying to sort out some conflicting reactions to it. Some of what was done seems, at least on the surface, eminently reasonable. But other actions taken by the board raise serious concerns that call into question all of their changes.

One of my colleagues noted to me, with some alarm, that one of the changes was that "the ideas in Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address are to be laid side by side with Abraham Lincoln's speeches." On substance, I have no trouble with that at all. Such a compare and contrast exercise can be quite an effective teaching tool. Looking at the argument that does not carry the day can sometimes be much more instructive than the one that does. When I teach the debate over ratification of the U.S. Constitution, for example, I give a lot of attention to the arguments of the Anti-Federalists.

Another one of the changes that has raised hackles is the removal of Thomas Jefferson "from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone." Again, this one doesn't bother me much substantively. One can make a strong argument that Jefferson was not a particularly original political thinker and that the inclusion of other thinkers, particularly John Locke, covers much of the same ground. The list still includes other Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau.

Other aspects of the Texas changes are not particularly susceptible to benign interpretation, however. Another change that was made to the standards, which were proposed by a panel of teachers, was an "amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism." Any attempt to equate the wholesale internment of the Japanese during World War II with the case-by-case internment of Germans and Italians amounts to falsifying the historical record. Although there were relatively few people in the U.S. of Japanese heritage, virtually all of them, about 110,000 people, were interned. By contrast, though there were far more German and Italian Americans, about 11,000 Germans were interned, and only about 1,500 Italians. The facts here are clear: Japanese were interned as a group, Germans and Italians were interned on an individual basis. It is fair to say that all three groups experienced violations of civil liberties, but no reasonable understanding would discount racism as a factor in the difference in the way Japanese were treated.

The attempt to burnish the reputation of Joe McCarthy falls into the same category. Another of the school boards changes requires "that the history of McCarthyism include 'how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.'" I happen to have read the book on the Venona papers that is referenced here. The secret government records do indeed show that there was Soviet infiltration of the U.S. government--during World War II. They also show that this influence was ferreted out (by the very intelligence gathered by Venona) and that by late 1946, the problem had been effectively dealt with. McCarthy did not begin making his reckless and irresponsible charges until 1950, and he said not that there had been communist infiltration in the past, but that there currently was. The Venona papers do not support those McCarthyite attacks. This proposed treatment of McCarthy also amounts to falsifying history.

What these last two examples have in common is that both attempt to take a fairly shameful chapter in American history and whitewash it. This is of a piece with the attitude of American exceptionalism that I wrote about recently. The proponents of these changes either do not know the facts of Japanese, German, and Italian internment, or they willfully ignore them. They either do not know what the Venona papers actually say, or they do know and don't care because it serves their rather overtly politicized agenda. In either case, they show their unfitness to set standards for what children need to learn. The Texas school board should first educate itself.