Is our media balanced or biased

“There are two sides to every argument.” “There are two sides to every coin.” May sound like clichés and are clearly truisms.

But truisms rarely receive an airing in our media and I think that the Brexit debate or debacle strongly endorses this.

You would think if you were an editor or producer that you would focus on presenting news or topics in a balanced format. After all, the audience is an intelligent, sentient lot who generally do not react well to moralising. We expect bias whereby a newspaper will have a leaning to a political party and that most of the content will reflect this

News coverage on radio and TV tends to encourage their reporter to present an aggressive, argumentative, polemical stance whereby all their questions are negatively challenging and therefore vehemently defending the opposite view. They feel that passively listening and allowing the interviewer a neutral platform might portray an appeasing persona and not appeal to the audience who is ‘looking for a fight’.

Feedback from the populace

So, media, treat your audience not sententiously but rather as people who spend their lives reviewing choices, options and balances. People who are not unfairly prejudiced, fanatically inflexible or truculent but malleable who make decisions based on experiences, knowledge,  discussion and debate

Perhaps to get started try this:

The advantages of Brexit are …..

The disadvantages of Brexit are ….

The advantages of the status quo are …..

The disadvantages of the status quo are ….

Now apply this balanced formula to the next news item or topical discussion and you might ‘wow’ or even shock the audience.