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# Bothsidesism
- URL: https://birchtree.me/blog/bothsidesism/
- Published: 2022-09-22T02:41:38.000Z
- Updated: 2022-09-22T02:41:38.000Z
- Author: Matt Birchler
- Tags: Links, #Import 2023-06-01 22:41, #Import 2025-03-29 19:29

[Max Witynski: False balance in news coverage of climate change makes it harder to address crisis](https://phys.org/news/2022-07-false-news-coverage-climate-harder.html?ref=birchtree.me)

> Bothsidesism — also referred to as false balance reporting — can damage the public’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction and lead audiences to doubt the scientific consensus on pressing societal challenges like climate change, a new Northwestern University study has found.

There's definitely something to this idea that we now see everything as an "us vs them" situation. If liberals believe in X, then conservatives are predisposed to look for a reason to not believe X (and vice versa). According to this study, a media that is obsessed with giving equal weight to observably false information in the name of some twisted version of "balance" isn't really helping.