Balance in the News

What is Balance?

Definition (a key one in this course): Equality between the totals of the two (or more) sides of the account.

Balance is more technical; a quantitative measurement. In news (media) literacy, balance means that we don’t just hear from each side, but each side gets exactly the same amount of space on the page, or length of time in a broadcast.

When is it appropriate for a story to be carefully…point-counterpoint-rebuttal-re-rebuttal…balanced?

Here's an example of an effort at balance in a story. In March of 2015, United States Senators thought they had bipartisan support for a bill that would prevent and penalize human trafficking, the recruitment and sometimes forcible interstate and international shipment of young prostitutes and slave laborers. But then Democrats actually read the bill and discovered it includes language that will prevent federal money being spent on abortions for young prostitutes.

Now the bipartisan agreement has broken to pieces. So in a story where there is no consensus, you want a balanced report that reflects the range of options and opinions and allows you to make up your mind.

We have color-coded the statements from Republicans in red and Democrats in blue, so that you can see there’s an attempt to balance the amount of ink being spilled for each side of the fight.