Objectivity vs. Balance

An ongoing commentary of this election questions the role of the mainstream media in shaping the outcome. The McCain campaign has endlessly and brazenly accused the media of a bias towards Obama, decrying the disappearance of objectivity from political discourse.

In the McCain campaign’s estimation there is the neutral Fox and the biased everyone else.

I don’t want to interrogate the fundamental claim that any given news source is biased: I don’t have the capacity or the will to do this research. Rather, I hope to point out that being objective and balanced are not necessarily the same. For instance it is entirely objective to report Obama’s relationship with Ayers as innocuous while concluding that McCain campaign manager Davis had a monetary relationship with Fannie and Freddie. Now that one of those investigations turned out to be in favor Obama and the other largely incriminating to McCain doesn’t alter the objectivity of the two investigations.

However, the decision to publish the two reports could certainly show a imbalance in the NYtime’s agenda. This is the claim that McCain’s campaign is making while conflating the idea of objectivity and balance.