Fair and Balanced Reporting

I hope that Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who wrote about the matter yesterday, stirred some journalists into giving more thought to what fair and balanced reporting requires: For example, it does not require –– it does not permit –– saying, “{A named politician} says that there are real concerns about fraud in the 2020 elections that need to be investigated.” Since the record is clear that all such concerns are baselessly fabricated and bear no relation to the truth, the statement is not worth reporting, or if it is reported, being fair and balanced requires stating that the statement is false. The news involved is not that there may be a genuine issue as to fraud, as the statement suggests, it’s that a particular politician chose to make a false statement. A fair and balanced report of this event would place it in the context of Republicans’s concerted attempts to mislead the public.