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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Although El Mundo does not openly challenge the scientific consensus, through
information or editorial articles, the use of the balance norm allows providing an ample
coverage of the sceptic point of view and the Climategate affair. In addition, several
opinion articles (implicitly also justified by the norm of balance), include false or
inaccurate facts, which constitute a potential source of misinformation on this topic.
The use of this norm in the Spanish press, seems to be linked to the political position of
the medium. The fact that only the conservative medium uses balance in this
inappropriate way, allows drawing a relationship between the use of this norm and the
ideology of the medium. The analysis we have made in this study suggests that
balance is used in a second level of decision, only when it can help to present ideas
with are coherent with the editorial line of the medium.
The norm of balance should be applied to give equal coverage to different points of
view, on those topics which are subject of dissenting opinions. However, ours and
previous studies show that there also exists a perverted use of this norm, which leads
to present false or inaccurate data on a topic in which scientific certainties leave little
room for dissenting opinions. Therefore, journalists should use this norm with a sense
of wisdom, combining them with other journalistic norms, such as the need for
contextualization, which allows giving each point of view the relative weight it really
has.
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