Being "Fair and Balanced" is unfair according to unbalanced academics

US News and World Report headline: Study: Is Fox Too Balanced?

Yes, when the pinheads writing the study are unbalanced.

Paul Bedard reports, "It's not easy being Fox News in today's highly politicized media environment. When it says it's "fair and balanced," the mainstream media sneer disbelief. When the cable news ratings leader reveals figures proving its coverage is balanced on a specific hot-button issue, it gets slapped for pandering to conservative dogma.

That's a conclusion one might reach from a first-of-its-kind study in the authoritative International Journal of Press/Politics of how Fox, CNN, and MSNBC cover the issue of global warming. The bottom line: Being balanced and providing supportive and critical views of global warming is actually biased because it gives critics a louder voice. Worse: Fox covers global warming about twice as much as CNN and MSNBC combined, meaning those critics get much more airtime, another sign of bias."

Yup. According to the Great Minds that did the study, being fair is unfair and providing balance among points of view is biased. Once again, Life Imitates The Onion.

Bedard quotes: "Although Fox discussed climate change most often, the tone of its coverage was disproportionately dismissive," says the study by four professors, two from George Mason University, the others from Yale and American University. They wrote, "Fox broadcasts were more likely to include statements that challenged the scientific agreement on climate change, undermined the reality of climate change, and questioned its human causes."

It would be a lot easier to take them seriously if 'the scientific agreement were not liable to challenge, if human causes were truly unquestioned causes of real climate change. But it just isn't so. "A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday.... Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data."

Now, I would expect this sort of silliness from employees of Yale and American, but heretofore I had a better opinion of the level of scholarship practiced at GMU.

Bedard closes: "The study acknowledges that Fox was the most balanced from the numbers perspective, but the network still gets an F. The reason, it says, is because viewers are influenced by what they see, and seeing more critics of global warming makes more viewers critics. "The more often people watched Fox News, the less accepting they were of global warming. Conversely, frequent CNN and MSNBC viewing was associated with greater acceptance of global warming," the study concludes."

So, there you have it. Being fair and balanced is unfair to the unbalanced dogma of ideologically bent professors whose faith in man made climate change is stronger than their allegiance to truth - or hold on reality for that matter.