Talking Heads

So today in class we talked about talking heads, and the media giving equal time to opposite views. This is generally the practice on many of the 24 hour news channel shows: Crossfire, Anderson Cooper, etc.

Sure give both sides some time to share their point. I see the idea, but is that always what should be done? I say probably not. Let's take global warming as an example.

The scientific community is pretty much in agreement about global warming and what is going on. Sure, you have a few people who hold out, but they are way off base with the rest of the research and the scientists. So what happens? A news show wants to talk about global warming so they get one scientist that's agrees it's happening and one that doesn't. But here's the problem. That one scientist who thinks it's not happening represents an extremely small fraction of the scientific community, while the other scientist is representing the majority. But the viewer doesn't see this. The viewer comes away thinking it's 50/50, and is more easily confused about the subject. Not good. Because of the way the media has portrayed this it comes across as there being a debate about the subject when really there is no debate at all.

We see this same thing with health effects of smoking and evolution.