Balance and transparency are broadly accepted tenets of journalistic practice. So when readers believe that one or both are lacking in The Globe and Mail’s coverage, I hear from them.
In many cases, balance is easy to spot. For example, political rivals championing opposing sides of an issue in their riding should both be interviewed for an article on that subject.
But that is a single, simple example. News organizations publish many different types of stories, some of which don’t require competing views – a tight question-and-answer piece with a business leader that enhances insight into plans for a takeover bid, say, or a report on rising influenza cases that’s clearly supported by public health data.
When journalists report on a long-term and complex issue, such as the Israel-Hamas war, balance is achieved across the entire breadth of a news organization’s coverage. No single article can address or even touch on every relevant detail.
Who, and what, determines which news is fit to publish?
Inevitably, audiences will bring their own value systems, beliefs and expectations for coverage to their reading of the news.
“The question of balance becomes more problematic the more divisive and controversial the topic,” Agence France-Presse standards and ethics editor Eric Wishart wrote in his book, Journalism Ethics. “We start to talk about false balance or false equivalence when in your quest to appear balanced you give equal space to valid arguments and discredited ones.” This is sometimes called “bothsidesism.”
The Columbia Journalism Review has covered the growing disagreement about what “fair and balanced coverage” looks like, quoting a standards editor (not this one) who asked not to be named: “In this particular moment, with respect to issues like Gaza, there’s an added challenge to offer moral certainty around issues — it holds the media to a high moral bar and considers it a moral failure if an outlet doesn’t cover things in a particular way.”
Some readers have expressed this desire for moral certainty in their correspondence with me. For example, as I wrote in October, 2023, many have voiced their disagreement with The Globe’s practice of using the word “terrorist” only with attribution, or in the context of “designated terrorist organization.”
More recently, a number of readers said they were upset by The Globe’s decision to write last fall about Bassem Khandaqji, a 42-year-old Palestinian man who was released from an Israeli prison.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan had arranged for the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the Globe was able to place a correspondent on the ground to cover the swap. It ran a report from Tel Aviv on the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Shortly after, it published the contested article, which was reported from the West Bank.
While the report from Tel Aviv included reactions from family members of released Israeli hostages, the article filed from the West Bank centred on Mr. Khandaqji, who was not a prisoner of war, but had been incarcerated for more than two decades after his arrest and conviction for his role in masterminding a suicide bombing.
Some readers called the inclusion of Mr. Khandaqji in an article about the release of prisoners a false equivalence.
The article stated clearly and early on (in the sixth paragraph) why he had been imprisoned, meeting the standard for transparency. However, it would have been helpful for readers to know of the correspondent’s difficulty in finding other released Palestinian prisoners willing to speak on the record; most were afraid to do so.
News judgment includes an element of “reading the room” – understanding how a story is likely to land with your readership. Stories are regularly held because the timing isn’t right, or because the reporter and editors have deemed that additional sources are needed to provide readers with a full picture.
A timely reminder of The Globe’s guidance on war reporting
In late November, The Globe published a series of photo essays that depicted Russian military special forces fighting Ukrainian soldiers in Donbas. Some readers complained that the coverage “legitimized” the Russian troops’ actions and facilitated the distribution of propaganda.
I replied that news organizations make daily decisions regarding how to use limited resources such as personnel, space in print and time to report, format and publish stories. Those decisions add up to what the organization stands for. Sometimes those decisions are controversial, but that does not necessarily make them unethical.
Each collection in the photo series began with a note from The Globe’s editor-in-chief, David Walmsley, which put the coverage into journalistic perspective. It stated: “This is not to cast a blind eye to what Russia’s leadership stands for – its capture of journalists as hostages, its propaganda and its lies about Ukraine’s Nazification.
“We have photographed what we saw.”
That is the work of journalists. It is not to moralize, or turn a sympathetic lens only on those deemed to be the “good guys.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to released Palestinian hostages. Palestinian prisoners were released.