False equivalence vs false balancing

Musing about Germaine's MSM darts

This is a companion post to my other post today, About an interesting tactic to combat authoritarianism & irrational blither. With this included, that post would have been TL/DR.

Over the last few months I've been tossing darts (emails) at reporters, columnists and editors of news sources, including the big ones. Recently, I started applying the term false balancing to situations were news sources refer to DJT and the MAGA wealth and power movement as conservative. I argue that calling radical right authoritarians amounts to false balancing, or bothsidesism. This article raises the issue of false equivalence, a similar concept.

False equivalence (FE) is when a person or organization (not an MSM journalist, columnist or news source) says that two or more things or concepts are the same, when they actually are significantly different. Examples are “politicians are all the same” and “global warming denial is as valid as global warming belief”. Both assertions are false. 

False balance (FB) is similar to FE, but (i) it applies to news reporters or commentators, or generally the MSM, and (ii) usually applies to covering opposing opinions where one opinion has significantly more expert or empirical evidence support than the other. An example is interviewing a person who claims that global warming denial is true and/or equally valid as global warming belief and/or evidence. 

FE and FB are both frequently used to deliberately mislead people in disinformation and deceit campaigns generally. FB applies just to professional journalism, such as it is with its warts and whatnot. The mental leap from the narrower FB to the broader FE concept is small. 

So, could some of my FB darts have maybe nudged a few MSM minds to think more deeply about these two FE/FB deceit tactics? Probably not, but it's fun to speculate. 🤪

Q: Is crackpot or false Faux News opinion content that engages in bad comparisons a matter of FB or FE?

A: FE because the bloviating crackpot opinionologists and liars at Faux are not part of the MSM. They are part of an authoritarian propaganda organization dedicated to deceiving people and killing democracy. Faux does have a real MSM news group, but that reporting is different from what the professional liar-propagandists like Hannity spew on us.