By Selwyn Duke

The phrase “fair and balanced” certainly has a
positive connotation. It is thought the
greatest quality a news outlet can possess; it has even become a motto of the
Fox News Network. Yet I don’t find Fox
very balanced at all.

Oh, I give credit where it’s due. Given that neo-communist organs such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles
Times and most other mainstream newspapers believe presenting the “other
side” means airing the voice of socialist dissent, Fox and its soul mates are a
major improvement. I say soul mates because,
while among TV news outlets Fox may be unusual, its perspective certainly is
not.

I am never fair and balanced, certainly not in the
modern way of thinking. My problem with the
approach is that it breeds something akin to the following reportage:

“God says Devil is evil; Devil says God is evil. 

We report, you decide.”

The above is more literally true than you may
think. We often complain about
internationalist news bureaus that will call terrorists by a euphemism such as
“insurgents” or “militants,” but in the fair and balanced world it makes
sense. After all, one man’s terrorist is
another’s freedom fighter. Sure, that
widely-accepted U.S. government definition of terrorism states that it is “. .
. violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or
clandestine agents . . .,” but, first, why should our perspective carry the
day? Then, what is this business about
“subnational” groups? It is obviously a
tendentious definition allowing the biggest bullies on the block, nations, the
latitude to employ an effective tactic while denying it to the less powerful. And we know that during WWII both sides aggressively
targeted civilian populations. Let’s be
fair and balanced now.  And all is fair
in love and war. 

You see, everyone has a perspective, his own truth,
and who is to say what is right or wrong? We shouldn’t impose our values on others.

We may dismiss such a defense of terrorism out of hand,
but the moral relativism that underpins it imbues our fair-and-balanced
mentality. You may wonder about such an
assertion; after all, whether it’s O’Reilly or another fair and balanced
person, such an individual takes strong positions all the time. For instance, O’Reilly (I don’t mean to make
this about any one individual, but consider him the archetype for the
perspective in question) has bemoaned the failure to call terrorists what they
are, and he has boldly attacked the toxic rap sub-culture, the faux marriage
movement, anti-Christmas crusaders, and localities that have lax punishment for
child molesters. Yet he also does
something else.

On other issues, O’Reilly is quite content to sing relativism’s
song. For example, I’ve heard him
refrain from making judgments about the sinfulness of homosexual behavior (this
is just an example, as this isn’t about one issue, either), saying “I’ll let
the deity decide.” This is interesting. Why
don’t we just “let the deity decide” about bestiality, polygamy and child
molestation as well? One man’s terrorist
is another’s freedom fighter, and one man’s perversion is another’s pure
love. For that matter, why not let Him
decide about rap, Christmas, faux marriage and everything else? In point of fact, God has already decided;
our job is simply to discern what those decisions are.

This is the purpose of all philosophical inquiry: To
determine Truth, which may be defined as God’s answers to all life’s
questions. This is where the modern man may
click his mouse. You, Duke, have the
temerity to speak of God? Not everyone
believes in God, and, even insofar as believers go, not everyone has the same
conception of Him. Let us just leave God
out of it and talk about issues.

This is a contradiction. The problem is that there are only two
possibilities: Either man determines what we call right and wrong or something
outside him does. If it’s the former, as
relativists assert, then “right and wrong” is synonymous with consensus opinion
and only serves to muddy the waters. We
then may as well be honest with ourselves and recognize that it is all a matter
of taste and that the most popular tastes will prevail. We might as well recognize that all the words
we use to describe these tastes – morality, values, right and wrong, etc. – are
simply window dressing, a way of lending an air of legitimacy and
intellectualism to a very crass modus operandi; to wit: My version of right and
wrong will prevail over yours simply because more people agree with me than
with you. I have more votes. 

We also might as well accept that serial killer and
cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer was more sane than most of us, as he recognized this
“fact,” saying “If there’s no God, why can’t I make up my own rules?” And we should accept the same about a
completely unreasonable little child who says, “That’s not fair!” simply
because he doesn’t get his way. At least
there is little or no pretense about fairness having any relationship to
something more than personal taste.

Even more to the point, however, this would render
discussion and debate about politics, religion and social issues
unnecessary. Why? Because the purpose of all intellectual
inquiry is to find answers, and if there is no Truth, there are no answers to
be found. This is the reason why our
great debates center around things such as abortion and marriage and not what
ice cream is the best. I may like
chocolate and you vanilla, but there is nothing to discuss; it would be
ridiculous for me to say chocolate is good and vanilla evil – even if 90
percent of the population also preferred chocolate – because that is the
terminology of Truth, not taste. Likewise, if “morality” is a function of consensus opinion, then it is
also just a matter of taste. Thus,
murder can only be “evil” if there is something above us dictating it is so; if
we only view it as such because 90 or so percent of us prefer it not be
committed, then the most we can honestly say is that we dislike it.

This brings us back to the concept of fair and
balanced. What really constitutes being
so? Certainly it doesn’t involve
granting a hearing to any and every point of view; everyone picks and chooses,
and O’Reilly himself has said that he won’t have “radicals” on his show. It also doesn’t seem to involve giving voice
to “radical” ideas as O’Reilly’s desire to leave the morality of homosexuality
to the “deity” illustrates (note that the “deity” doesn’t have a news and
commentary show; He leaves that role to us).

But there is a problem with this. As history has proven time and again,
radicals and their radical ideas have often been correct. At one time, those who opposed slavery (and
for most of history no one opposed it) were thought radical. Sometimes a radical is just a person who is
right 50 years too soon. 

The lesson here is that while the Truth often lies at
the center of civilization, it’s also sometimes found at the fringes. Being radical doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but
simply that your views deviate greatly from the mainstream. In a land where most believe that 2+2=5, a
person who insists it is 4 is a radical.

So what is true fairness? How do we determine who will be given the
podium and who won’t and what ideas to promulgate? The fair-and-balanced crowd boasts of giving
voice to “both sides,” which means, in essence, “Society says that answers are
only found within the confines of two legitimate ideologies, so we will feature
them.” But is this what the Truth
says? They tell us that certain moral
issues will be tackled with manly vigor while others will be treated as matters
of taste, which means, in essence, “Society says there are certain acceptable
“values” and certain unacceptable ones, so we will feature the former and
suppress the latter.” But is this what
the Truth says? No, a given civilization
may be more or less oriented toward Truth, it may be a relative heaven or hell,
but it is not the Truth. We are to judge it with the yardstick of
Truth, not use it as a yardstick for judging what will be considered “truth.”

If the nature of true fairness isn’t yet clear,
consider this question. If false
allegations were leveled against you, would you want to be judged based on some
standard of man, which would by its very nature be flawed? Or would you rather come before a judge who
is guided by Truth, which by its very nature is perfect? True fairness is never achieved by judging
based on the spirit of the time, but by the spirit of the timeless. 

In other words, journalism professors may point out
that all people have biases, and this is true. But what most of these academics may not tell you, being relativists
virtually one and all, is that there are only two kinds of people: Those biased
in favor of a lie and those biased in favor of the Truth.

This brings us to the problem with the
fair-and-balanced set. They judge
fairness not with reference to the true center, Truth, but the center of our
cultural spectrum. It’s an easy mistake
to make, and it gives them more in common with those who euphemize about terrorism
than they care to think. When Reuters
called terrorists “militants” and O’Reilly, in so many words, called
homosexuality a preference, they were both saying (and perhaps sincerely
thinking) what the most strident elements of their audience wanted to hear, not
what the Truth demanded they tell. Insofar as this goes, the only difference between them is also a
similarity: The contexts in which they operate. O’Reilly’s context is America; internationalist news organs’ context is
the world. Yet they are the same because
they are both a context of man, not the
context of God.

A prerequisite for fairness is the ability to judge
matters properly. And just as we cannot
properly judge the soundness of an engineering plan without understanding the
laws governing the physical world, we cannot properly judge the soundness of a
social plan (e.g., ideology, policy or philosophy) without understanding the
laws governing the moral world. Simply
put, you cannot know if a thing is good without knowing what good is.   

This is why no one, no matter how clever, witty or
profound, has any right being a commentator if he is a moral relativist. Such a person is essentially telling us that
there are no answers to be found, but he will talk about them anyway; he is
saying that your perspective cannot be better, but it is better to accept his
perspective. The problem with commentators nowadays is what ails most of us: It’s
not that we sometimes profess untruths, but that we’re detached from
Truth. This is why the media are
actually becoming more unfair, and why, as the degradation in the wider society
proves, we become more unbalanced all the time.

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