Bothsidesing our way to Doom

In a December 2024 article on his news-about-the-news-industry website, Status, Darcy Oliver reports that the publisher of the LA Times has imposed a new rule to the effect that any opinion piece critical of Trump can only appear if it is published opposite another from a supporter. In a comment on BlueSky, journalism professor Jay Rosen called this a “refuge-seeking” as opposed to a “truth-seeking” journalistic policy. It is a useful term. As Rosen describes it, this behavior is a (mere) performance of the paper’s innocence and objectivity, designed to protect its owners from the wrath of Trump and his supporters.

To put it another way, you could say that bothsidesism fetishizes some of the consequences of objectivity and ends up pursuing those things instead of well-informed objectivity itself. It is a bit like stolen valor: Trying to make people believe you have earned a respect that you have not.

Paul Krugman, having recently retired from the New York Times, gave a parallel argument about that paper in a January 2025 post on his new Substack.

It is clear we know what the problem is with bothsidesing in journalism: What it is, why it is bad. Ditto with false equivalence, lying, propaganda. And yet reporters, editors, and news outlets seem to be nearly unable to avoid it. Some take it to worse extremes than others—Fox blaming the January 2025 Los Angeles fires on “wokeness” is a particularly egregious example of lying to support an agenda, as opposed to journalism focused on telling and explaining the facts. But sometimes I think that the way the NY Times does it is worse because it is more pernicious: They rely on their reputation as a reliable news source, and the veneer of objectivity, to blandly pass off fabrications and manipulations as measured, wise commentary. (Not all journalists. Not all NYT pieces.)

The practice of bothsidesism is, frankly, dishonorable. The people who do it should be ashamed. But the dishonor isn’t the worst part: The existence of bothsidesing is also extremely harmful—to individuals, societies, and the planet. There is no upside of doing this for a reporter or news outlet that can justify this behavior. They only have the illusion that it is okay, or that they can get away with it, because of short term thinking. This year, this economic cycle, this political cycle, this career—sure, they’ll get through that. But individuals will be deeply harmed both by false information and the undermining of truth-seeking public discourse; society and good government will be undermined; and the world will turn out to be a much worse place than it could have been. The fact that the perpetrators of bothsidesism might not live long enough to see or be held accountable for the full effects of their corruption does not make it any less.

This news is not news, of course. People have been ringing this bell in and about American journalism for decades. Krugman mentions sounding the alarm about the press bothsidesing George W. Bush’s campaign lies in the year 2000. Rosen has a 2010 post on his blog, PressThink, where he identifies “the view from nowhere” as a bid for trust by journalism to readers: You should read us because we don’t take sides, we just tell it like it is.

On Rosen’s analysis, the view from nowhere in American journalism attempts to do three things: create the impression of impartiality (the journalist becomes like a referee in a sporting contest), avoid the charge of partisan bias (partisans only and always tell you their side, the implication being that they can’t be telling the whole truth), and give journalists the aura of legitimacy and authority.

Of course, truly “telling it like it is” would involve saying which position is right or has the stronger case, not simply giving equal airtime to opposing positions (sometimes coupled with leaving out relevant facts that tip the balance for one side—for example, that one side is lying or wrong).

Krugman quotes his 2000 self and then comments,

‘If a presidential candidate were to declare that the earth is flat, you would be sure to see a news analysis under the headline “Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.”’ Since then, Republican lies—and yes, the major ones have consistently come from the G.O.P.— have gotten ever bigger, but the insistence on bothsidesing when there aren’t two sides remains, with an increasing Republican tilt. (Krugman 2025)

Considering all sides of an issue is supposed to bring clarity and eliminate prejudices, showing us what is true and what isn’t, what is well supported and what isn’t, what makes sense and what doesn’t, who is trying to bamboozle us and who is trying to make a reasonable case. Bothsidesism mimics the form of considering all sides fairly, but does so precisely to undermine these purposes, leaving us in a worse epistemic position than we had been in before.

Journalism, science communication, and public policy that leave us worse off than before are hardly what we were looking for, and certainly aren’t what we need. That is why it is so important to identify, call out, and combat bothsidesism when it appears, holding journalists and public figures to higher standards. We need to pursue actual fairness, careful consideration, and objectivity, not merely their performative echoes.