this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Both sides is a falacy since for most human subjects it's incredibly rare for there to be only two options.
Real Journalism is discussing the situation on its own implications, merits and demerits, and presenting options and explaining their pros and cons.
The whole "both sides" reporting is an artifact of it being Propaganda in a system with a Power Duopoly, so mainstream media frames all human subjects with political implications to match that polical system's own artificially reduced set of choices so as to make it seem like that political system is well suited to deal with human subject with political implications.
(I've actually lived in a couple of countries with different levels of actual political freedom, from the UK which is a lot like US and arguably in some ways even less representative, to The Netherlans which has Proportional Vote, and it's pretty much guaranteed that the way the established Press frames news closelly matches the limitations in political choices in that system)
Then if you go out of mainstream media and look at amateurs (i.e. social media posts) the way they frame subjects is also almost invariably like the Propaganda they grew up with, IMHO not because of them trying to be manipulative but because that's all they've ever known and seen all around them, though the result is still that in their parroting of a sometimes more sometimes less rationalised version of somebody else's talking points, they follow the same falacious structuring.
There are a handfull of less mainstream media who actually mostly practice Journalism and a few diamond-Journalist amongst the muck which is mainstream media, but generally well established news media will not stray away from a framing that justifies the very system that made them "established".
Agreed
'Both sides' is also a shorthand for both or more. I like your description of "discussing the situation on its own implications..." but I think it's common in human discourse to frame things in two main perspectives and discuss from there.