{"id":1271,"date":"2004-11-04T14:25:15","date_gmt":"2004-11-04T19:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/11\/balanced_to_the_absurd_degree\/"},"modified":"2004-11-04T14:25:15","modified_gmt":"2004-11-04T19:25:15","slug":"balanced_to_the_absurd_degree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/11\/balanced_to_the_absurd_degree\/","title":{"rendered":"“Balanced” To The Absurd Degree"},"content":{"rendered":"

More from the strange world of TV news. I was watching CNN and Wolf Blitzer was talking with a reporter<\/a> regarding how Elizabeth Edwards has been diagnosed with breast cancer. They got to talking about Ms. Edwards in general:<\/p>\n

BLITZER: He’s been a longtime spokesman for the Edwards campaign, in supported of Elizabeth “is as strong a person as I’ve ever known. Together our family will beat this.” She’s a very impressive woman, an attorney in her own right. She’s done some pretty remarkable things over the years.
\nHENRY: That’s right. She was very impressive to a lot of Democrats and Republicans when you talk to them, just as Laura Bush has been — has impressed Democrats, as well as Republicans, with her aplomb on the campaign trail and as first lady. And what they say is that Elizabeth Edwards is a lawyer, is very accomplished, but also has children, older children, as well as younger children that we saw on the campaign trial, and that she has been very accomplished both as a mother, and as a professional in her own right, and that’s why, obviously, a lot of sadness right now at the Kerry\/Edwards campaign, that she was diagnosed with breast cancer right in the middle of the difficulty campaign itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure why Henry uses the “what they say is that Elizabeth Edwards is a lawyer.” She is<\/i> a lawyer. She has<\/i> an older daughter and two young children. Henry doesn’t need to attribute these known facts to some campaign statement.
\nBut more importantly, what does this story have to do with Laura Bush? Absolutely nothing. So why is she brought up? I suspect because this is just one of many reporters who has been programmed not make any sort of value statement about a person on one side of the campaign without saying something similar about the other side. Whenever they offer a subjective comment about one candidate–positive or negative–they reflexively must “balance” it with an in kind remark about their opponent.
\nThus, if Dick Cheney says he never implied a link between Iraq and 9\/11, duty requires that a reporter can’t point this whopper out unless he devotes equal time to point out that Edwards misstated the amount of money allocated in a three-year-old spending bill. So it always works out that both candidates are equally untruthful.
\nLame.
\nAnyway, best wishes to Elizabeth Edwards. She seems like a wonderful person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More from the strange world of TV news. I was watching CNN and Wolf Blitzer was talking with a reporter regarding how Elizabeth Edwards has been diagnosed with breast cancer. They got to talking about Ms. Edwards in general: BLITZER: He’s been a longtime spokesman for the Edwards campaign, in supported of Elizabeth “is as […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}