Disingenuous straw men

NBC News anchor Lester Holt was recently honored with the Edward R. Murrow Award, an award honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism. Here is what Holt conveyed upon his acceptance. 

Nightly News anchor @LesterHoltNBC accepts Edward R. Murrow Award and proclaims "fairness is overrated," insists it's not necessary to "always give two sides equal weight and merit" pic.twitter.com/IwI6yA7DAF

— Kyle Drennen (@kjdrennen) March 31, 2021

I will definitely concede that there has been a disturbing trend of disinformation, particularly in the aftermath of the presidential election. As such, there were several outlandish claims from non-credible individuals which were summarily dismissed. And rightly so. 

That said, Holt is incredibly disingenuous with the line "...that the sun sets in the west is a fact, and a contrary view does not deserve our time or attention." This is a lofty standard that too many media members themselves don't live up to. The obvious example is individuals with a cervix are, in fact, women. However, the self-proclaimed "Most trusted name in news" doesn't even use the empirically factual term "women." I would venture a guess that the three major new networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) and other cable outlets also use similar vague terminology when discussing gender.

Sorry Les, but there absolutely are issues which require two sides being granted equal weight. This has never been more true than in this era of COVID-19. How many times in the past year have you heard from our betters to "Trust the experts!," to which I (and many others) would reply "Which experts?" The media often propped up the scientific talking heads which recommended the harshest mitigation strategies when it came to combatting the virus. But dissenting viewpoints indicating that less stringent lockdowns would be helpful in alleviating adverse mental health issues as well as ensuring kids were in the best educational environment possible were rarely (if ever) heard. Hell, even an epidemiologist from Harvard University was cited by Twitter as posting something "misleading" when he dared went against the "Vaccines for all" narrative by suggesting that not every single solitary adult is required to have a COVID-19 vaccine in order to reach herd immunity. 

Yeah, I get that Twitter is not the same as mainstream journalism. However, the media would be doing a great service to its consumers if they brought on someone with the credentials of a Dr. Kulldorff. But they won't. Why, it almost seems as though Holt and his ilk are only interested in one particular narrative. Sadly life is not at all that simple. 

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Les's "Fairness is overrated" lecture did little to stem the tide of what is already an eroding trust in media. 

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