balance
In media law, balance is the equilibrium reproduction of media content .
General
Balance is one of the hardest terms to define. In any case, the “balanced” suggests that something should be balanced, balanced. The pluralism in the media is to be retained by the presentation of different opinions and political alternatives. In a negative way, a medium must “not serve a political party or group, an interest group, a creed or a worldview unilaterally.” Balance can be seen on the one hand in the variety of topics and on the other in the balance between the pros and cons.
Legal issues
In media law , balance is an indefinite legal term . In its first broadcasting decision, the BVerfG already spoke of "balanced content" without specifying the term. The BVerfG relates the “external balance” to the respective distribution area of those programs which are assumed to balance each other out. For the Supreme Court, equilibrium is the same as equilibrium and diversity of the existing directions of opinion.
The legislature had to take into account the balance within the framework of the program requirements. According to the Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Interstate Broadcasting Treaty), the balance of the program in public broadcasting according to Section 11 (2) RStV must be taken into account, while the programming principles in Section 41 RStV do not mention the requirement of balance for private broadcasting . That is left to the state media law, which, for example, in Section 33d of the State Media Act of North Rhine-Westphalia, assigns the editor-in-chief the responsibility for the balance of the program and leaves the decision-making authority to the program advisory board. Otherwise, the balance of the total range of private providers in the distribution area is sufficient. Balance is assumed if at least 3 full programs are organized within the scope of a law (so-called external plurality ).
species
Olaf Jandura differentiates between qualitative and quantitative balance. In quantitative terms, the reporting is therefore balanced if it arises from the requirement of pluralism and the selection of facts and points of view on the object of assessment is the focus of interest. The qualitative balance refers to the difference in news selection compared to other media. Balance also affects both an individual contribution and the overall offer of a medium.
Demarcation
With a vague term like balance, the problem arises of delimiting it from other terms. This is especially true in relation to objectivity . While balance concerns the relationship between the statements, objectivity relates to the relationship between the statements and the event. The balance is about the balance in the choice of topic. There must be neither a negative nor a positive valence in the reporting. Valence here means value or the character of a challenge, which is possessed by all information that builds up tension. Correspondingly, positive valence is attraction and negative means rejection. In extreme cases, the reporting is one-sided - the opposite of balance. One-sided reporting leads - if it is not noticed by the recipient - to one-sided opinion formation. If it is noticed, it can provoke rejection or opposition.
Bad balance
→ Main article: Incorrect equilibrium
If applied incorrectly, a balanced presentation can lead to an informal bias (“balance as bias”), in which the actual situation is distorted by supposedly balanced reporting and thus misrepresented. One example of this is the supposedly balanced reporting of man-made global warming . An influential study from 2004 showed that of 636 media articles examined, which had appeared in four major newspapers between 1988 and 2002, around 53% reported "balanced" reports, that is to say, the theses were weighted almost equally, that humans make a significant contribution to the global warming or that global warming is exclusively natural. 35% of the articles emphasized the existence of man-made global warming, but also mentioned the counter-thesis that the warming has natural causes. In contrast, only 6% of the articles correctly reproduced the scientific consensus by attributing the warming to humans without presenting an opposing thesis. The reporting also changed over time. While in 1988 the majority of the reports still correctly reflected the view of science, from around 1990 journalists started disinformation campaigns in the organized climate denial scene etc. a. by the Global Climate Coalition and the Heartland Institute to report "balanced". At the same time, the press began to replace scientists as the most frequently cited sources with politicians as sources of information. Due to the supposedly balanced reporting, which has its origin in the fairness doctrine , climate deniers and their theses were systematically favored in the media, as they received much more attention than they actually deserved due to the broad scientific consensus.
Individual evidence
- ^ WDR broadcasting principles, quoted from Horst Decker (ed.): Introduction to Communication Science, Part 2. 1983, p. 236.
- ↑ BVerfG, judgment of February 28, 1961, Az .: 2 BvG 1, 2/60
- ↑ BVerfGE 73, 118, 162
- ↑ BVerfGE 57, 295, 324
- ↑ Olaf Jandura: Small parties in the media democracy , 2006, p. 44.
- ↑ Olaf Jandura: Small parties in the media democracy , 2006, p 45th
- ^ Siegfried J. Schmidt, Siegfried Weischenberg: Media genres, reporting models, forms of representation. In: Klaus Merten, Siegfried J. Schmidt, Siegfried Weischenberg: The reality of the media. 1994, p. 227.
- ^ Matthias Kraft, Mandy Haller, Christoph Haas: The field theory of Kurt Levin. 2005, p. 11.
- ↑ Birger P. Priddat: Politics under influence. 2009, p. 113.
- ↑ Maxwell T. Boykoff, Jules M. Boykoff: balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press . In: Global Environmental Change . tape 14 , 2004, p. 125–136 , doi : 10.1016 / j.gloenvcha.2003.10.001 .
- ↑ James Lawrence Powell: The Inquisition of Climate Science . New York 2012, pp. 121f.
- ↑ Naomi Oreskes , Erik M. Conway : The Machiavellis of Science. The network of denial. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2014, p. 267f.
