Fair and Balanced

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I've got CNN on in the background, and just noticed a correspondent describe David Kay's Senate testimony—still going on as I write and viewable on C-SPAN—as "very balanced" because it provided just a little bit of political fuel for Democrats and Republicans alike. At the risk of overinterpreting, I think that's psychologically revealing—a little bit of confirmation of what plenty of folks have already observed: The contemporary journalistic conception of "balance" and "objectivity" entails, not a judicious weighing of perspectives to arrive at truth, but a he-said-she-said hodgepodge that faithfully reflects talking points from both left and right.