False balance

Today, in contrast to prior decades, most media are willing to call out false information as incorrect,[citation needed] such as the idea that the Earth is not warming, or that Donald Trump won the 2020 United States presidential election.

[11] False balance can also originate from other motives such as sensationalism, where producers and editors may feel that a story portrayed as a contentious debate will be more commercially successful than a more accurate (or widely-agreed) account of the issue.

Science journalist Dirk Steffens mocked the practice as comparable to inviting a flat Earther to debate with an astrophysicist over the shape of the Earth, as if the truth could be found somewhere in the middle.

"[11] Although the scientific community almost unanimously attributes a majority of the global warming since 1950 to the effects of the Industrial Revolution,[13][14][15] there are a very small number – a few dozen scientists out of tens of thousands – who dispute the conclusion.

[21] Earlier papers in Communication in Medicine and the British Medical Journal concluded that media reports provided a misleading picture of the level of support for Wakefield's hypothesis.