One can understand the impulse behind this advice. But to apply it to every story is absurd. Consider a hypothetical report on global warming. The overwhelming majority of the scientific community believes that global warming is happening and that human activity is contributing to it, but there is a small group on the right that consider it an unfounded myth. To give equal time to the vast majority and the tiny minority makes no sense — and yet that’s precisely what a reporter should do, if Baker is to be believed.

A recent incident concerning C-SPAN illustrated to what absurd lengths the quest for equivalence at all costs can lead. The network announced that it would balance its coverage of a lecture by a professor of Holocaust studies named Deborah E. Lipstadt with a speech by David Irving — who sued Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier. A British court found for Lipstadt, finding that Irving was anti-Semitic, racist, and given to misrepresenting and misinterpreting historical evidence. “Falsifiers of history cannot ‘balance’ histories,” said a petition sent to C-SPAN that was signed by more than 200 historians. “Falsehoods cannot ‘balance’ the truth.”

There is important work to be done to combat instances of bias in the press. But it’s not being done at MRC. Unless the folks at Bozell’s organization decide that fixing the press is more important than undermining it, their critiques will continue to be met as so much rhetorical posturing.

That’s not good for the health of the press, and, in the long run, not so good for conservatives, either.

Correction: This article has been updated to specify that the case against Prof. Lipstadt was decided in her favor, rather than dismissed. The original description relied on a New York Times article that has been corrected by the Times.

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