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Comment on Police declare 'major incident' as wind change increases Cairngorms wildfire risk

False balance, known colloquially as bothsidesism, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports. Journalists may present evidence and arguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side’s claims as baseless. False balance has been cited as a cause of misinformation.[2][3][4]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance

One single local critic gets quite a bit of prominence.

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Tweak@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I get that, but I don’t see that as what’s happening here. It sounds more like you have a bunch of noisy locals moaning about things, but the BBC is just reporting that, not really amplifying it. If anything, the subtext of the article is that the complaints are generally baseless.

Swinney continued: "The wind has changed direction overnight, which means the track of the fire has altered once again and the threat to Nethy Bridge has reduced, for the moment at least.

So the wind changed towards Nethy Bridge, creating a high threat warranting an evacuation. Then the wind changed again and the risk went down. Sounds more like an ever-evolving situation than anything negligent by those in charge of dealing with it. Even when they start quoting the local Tory MP and their moans, it’s immediately contrasted with detailed explanations from the people actually fighting the fires. Hardly “omit[ting] information that would establish one side’s claims as baseless.”

Good journalism shouldn’t explicitly tell you that one side of the argument is bullshit, as that would be expressing an opinion, not publishing the news. This article presents enough information that the reader should be able to come to that conclusion themselves.

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