You’d think so. But there’s at least one significant issue where at least one media outlet has completely failed. I speak of utility-scale wind, and I speak of the usually admirable VTDigger.
Since the beginning of this year, Digger has posted (by my count) 16 opinion columns whose primary focus was support for, or opposition to, large-scale wind farms.
13 were opposed to wind. Three were in favor.
That’s the kind of score that invokes the Mercy Rule in softball games.
Not to pick on VTDigger; its organization makes an archive scan simple and free. This isn’t true for the Mitchell Family Organ (or the Freeploid), or I’d be able to verify my strong impression that the opinion pages of the Herald and Times Argus have been similarly slanted against wind. Anecdotally, I recall a recent Sunday issue which presented two opinion pieces under a header that said “The Wind Debate” or something to that effect. Both pieces were against wind.
Heck of a debate, Brownie.
I suspect that what’s going on here is not a conspiracy, just the simple need to fill space.
This is why you often see the same opinion column showing up over and over again in different outlets. I doubt that our news operations pay for opinion pieces, and I think they have to (at least some of the time) print or post or broadcast whatever is offered to them. And, of course, the small but extremely determined Windy community is very prolific.
Some of the blame must go to the pro-wind community, especially the environmental groups that held a well-publicized January news conference in which they promised to fully engage the public debate over wind. They have, by and large, failed to do so. You’d think that someone at VNRC or Sierra Club Vermont or 350VT or VPIRG or the Conservation Law Foundation could whomp up a few pertinent essays.
But still, I’d think that Digger and other media outlets should feel responsible for ensuring some measure of balance on current issues of wide interest. Maybe even solicit a few pieces from the other side, if there’s an imbalance.
That would seem to be the responsible thing to do. VTDigger isn’t doing it.
For what it’s worth, I think your argument goes too far. It certainly seems fair to argue that any news outlet with even a pretense to being balanced should print any reasonable piece on either side of a debate like this. To my knowledge, there’s no indication that’s not happening in this debate.
But in the absence of such pieces, I fail to see how it’s the outlet’s job to SOLICIT opinion from the other side.
Put differently, ALL (not some) of the blame goes to the pro-wind community, and I for one find myself wondering why Vermont’s environmental groups and its utilities (with the exception of WEC’s Avram Patt and VEC’s David Halquist) have remained almost entirely silent in the face of egregious lies, misstatements, etc. from wind opponents.
Again for what it’s worth, I think that’s a HUGE mistake. Indeed, that’s precisely why I find myself having almost a second career answering the attackers when they are substantively wrong and misleading in the comment columns of Vermont Digger and other outlets.
Wind supporters have never effectively stood up for themselves in the decade that utility scale wind has been an issue in Vermont. There have been token efforts made by some of the developers and environmental groups, but nothing has been done with any consistency, and as a result the opponents have essentially dominated the opinion columns for almost the entire time.
The Herald and later the Free Press did some pro-wind editorializing, but now seem to have re-lapsed into making much of the controversy without defending a stance one way or the other. And I confess, since the Herald went to a paywall format I haven’t checked it as often as I used to.
As long standing participants in the debate (at the level of a small, underfunded advocacy group) we argued at all of the various pro-wind gatherings for a vigorous PR campaign to counter a lot of the opposition pieces, but met with only limited success. Similarly we argued for a development and ownership strategy based on the mid-western farm Co-op “Minnesota Flip” model which has also gone nowhere fast.
And thus the opponents have been more or less free to repeat the same silliness over and over again. This is not to say that they don’t have some valid criticisms, but most of it is just base propaganda.
It’s not too late for such an effort in favor of wind, but I am coming to think that trying to get the pro-wind groups, the legislators, the utilities,
the developers and the media groups on the same PR page is about like herding cats.