fair?

Our sense of what is 'fair and balance' and 'unbiased' is formed by looking at a single point of view from both sides, so analysing the pros and cons for a point made. This way of approaching something from a so called 'objective point of view' is in itself biased becuase it takes the point of view to be true and objective and so discussing the pros and cons of the point made rather useless. I think that this is very misleading. An unbiased and an objective conclusion can be made from a point of view by analysing and studying the evidence used to make the 'point', and then further analysing if the conclusion made in the 'point' holds up to the evidence and whether any other conclusions, maybe even conflicting conclusions, can be made from the pieces of evidence used to support the original point. The evidence's veracity should also be examined.

A lot of the points made above are often used by scientists researching a particular topic and their analyses incorporate all of the ideas above (and even more) when drawing conclusions from data gathered. The fairness of the experiment is usually thought out before the experiment is carried out and usually takes the form of controls, as well as all the other factors that can influence the data. But this isn't the reason for the post. The reason why I wrote the first paragraph is because all of the principles above (and many more) apply not only to Science but wherever a point is being made.

One of the biggest abuses of 'fairness' are carried out by the media and to some extent us, the people: whether it's reading newspapers, reading articles on the internet, or watching the news on TV. We all read news articles on the internet; on news websites and blogs. And people tend to comment on what they make of the article in question and there's usually a vast array of people commenting, some denounce it as utter rubbish whereas others agree at the points made. This is misleading. Very few people ever read an article and check all the sources used and if they corroborate with the points the writer is trying to make. Doing this leads to a meaningful debate. We should be discussing whether points of views put forward in an article support all the evidence used and whether someone can conclude something entirely different. In effect, we are taking the article in question as 'the truth'. Some articles, when read, seem heavily biased, and we are quick to denounce it as propaganda and the writer as being partisan (either Left or the Right, doesn't matter), but we usually never go back (like I've said) to see whether the sources corroborate the writers point of view, and also whether the sources are in themselves objective.

People shouldn't be expected to, nor do they have the time to be this thorough with everything they read. But what people could do is read with an air of scepticism, especially when statistics are used and numbers are thrown around everywhere. Though I think it becomes a moral duty for a person to be as thorough as I've outlined above, when a country's prime minister/president takes them to war, then I think people should be scrupulous in holding their government to their word.