As we listen to Lou Dobbs on CNN, as well as the entire team at Fox news (save Shep Smith) obsess on Obama's mother secretly plotting to wire birth announcements from Kenya to Hawaiian papers from her hospital bed, it reminds me of how the American journalistic standard of "he said/she said" reporting is exposed as being a sham when one side is absolutely crazy.
Sometimes there are just facts, and there are not two sides to an issue. The Republicans have taken advantage of the inclination for balance to lie for the past several decades, when "their side" needed to be heard to balance reality.
Now though, the environs are different. There are many in prominent positions in the GOP who aren't simply cynical liars. They are absolutely crazy. Watch this video Media Matters captured of Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma for example.
In this short clip, he denies that oil and gas pollute. Should he get air time every time somebody wants to curb carbon emissions? He says they don't exist, and well you know we need "balance" after all.
It's a good example of how the paradigm breaks down over the flat earth position. We don't get flat earthers on the air every time somebody mentions the earth is a globe. Yet, we get Michelle Bachmann, Lou Dobbs, James Inhofe, and the whole gang of crazies miked up any time they want to travel into crazy base land.
As journalists wonder why their medium is dying, perhaps they would consider that when they consider Fox News and their guests are serious people, those who are genuinely serious turn elsewhere for information.