The illusion of balance

The President thinks it unfair that a Google search of his name results in a preponderance of "bad" news about him and hints that search engines should be regulated to assure more balanced results. While he may think he's being targeted by the same old elite-media cabal, it was reported that a similar search for "Hillary Clinton" produced similarly "bad" results. Inevitably, Trump's complaint has caused alarm among civil libertarians and progressives, as it echoes generations of conservative demands for "balance"  that, as critics see it, have actually skewed political discourse. The critics think that conservatives have "worked the refs" by demanding a minimum of recognition for views that critics consider objectively unworthy of consideration. Such demands are inevitable in multiparty democracies, but are driven less by an objective commitment to representation for all sides of all questions than by demands for recognition of power. Conservatives want equal representation for their views not because they're simply the other side of important debates but because they're a mass political movement representing millions of people and billions in wealth. Were the demand for balance driven simply by solicitude for all sides of any question, than Marxists would be equally entitled to balanced coverage of economic issues, and white racists equally entitled to balanced coverage of cultural issues. No one would take their entitlement seriously, however, because they lack the conservatives' numbers -- but most would agree that they're not entitled because their views can be dismissed objectively without counting heads or dollars. The progressive argument now is that numbers do not entitle Trumpism to balanced representation in the media because it's self-evidently beyond the pale morally and intellectually. If there's an authoritarian  (or authoritarian democratic) aspect to Trumpism, however, it would include a claim that numbers and the raw fact that Trump won an election entitle him, in fact, to more than balanced coverage, just as the entire nation owes him some deference until the next election. Whether balance is Trumpists' true ideal, or anyone's, is open to debate, and that would be a debate where all sides would deserve to be heard.