Earlier today, CNN posted a story that was unapologetically one-sided, if not deviously slanted and incomplete. And I couldn't be happier - it's about bloody time.

I'm no fan of slanting per se, but I'm always encouraged when media editors reject the false notion that there are two sides to every story, as if the claims made by intelligent design proponents lay on equal footing with the claims made by evolutionary scientists. Here's a great example of a news story that practically mocks the notion that reasonable people can disagree on a particular issue:

The issue on the table is adoption and parenting by same-sex couples, and the more specific arena of debate deals with issues of child development. The article opens with an unambiguously positive headline: Gay Adoption: A new take on the American family . No hedging here - no subheadings that ask whether gay adoption is a good idea, and no typically ominous "But Not Everyone Agrees" indicating that this article will bother considering opposing viewpoints.

But things get really interesting after the article finishes profiling its impossibly happy families and starts dealing with the research on child devlopment. Compare how CNN contextualizes the two "sides" of the gay adoption debate:

"Love alone is not enough to guarantee healthy growth and development," James Dobson -- the head of Focus on the Family, a socially conservative organization -- wrote in a commentary for Time magazine in December 2006.

"The two most loving women in the world cannot provide a daddy for a little boy, any more than the two most loving men can be complete role models for a little girl."

But there are millions of single heterosexual mothers and fathers and foster parents, legally raising children across the country. Some find it hard to see how children of same-sex couples or single gay parents are somehow worse off.

What's interesting here, and what inspired me to write this story in the first place, is how the author immediately undercuts Dobson's claim without resorting to a counter-quote by someone on the other side. This gives the illusion of an "objective" voice that judges - and finds wanting - Dobson's claims about child development.

Contrast this with the passage that immediately follows:

"There is no credible social science evidence to support that gay parenting -- and by extension, gay adoptive parenting -- negatively affects the well-being of children," said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.

"It's quite clear that children do fine in homes led by gays and lesbians. That's a pretty basic bottom line."

(snip)

Several organizations -- the National Adoption Center, the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics -- also say that having gay and lesbian parents does not negatively affect children.

Pertman's statement, along with his credentials, are given without authorial commentary; they're also located near the end of the article, and conspicuously lacking any rebuttals. Furthermore, the author goes on to list the organizations the reject the theory that children do worse with gay parents, while no such list of anti-adoption organizations is to be seen.

This all seems ridiculously slanted, and it is: but for good reason. In effect, the article is subtly indicating the differences in expertise without making these differences explicit:

* On one side, we have James Dobson, Ph.D. in Child Development . That sounds pretty impressive, except for a scientist his critique of gay parenting is typically vague on specifics. And when he does quote research, the results aren't encouraging: here's one person he cited condemning his misuse of the study , here's another doing the same, and... oh, have another for good measure.

* On the other side, we have the National Adoption Center, the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the researchers that Dobson likes to misquote, etc.

Two equal sides, right?

Rather than indicate all this in what would make for a long digression to the main article, the CNN editor built contexts around the quotes to deprive Dobson of the authority he doesn't deserve in the first place. It's a nifty bit of journalism in that it doesn't bother to lend false credibility to a pseudo-argument, and it furthermore calls attention to the (painfully) obvious hole in the logic.

Even though we're all familiar with the dangers of journalists providing too much editorial slant to the news we consume, I can't help but think articles like this are a good thing. Not all debates have two equal sides, and it's refreshing whenever I read articles that make this point, explicitly or implicitly.

addendum: this isn't to say there couldn't be other aspects to the adoption debate in which reasonable disagreement exists, but there clearly aren't equal sides when it comes to child development research. If Dobson wants to argue from the point of view of religion, that's his prerogative, but he's out of his league when he gets into the science.