Houston …we have a problem. It may well be that Hack is sneakily approaching this from the "give them enough rope" angle, which seemed to be the case with the "stealthing" special, where the young man defending his right to endanger the lives of women who trusted him came across sounding exactly like the entitled jerk you would imagine. Even so, the entire exercise is grossly misguided. First, because it frames male privilege as a question for which the answer has not yet been resolved, and second, because it takes an apparently neutral stance, presumably intending to give both sides equal time to air their views. This, of course, is the basis of much journalism today. The reporter keeps themselves out of the story, does not blatantly offer their opinion, and, having presented the information to the audience as impartially as possible, leaves it to them to make up their own minds. This approach to "objectivity" needs to be put to rest once and for all.

Not every topic is up for debate. Just because there are vehement disagreements on certain issues, it does not automatically follow that each opposing viewpoint is equally valid, nor that the job of the journalist is to never take sides. In 2011, for instance, the BBC revamped its science coverage after an independent report, Balance As Bias, found the media giant was prejudicing its own coverage by giving undue weight to fringe viewpoints on issues such as climate change, vaccines and GM crops. By putting fringe views on equal par with scientific fact, just for the sake of debate, the media was creating bias in the form of false balance. To put it another way, when journalists insist on a morally neutral "we don't know what the truth is stance" on controversial issues, they risk legitimising viewpoints that simply lack credibility and can often be dangerous. What regular people think about climate change is irrelevant given that qualified scientists overwhelmingly accept its reality – and that it is already happening. We may all have the right to an opinion but that does not make our opinion right – or even worthy of a place in a debate

Similarly, to question the existence of male privilege is also a form of balance as bias because it is an indisputable fact that women remain at obvious disadvantage. Indeed, according to the World Economic Forum, at current rates of progress, the gender gap will not be eliminated until 2095. It is against this backdrop of profound gender inequality that Hack is asking whether male privilege is "bullshit." A multiple-choice survey on its website (now closed) even asked Triple J listeners "what they thought of feminists", with the options either "They make some good points" or "They hate men." In other words, the usual false man-hater stereotype. This was made worse by the inclusion of an identical question on men's rights activists, with the second option changed to "they hate women". This places MRAs and feminists on an equal footing, presenting them as opposing but essentially the same. But these are not movements with anything approaching similar motivations or goals. One wants to elevate women by levelling the playing field, the other wants a return to the "good old days" of unquestioned male power. By framing this as a question that is still up for debate, Hack is tricking its audience into accepting the claims of MRAs, based not on statistical data, research, theoretical framework, or history – which is what feminism bases its own claims on – but on the opinions of MRAs and anonymous respondents.