The Truth about "Balance"

We here it all the time, calls for "balance", in newspapers and television. We've all heard that "one" cable news network's slogan of "Fair and Balanced" but are they? Trick question. The answer is "no" they are not and neither is any other newspaper outlet, television news organization or talk radio host.

Everyone has their biases and the only time we really here about bias is when someone from "the other side" says something we don't agree with.

I've recently received a lot of good feedback from the release of my new Kindle eBook "Blood in the Ozarks: Union War Crimes Against Southern Sympathizers and Civilians in Occupied Missouri."

There have been a few people who gave some negative feedback upon the Kindle release of the book. One person had some criticism of "What the hell do you mean occupied? Missouri was a divided state."

I guess it all depends on how you look at it. Was it really divided or did it just fall into Union control more quickly than other Confederate states?

Why do I say Missouri was "Occupied" in the title? The simple answer is because it was. According to statistics, the Union Army had to keep 1/4 of its entire army in the state to maintain control of it. If it were truly "divided" and not "occupied" this would not have been the case.

One person left a ( very fragmented )review of the book on Amazon stating:

"Poorly edited but an interesting subject for a Southeast Missourian it seems the author was overly enthused about proving an argument about the truth of History actions of War are always biased and no one wins."

This fellow must have been in a hurry or really upset when he wrote this review. It seems his hands were working faster than his brain, at any rate I get the point. He thought the book should be more "balanced".

The problem with this argument is that the book is centered around a massacre that was committed by Union Militia on Christmas Day, 1863 in Ripley County, Missouri. If the book's focus is about a war crime committed by Union troops it would make no sense to write about Confederate war crimes.

Was the reviewer truly upset about a lack of "balance" of the book or was he simply upset because I said something he didn't like about his "side"?

- Clint Lacy is author of "Blood in the Ozarks: Union War Crimes Against Southern Sympathizers and Civilians in Occupied Missouri." You can preview the Kindle format eBook below.