Posted on 06/20/2003 9:58:15 AM PDT by hsmomx3
A few years ago, I conducted a word search in the news archives of various big-city dailies on the words "liberal" and "conservative." The search included my hometown newspaper, the Arizona Republic, which, in a commendable effort to achieve balance on its opinion pages, is gracious enough to let this libertarian (really a classical liberal) have a guest column.
The search revealed that the word "conservative" was used in a political context three times more often than "liberal" and was frequently used as a pejorative. Since then, there has been an avalanche of stories, commentaries and books on the mainstream media's liberal bias, including the best-selling book, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News.
Has all of the negative publicity changed anything in news rooms? Based on a recent analysis of mine, apparently not much. The conservative label is still used about twice as often on average in newspapers to describe Republican politicians and conservative think tanks than the liberal label is used to describe Democratic politicians and liberal think tanks.
It should be noted that the analysis is a painstaking process. It requires more than counting the number of hits on the words "liberal" and "conservative." It requires skimming articles to make sure that the words were used in a political context. This is due to the fact that the words are often used in a nonpolitical context. For example, the word "liberal" is frequently used in recipes in the food section of newspapers, and the word "conservative" is frequently used in the religious section in reference to conservative Jews.
Conducting an analysis of the words "right wing" and "left wing" is equally painstaking, for the words are often used in the context of hockey. And because of Hillary Clinton's new book and her famous reference to a "vast right-wing conspiracy," more recent archives have a much higher proportion of "right wing" references than older archives.
When these anomalies are excluded from the data, "right wing" is still used much more often than "left wing." Think about it. How often do you see the adjectives "left wing" or "leftist" used in your newspaper to describe politicians and think tanks that clearly advocate socialism or redistribution of income? On the other hand, how often do you see the adjectives "right wing" or "conservative" used to describe politicians and think tanks that clearly advocate free markets and lower taxes?
At a recent meeting of the Society of Professional Journalists, a panel of journalists defended the higher use of the word "conservative" to describe conservative think tanks. The panel claimed that conservative think tanks describe themselves as "conservative" or "free market," but liberal think tanks do not describe themselves as "liberal" or "socialist." Based on that rationale, if the Industrial Workers of America or some other widely recognized leftist group is not honest enough to call itself "leftist" or "socialist," reporters would treat the group as politically impartial and not affix a label to it.
The ability of humans to rationalize their actions is amazing.
There are more insidious forms of bias than the unequal use of political labels. An example is the unbalanced use of sources.
For example, the Arizona Republic frequently quotes the Children's Action Alliance on social issues and state social welfare spending. The Alliance is a left-leaning organization that believes in income redistribution and big government solutions to social problems. I cannot remember one story that quoted an organization like the Family Research Council, which is a family advocacy organization that believes that the state is the problem, not the solution, to social problems.
The Arizona Republic's archives are undergoing reconstruction, but the limited available information supports my observation. The archives show that there have been 15 stories in the last seven months that referenced the Children's Action Alliance, but no stories that referenced the Family Research Council, although the Council is a large, politically influential organization that is quoted frequently by other newspapers.
Equally insidious is how cuts in state spending are covered in the Republic and other newspapers. The standard formula is to interview both Democratic and Republican politicians about the cuts. So far, so good. But then the coverage invariably becomes biased. It becomes biased because it quotes those who are on the public dole or who work for the government about the "unfairness" of the cuts, but it does not quote taxpayers who are fed up with the unfairness of high taxes and progressive taxation.
For example, in one long article about cuts in state spending, the Arizona Republic quoted 11 people who are dependent on the government, including state workers and college professors at state universities. It did not quote one taxpayer who worked in private industry and supported the spending cuts. Instead, it asked Republican politicians to justify the cuts.
Such unbalanced coverage results in Republican politicians being portrayed as hardhearted and mean-spirited, leaving the impression with readers that they do not have a constituency.
The coverage of public education, economics and racial issues is even more insidious and unbalanced.
With respect to public education, many of the stories appear to be lifted directly from press releases by the National Education Association and other education establishment special-interest groups. Consequently, newspapers across the land have led readers to believe that the problems with government schools can be fixed with smaller classes and higher teacher pay, when nothing could be further from the truth.
With respect to economics, stories seldom include cost-benefit tradeoffs. For example, the Arizona Republic published the results of a survey last year in which it asked readers to design the perfect school. The survey did not give the cost of various options, as if money is no object when it comes to education. Similarly, the Republic, like most big-city dailies, is a rabid supporter of light rail. But like most big-city dailies, it conveniently fails to tell readers that the systems are so uneconomical that riders receive an $8 subsidy each time they step on board and that much of the federal funding is stolen from the Highway Trust Fund. It is doubtful that voters would approve light-rail expenditures if they knew that riders will receive a $100,000 subsidy apiece if they take light rail to work over their entire career.
And with respect to racial issues, newspapers seem to believe that only non-Hispanic whites are racist. For example, there are few if any stories on the racial animus between blacks and Asians or between Hispanics and blacks. Moreover, Hispanics are labeled as a "minority" group, although in states like Arizona they are the largest ethnic group and far surpass such true minority groups as Bosnians, Iranians, Greeks and Italians.
Newspapers keep losing conservative readers and keep claiming that they do not have a liberal bias. Since newspapers always tell the truth, the only possible explanation is that conservatives must be a bunch of thick-necked, ignorant, right-wing extremists.
Ha, ha, tee, hee.
__________
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
Then there is the issue of numbers. They will compare the numbers to the entire state population. How can you tell anything from that? Surely we do not expect all behavior stats to reflect the exact ratios in the population.
Am I missing something?
Actually they don't call left-wing think tanks "think tanks" as that sounds like a cabal of sinister plotters. They are called "child advocacy groups", or "enviromental watchdog organizations", or some other name that connotates selfless defenders of the public good.
A simple survey of Google's search engine:
NEWS articles searched (this will include duplicate articles printed in different publications and includes international and historical uses of the word):
"Right Wing" 5,170 matches
"Left Wing" 3,760 matches
"Extreme Right Wing" 183 matches
"Extreme Left Wing" 13 matches
"Right Wing extremists" 323 matches
"Left Wing extremists" 4 matches
"conservative" matches 8,990; the term "conservative estimates" account for 121 matches
"liberal" 8,620 matches; the term "liberal estimates" did not appear at all
"conservatives" 4,770 matches
"liberals" 3,260 matches
"Republican" 8,720 matches
"Republicans" 10,500 matches
"Republican Party" 2,680 matches
"Democrat" 12,100 matches
"Democrats" 11,400 matches
"Democrat Party" 320 matches
"Democratic Party" 5,170 matches
"Progressives" 226 matches
"Socialist" 2,200 matches
"Socialists" 630 matches
"Socialist Party" 687 matches
"Communist" 5,950 matches
"Communists" 1,240 matches
"Communist Party" 2,200 matches
"Green Party" 692 matches (there is an nternational Green Party)
"Libertarian" 463 matches; with 73 matches for"Libertarian Party"
By the way, I did a News search of "Media Bias" and found 63 matches.
A little varation:
"Right Wing radicals" 1,490 matches
"Left Wing radicals" 1,920 matches
Lefties are more radical. Less bias here. Lefties are radical.
I'll do you one better than that. My local paper refers to the Brookings Institution as "the Conservative Brookings Institution". Go figure.
That lame excuse doesn't even pass the laugh test.
-Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media
"right wing radicals" 3 matches
"left wing radicals" 2 matches
Additional search terms:
"radical right" 69 matches
"radical left" 53 matches
"right wing radical" 7 matches
"left wing radical" 5 matches
"radical conservatives" 2 matches
"radical libeals" 1 match
"radical conservative" 3 matches
"radical liberal" 4 matches
"extreme conservative" 6 matches
"extreme liberal" 4 matches (3 in reference to media bias)
"extreme conservatives" 1 match
"extreme liberals" no matches
"extremely conservative" 21 matches
"extremely liberal" 12 matches
"rabid right wing" 3 matches
"rabid left wing" no matches
"rabid conservatives" 1 match
"rabid liberals" no matches
"rabid conservative" and "rabid liberal" were used together in the same article
"right wing zealot" 2 matches
"left wing zealot" no matches
"right wing zealots" 5 matches
"left wing zealots" no matches
"radical republican" 3 matches
"radical democrat" 1 match
"radical republicans" 14 matches
"radical democrats" 2 matches
"right winger" 360 matches (this had hockey matches)
"left winger" 325 matches (this had hockey matches)
"conservative media" 84 matches
"liberal media" 145 matches
Almost all of these numbers are significantly smaller than matches found with the original search terms.
The characterization in the media puts "right wing" as extremist/radical much more than the "left wing".
As to hockey references to right/left wing, I'd think that overall they'd balance out (much like right turns and left turns in your car).
An interesting study could be made to search these terms every day for a couple of months and compile the tallies. Someone with Nexus search priviledges could do a much better job (scoping it to that day's articles alone and getting a fuller selection of articles).
As it stands, using Google would tilt numbers as some articles would weight the statistics (articles are available for several days meaning that they would be counted multiple times, also some articles get wider circulation seeing print in multiple papers racking up multiple matches but this would indicate a wider impact from the article).
As I say, it was a simple survey but I did not attempt to bias the findings. Radical was a good search term. Got any others?
Since some on the left are afraid to use the term "liberal", what is another search term? "Progressive" didn't hit well. There were 624 matches on the term fascist (with another 206 "fascists"), at least some of them applied to President Bush or his administration.
Most clear example of left-wing bias, imho ~> our honorable military wins a decisive victory in Iraq - frees an oppressed nation from a sadistic monster, lessens the world's threat from terrorism - and instead of covering the daily good works and progress of our troops in Iraq, the press misrepresents the situation on the ground - hyping each casualty and giving the bad guys far more credit than they deserve, mocks the CIC for thanking the troops aboard the USS Lincoln - and, in a final "put some ice on it" to the troops - the press fawningly parades the CLINTONS ("I loathe the military") in front of the world.
Poster #2: [Hillary to the military: "Put some ice on it."] (^;
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