Liberal Media Bias - A Blog Post About Losing a Bet With My Wife

This post comes from a challenge given to me by my wife.  We had a discussion about the reputations of certain websites for being too partisan to be taken as serious news sources (Huffington Post), and during the course of our discussion I said that NPR and the New York Times exhibited a sort of liberal bias through the selection and emphasis of stories that would reaffirm a liberal worldview.  She called me on it though, and so now I have to see if what I said was actually true (this look-before-you-leap assertion philosophy of mine is also a primary reason why she usually wins all our arguments).

I took snapshots of news websites' front pages at the same time on Thursday afternoon to see which stories were being emphasized by particular news organizations and which stories were being ignored.  Thursday night was the night of John Boehner's big fail of an attempt to pass a partisan symbolic "fiscal cliff" solution that involved raising taxes on millionaires, the so-called "Plan B".  It was also 6 days after the tragic Newtown elementary school shooting, so lots of stories relate to this.  For scoring purposes, any Newtown policy story critical of guns will be scored as D +1, while any policy story that talks about any other theory will be scored as R +1.

I have decided to analyze the headline (and only the headline) of everything I can see in these snapshots, which only include the top part of the front page of these websites.  This includes both news articles and opinion pieces.  I summed up all the Republican sounding headlines and all the Democrat sounding headlines and came up with a total score of partisanship.  I start with a few right-wing websites just to show what bias really looks like.

Daily Caller

Daily Caller is basically your number one source for trolling.  They show a story right there at the top of the page; the headline is "Teachers Union chief: Teach for America helps kill children in classroom".  It is also repeated in the "Popular Articles" column on the right. As are the words "ANN COULTER", so, you know.

Plan B stories: Obama belittles a GOP plan (Neil Munro) (+1 R); Congressional hypocrisy (Alex Pappas) (a fair both-sides-are-hypocrites headline and sub-headline) (neutral); a Boehner talking point (Nicholas Ballasy) (+1 R). None of these headlines scream "tax hike!"

Newtown/gun stories: Ann Coulter (+1 R), teachers unions kill kids (+1 R), "My AR 15 Is Not An Assault Rifle" (+1 R), "Guns for dummies" (+1 R), Morning Joe says GOP needs to not block gun reform (neutral).  The NRA is not mentioned.

Other: Miss Venezuela (neutral), The 10 Hottest moments from the Miss Universe pageant (not news), a reporter gets paid to check Craigslist for end-of-the-world sex (neutral).

Total: +6 R

Newsmax

Newsmax, which markets to conservative voices, definitely foretold of Boehner's eventual failure due to conservative voices.  They repeatedly emphasize the "tax hike" part of Plan B, which echos a conservative worldview on taxes.

Plan B/fiscal cliff stories: GOP about to vote on "Tax Hikes" (though it's anti-Boehner, it presents Plan B as only a tax hike, so +1 R): AP says the tax averages $100,000 (but doesn't give percentage of income) (+1 R), Rick Scott presented in a good light (+1 R), Boehner says Obama will eat the blame (+1 R), Wall Street Journal hates the Boehner deal (as if we should care what the Wall Street Journal thinks) (+1 R), Boehner "pushes" Plan B "tax hike" (+1 R).

Newtown stories: Hmm, where are the Newtown/gun control stories? Oh, I see one, way down there, just above Newt Gingrich's head! Chris Christie says we should talk about guns (D +1). On the opinion side, just one story about guns from Michael Reagan's perspective (R +1).  The NRA is mentioned nowhere.

Other: Main story #3 is Hillary Clinton being at the "Center of Benghazi Debate", though she wasn't at the hearing, an actual news event (this framing suggests R +1), and a neutral sounding Susan Rice article.  Then there's Gingrich evolving on "marriage equality" (D +1, also the fact that the Newsmax headline says "marriage equality" and not "gay marriage" is a great sign for the movement). Hunger and homelessness are featured in Newsmax only to make Obama look bad (R +1).  On the opinion side, neutral yuletide statements, farewell to Clinton, something something energy policy, and one thing about Chuck Hagel's possible nomination to defense secretary. From the headlines these seem neutral, though I doubt the pieces actually are neutral. 

Total: R +7

Fox News

 
















Fox News was harping on this one story that I hadn't heard anything about apparently on their cable news network as on their website. It involves both a government's legal action against a gun owner and a vehicle in which Mexicans are viewed negatively, so it is a natural fit as a Republican story.  It gets five clickable links, all five are R +1. 

Plan B/fiscal cliff stories: Nothing stands out. In the "Latest News" section of the front page, lawmakers are on a "collision course" and Grover Norquist's absolution is mentioned, but nothing notes the plan as a "tax hike" like on Newsmax.  The fact that Plan B news got buried probably means something, but it's not on an obvious partisan axis.

Newtown/gun stories: Story #2 is Newtown, but the stories focus on, in order, mentally ill (rather than guns (R +1), a teacher's memorial (neutral), mental health (rather than guns (R +1)), and the overreaction of police to a piece of wood with "rifle" written on it (R +1).  The NRA is mentioned nowhere.

Other: The weird anti-Mexico story aside, there aren't many other partisan stories, except for the video link that begins "Top government regulations Santa will ..." (R +1)

Total: R +9

Washington Times

Plan B/fiscal cliff stories: The Washington Times was a little bit more trusting of Eric Cantor's statement that the GOP had the votes for Plan B, and so their coverage assumes that the story will be that it passed.  Thus the Cantor talking point (R +1), Jay Carney saying that it's an exercise in futility (neutral), and the fact that their main story characterizes rules for debate as "House Republicans won an early test" (R +1).  The demonic picture of Obama on a fiscal cliff story is hilarious (R +1), and the fact that they are presenting the fiscal cliff through the eyes of "franchise businesses" is a Republican way of looking at things (R +1).      

Newtown/gun stories: Literally none.  This was the NRA's tactic at the time as well.

Other: Not one, not two, but three obits for Robert Bork, two of which sound glowing ("an original" and the one where Scalia remembers Bork) (R +2).  I would say nothing else is partisan, except for maybe the "Christmas skirmishes as old as Puritans", which sounds a little (D +1) if it is debunking the "war on Christmas".

Total: R +5


Overall, conservative news sites took different tacks regarding Plan B: Washington Times and Daily Caller went with an establishment Republican viewpoint, Newsmax went with a conservative tea party viewpoint, and Fox News either didn't know what to do or they saw a defeat and humiliation likely to come for Boehner, so they just buried all fiscal cliff/Plan B stuff.  Most of the conservative news sites ignored guns as part of the Newtown coverage, with the notable exception of the troll-bait articles praising guns by the Daily Caller.

So if conservative sites ignored guns, you can bet Huffington Post took the opposite tack.

Huffington Post

  




















Plan B/fiscal cliff stories:  Plan B gets one sad looking Boehner picture along with the line "appears likely to pass the house", which in retrospect, ha.  I don't understand the gist of that Boehner quote, and since I'm only judging by headlines and what I can see on the front page, I can't assess the partisan slant in showing it.  Overall it seems HuffPo was expecting Plan B to pass too, and they were getting right to the business of ignoring it because it is irrelevant (and because this is what Democrats would have wanted to do).  Robert Reich's blog post (D +1) and story #5 (D +1) appear to attack centrist Democrats from the left, as Newsmax was attacking from the right about "tax hikes!" in Plan B. 

Newtown/gun stories: Unlike the conservative media, HuffPo hits Newtown and guns hard.  Story #1 (D +1) and #4 are about the NRA and victim funerals respectively.  The bottom one includes words about guns, so it is a D +1.  There are also two blog posts about gun control (D +2).

Other: Cory Booker runs for a senate seat two (two!) years from now (neutral). There are some other words under the Cory Booker picture that I guess I have to count as separate links: "Boehner on the Brink" (neutral?), "Stewart Blame" (neutral?), "Coward GOPer" (D +1), "Palin mocks O" (Oprah? Anyways, nobody but partisans talks about Sarah Palin anymore (D +1)), "Coulter Slam" (D +1), "'Bigot' Scalia" (D +1).

Total: D +10

New York Times

Plan B/fiscal cliff news: The Jonathan Weisman-story headline writer provides a very accurate summary of what was going on with Plan B at the time, though one could make the argument that describing it as "a plan to cancel tax increases for all but the wealthiest" is a Democratic way of saying "raising taxes on the wealthiest"  There is nothing else on Plan B.

Newtown/gun news: the op-ed columnists are talking guns: The NRA's Blockade (D +1), On Guns, America Stands Out (D +1), and Looking for Lessons in Newtown (neutral).

Other: NY Times has a wide ranging front page of their website, which is neat, including the first bit of world news seen on front pages so far (Benghazi hearing doesn't count).  Very neutral about the Benghazi hearing.  There doesn't appear to be anything partisan about the non-Opinion Page stuff.  This is what a professional non-partisan news site should look like, I must admit.

Total: D +2

NPR

Plan B/fiscal cliff pieces: Plan B barely gets a mention, making it only to the "More News" section, where we get an extension of a dumb metaphor ("a push over fiscal cliff") that I don't even understand. 

Newtown/gun pieces: Story #1 is about an opinion poll on gun control (not mental health or 12-year-old husky boys, D +1).  Other stories on the site center around Newtown-inspired acts of kindness.

Other: The phrase "Big Food" is definitely D +1.  This is a much more diverse bunch of stories than one would find on other news websites, including NYT.  The malaria-fighting "French aperitif" story, the Mount Everest thing, the Mayan apocalypse thing, the Black Arts thing, the photo blog, the existence of something called a "cosmos and culture blog".  Though no other piece is overtly partisan, I would suggest that a panoply of ideas is associated with liberal values.

Total: D+2

Like the NY Times page, NPR seems to be mostly non partisan (except for "Big Food And The Big, Silent Salt Experiment" - making it sound like a big nefarious conspiracy from agribusiness).

So, once again, I'm forced to concede that my wife was right and I was wrong.  NPR and NY Times don't seem at first blush to be partisan towards Democrats, only that they lack a Republican bias. 

Lies, and the Lying Liars ...

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert

So I was thinking about that recent study that found that watching Fox News makes you stupid, as the headlines put it. And it got me thinking about how it's a really insulting thing to say that those who watch Fox News are actually idiots. I mean, the study is actually about misinformation and the 2010 election (that's actually its title) and not just about Fox News viewers. Sure, 63% of everyday Fox News viewers thought that it was unclear where the president was born, but that might be because 64% of Republicans share the same view. Fox News may lie directly to their customers, but they may also just be broadcasting and repeating Republican lies.

So this got me thinking about Republican lies. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of them. Like, a whole lot. It seems like Republicans lie more often than do Democrats. But I recognize that I am a liberal and I am a Democrat, and so when I hear about statements made by conservative Republicans, I notice the lies more prominently than your average American. So I decided to go to politifact.com (the non-partisan fact-checking project of the St. Petersburg Times that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009) and count up all the lies to see who lies more: Republicans or Democrats.

The editors of Politifact.com spend a lot of time sorting out controversial statements by how much truth they contain, always recognizing that, in politics, truth is never black-and-white. So they place statements into the following truth categories: "true", "mostly true", "half true", "barely true", "false", and "pants on fire."

Politifact.com has been around since the early stages of the 2008 presidential campaign, so that meant there were a lot of statements to count. I counted each statement made by a human or organization, and I did not count any chain emails or statements made by "bloggers". Journalists and pundits counted towards partisan totals only if it was clear which party they sympathized with (i.e. Rachel Maddow = Democrat, Glenn Beck = Republican). Joe Liebermann counted as a Democrat, even when he was bashing Obama; and Arlen Spector counted as a Democrat only if he made the statement after he switched parties. Bernie Sanders and Ralph Nader were put in the blue category: Bob Barr and the Cato Institute in the red.

There is surprising parity in the number of statements analyzed by Politifact.com. Politifact.com has chosen an almost equal number of Democratic and Republican statements over the years.

But of those statements, Republicans have told more lies than Democrats. And more Democratic statements have been rated "true" and "mostly true" than Republican statements.

A statement made by a Democrat is most likely going to be in the "true" category (25%). A statement made by a Republican is most likely going to be in the "false" category (23%).

A true or mostly true statement is more likely to come from a Democrat than a Republican by a margin of 54% to 44%.

And throughout Barack Obama's presidency and all the policy debates about health care, the stimulus and everything else, the margin has been fairly consistent: 54% for Democrats to 46% for Republicans.

However, a "false" or "pants-on-fire" statement is much more likely to come from a Republican source than a Democratic source.

And the margin has only increased during Obama's tenure as president. Nearly 7 out of 10 lies categorized by Politifact.com have been Republican lies. Think back to the policy debates during this time. The health care debate (death panels), the stimulus package (no jobs created), all the tax policy stuff (tax hikes); of all the lies that were produced during this time, almost 70% of them came from Republicans.

When one isolates the worst, most egregious lies, the "pants-on-fire" lies, one finds that the liars are overwhelmingly Republican.

And 87% of the worst, foulest, stankiest lies of the past two years originate from members of the Republican Party.

Fox News: Defenders of Right Wing Extremism

Apparently conservatives are steaming mad at Janet Napolitano. The Homeland Security Secretary has not withdrawn the report on rightwing extremism released April 9th, nor did she disagree with its findings. The part of the report that most angers Fox News and talk radio personalities is the following footnote:

Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

Fox News has sounded the horns of umbrage based primarily on this statement, and they have encouraged conservatives to talk it up like it accuses all veterans of terrorism. Republican senators and representatives around the country have issued many statements chastising Napolitano and the DHS for a failure to apologize and withdraw the report. And on the heels of a successful series of tax day tea party rallies (even though, as Paul Krugman notes, they did start unconventionally from the top down, their attendance by throngs of people makes them a success), Fox News has learned that it can bolster its role as red America's megaphone, a role that necessarily takes it even farther away from the realm of objective journalism.

But there are several layers of obvious hypocrisy on this issue. First of all, at no point does the DHS report state that veterans should be or will be monitored like terrorism cells. Many conservative talking heads are insinuating that this is a likely possibility in order to drive the perception that the Obama administration is anti-soldier. This is a complete lie, and it is vile to continue misleading people in this way. Secondly, it's hard to argue that the findings of the entire DHS report are not valid. The report cites evidence that veterans have been recruited in the past to rightwing extremist groups. Much of the report notes the similarity of our current economic and political climate to the last time rightwing extremism was on the rise, which was in the early 1990s. It would be foolish to ignore rightwing extremism's affinity for veterans, just as it would be foolish to ignore Al-Shabaab's affinity for Somali-American men from Minnesota.

Thirdly, the report was not written by or even commissioned by Janet Napolitano or the Obama administration. The Bush administration got the ball rolling on the report, and like so many economic summaries or CIA summaries, this Homeland Security summary took time to develop. Conservatives are suggesting that the Obama administration only started this report as a kind of grudge against conservatives and the military, when in fact the Obama administration didn't even commission it.

Fourthly, it wasn't even the only report to be developed and released by DHS. There is a similar report that looks at the threats from leftwing extremism, which is mostly concerned with cyber-terrorism and protesters of the type found at economic summits. Conservatives rarely mention this report, which claims that leftwing extremists may "encourage recruitment of individuals with sophisticated cyber skills into their trusted circles." I don't see code monkeys (or even Iphone owners)erupting en masse with umbrage at the Department of Homeland Security.

Expect to see more mischaracterizations of minor reports in the coming years as Fox News and others start to regain their swagger by relearning how to manipulate large groups of people who don't know any better.