“Conservative” columnists get more room on newspaper op-ed pages than “progressive” columnists do, a new Media Matters for America study of news bias has found.
The trouble is, on the Iraq war, the central issue of our time, the conservative-progressive divide is not so clear. George F. Will, whose column is printed in more newspapers than any other political commentator, is a conservative, and unlike many conservatives, he opposes the U.S. military action in Iraq.
(I’m a liberal and, like Sen. Joe Lieberman, I support the liberation of Iraq.)
According to Media Matters, the top 10 conservative columnists’ opinion pieces are regularly carried in 1,601 newspapers. The top 10 progressive writers’ columns are regularly carried in only 960 newspapers. But if you look at the Iraq war issue alone, and add George Will’s 328 newspapers to the papers of the progressive anti-Iraq-liberation writers, suddenly there’s a closer balance.
Partisan bias. The real imbalance at American news organizations is in the Democrat-Republican mix among editors and reporters. In most newspapers and television news outlets, I’m willing to bet, newsroom staffs are 60 to 80 percent Democratic. Rare is the news staff that is more than 20 percent Republican.
This lopsidedness doesn’t produce a “liberal” or “progressive” bias. It produces a Democratic Party bias, a team-spirit mentality that influences which stories are reported, which stories are ignored, which questions are asked, which questions aren’t asked, which facts are played up and which facts are simply left out.
Why doesn’t Media Matters do a study on the numbers of Democrats and Republicans in American newsrooms? Or is this one of those questions that Democrats don’t dare ask?
Frank Warner
Comments