Posted on 03/21/2002 7:38:40 PM PST by xm177e2
New York Times National Desk Media Bias Survey, 1991-2000:
Note this search was done on LEXIS-NEXIS. ONLY news articles from the New York Times National Desk were searchedletters to the editor do not appear, nor do editorials or columns (unless they contain the term national desk, I have no idea how often this would occur, I assume its very rare). This is because LEXIS-NEXIS has no way of searching just within news articles, but every article from the National Desk contains the term National Desk in the LEXIS-NEXIS summary.
Occurrences is the number of articles in which the term appears. Both is the number of articles in which both terms appear. Mut. Excl. is the number of articles in which ONLY one of the two terms appears. Relative frequency is the number to watch, if the Relative Frequency of right-wing to left-wing is 5, that means the term right-wing is FIVE times as likely to appear in a news story! A relative frequency of "1" would occur if the words are used an equal number of times. A value over 1 might suggest liberal bias, while values under 1 suggest conservative bias.
#Div/0 denotes an Excel error because one cannot divide by zero, so certain relative frequencies are incalculable.
w/5 means within five words of, so Right-Wing! w/5 Radical! would pick up phrases like right-wing radical terrorists from the or but certain radicals on the right-wing demand an end to
When a word ends in !, that means the LEXIS-NEXIS search will look for all words beginning with whatever is before the exclamation point. Extrem! thus could be extreme, extremely, extremist, extremities, etc.
These are the results, they have not been peer reviewed, its just a little research done by a college student on a lark, but I assume its all correct.
Terms/Phrases: | Occurrences | Both | Mut. Excl. |
Number of uses of the word referring to | |||
x | |||
Right-Wing! | 828 | 32 | 796 |
Left-Wing! | 164 | 132 | |
Relative Frequency: | 5.04878 | 6.030303 | |
x | |||
Right-Wing | 806 | 31 | 775 |
Left-Wing | 156 | 125 | |
Relative Frequency: | 5.166667 | 6.2 | |
x | |||
Hard Right-Wing! | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Hard Left-Wing! | 0 | 0 | |
Relative Frequency: | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | |
x | |||
Right-Wing Extrem! | 48 | 0 | 48 |
Left-Wing Extrem! | 0 | 0 | |
Relative Frequency: | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | |
x | |||
Extreme Right! | 62 | 1 | 61 |
Extreme Left! | 6 | 5 | |
Relative Frequency: | 10.33333 | 12.2 | |
x | |||
Right-Wing Radical! | 7 | 0 | 7 |
Left-Wing Radical! | 4 | 4 | |
Relative Frequency: | 1.75 | 1.75 | |
x | |||
Radical Right! | 48 | 1 | 47 |
Radical Left! | 17 | 16 | |
Relative Frequency: | 2.823529 | 2.9375 | |
x | |||
Right-Wing Reactionar! | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Left-Wing Reactionar! | 0 | 0 | |
Relative Frequency: | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | |
x | |||
Reactionary Right! | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Reactionary Left! | 0 | 0 | |
Relative Frequency: | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | |
x | |||
Right-Winger! | 29 | 0 | 29 |
Left-Winger! | 8 | 8 | |
Relative Frequency: | 3.625 | 3.625 | |
x | |||
Right-Wing Conservative! | 11 | 0 | 11 |
Left-Wing Liberal! | 4 | 4 | |
Relative Frequency: | 2.75 | 2.75 | |
x | |||
Right-Wing! w/5 Extrem! | 89 | 0 | 89 |
Left-Wing! w/5 Extrem! | 0 | 0 | |
Relative Frequency: | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | |
x | |||
Right-Wing! w/5 Radical! | 21 | 0 | 21 |
Left-Wing! w/5 Radical! | 6 | 6 | |
Relative Frequency: | 3.5 | 3.5 | |
x | |||
Right-Wing! w/5 Reaction | 2 | 0 | 2 |
Left-Wing! w/5 Reactiona | 0 | 0 | |
Relative Frequency: | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | |
x | |||
Right-Wing! w/5 Mean-Spi | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Left-Wing! w/5 Mean-Spir | 0 | 0 | |
Relative Frequency: | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | |
x | |||
Right-Wing! w/5 Angry | 3 | 0 | 3 |
Left-Wing! w/5 Angry | 1 | 1 | |
Relative Frequency: | 3 | 3 | |
x | |||
Right-Wing! w/5 Racis! | 2 | 0 | 2 |
Left-Wing! w/5 Racis! | 0 | 0 | |
Relative Frequency: | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | |
x | |||
Right-Wing! w/5 Violen! | 9 | 0 | 9 |
Left-Wing! w/5 Violen! | 0 | 0 | |
Relative Frequency: | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | |
x | |||
Conserva! w/5 Extrem! | 71 | 4 | 67 |
Liberal! w/5 Extrem! | 29 | 25 | |
Relative Frequency: | 2.448276 | 2.68 | |
x | |||
Conserva! w/5 Radical! | 25 | 2 | 23 |
Liberal! w/5 Radical! | 26 | 24 | |
Relative Frequency: | 0.961538 | 0.958333 | |
x | |||
Conserva! w/5 Reactionar | 6 | 0 | 6 |
Liberal! w/5 Reactionar! | 1 | 1 | |
Relative Frequency: | 6 | 6 | |
x | |||
Conserva! w/5 Mean-Spir! | 2 | 0 | 2 |
Liberal! w/5 Mean-Spir! | 2 | 2 | |
Relative Frequency: | 1 | 1 | |
x | |||
Conserva! w/5 Angry | 34 | 2 | 32 |
Liberal! w/5 Angry | 9 | 7 | |
Relative Frequency: | 3.777778 | 4.571429 | |
x | |||
Conserva! w/5 Racis! | 6 | 0 | 6 |
Liberal! w/5 Racis! | 8 | 8 | |
Relative Frequency: | 0.75 | 0.75 | |
x | |||
Liberal-Leaning! | 44 | 1 | 43 |
Conservative-Leaning! | 28 | 27 | |
Relative Frequency: | 1.571429 | 1.592593 |
Obviously, it's impossible to mathematically "prove" something as ethereal as "media bias," but I'm giving it my best shot. I forget if I posted this before, I honestly don't remember.
I did a lot of research on it before, but I forgot the methods I used, so the data is basically worthless.
Send this to Brent Bozell!! Publishable material!!!
His conclusion was, contrary to Goldberg's view, liberals were 2-3 times more likely to have "labels" associated with thier names! I'll see if I can find it on-line and post the link. You and Terry and the Stanford Geek can duke it out :-)
Done...
try " Republican ... mean-spirited " versus "Democrat ... mean-spirited" and also other 'harsh' adjectives close to Repub or Dem ("extremist" or "harsh" or "hard-line" or "controlled" or "regime" or "forced" or "threatened").
on the "threatened" for example, i have notice the NYT/LibPress would say "Clinton promises veto" but would say "Bush threatens veto". So you may get: "Extremist Republicans, taking a hard line, threatened to overturn LovelyDemPres promised veto."
In fact, it was because of his research that I decided to post this (I saw something about it over at the "morethanzero" Blog...
ROFLMAO! NPR looking at Liberal Media bias ... and they are completely lost trying to figure out what it is! They have no idea! :-)
Linguist Geoff Nunberg
Linguist Geoff Nunberg does some of his own checking on liberal bias in the media. Expanded Coverage
Here are the number of times these things appear (in the NYT national desk news pages):
Democrats Promise: 2
Republicans Promise: 39
Democrats threaten: 3
Republicans threaten: 6
Every time I look for bias, I don't always find conclusive results...
Here are the number of times these things appear (in the NYT national desk news pages):
Democrats w/10 mean-spi!: 22
Republicans w/10 mean-spi!: 40
This is also not proof of media bias, because these might just be quotes from the article--the NYT isn't guilty of bias just because it quotes a shrill harpy left-wing activist and a reasonable-sounding conservative activist. Also, this just means the words are in proximity, it doesn't necessarily mean they describe each other (for instance, "Democrats say mean-spirited conservatives are..." would show up under "democrats w/10 mean-spi!" It's important to remember the limitations of this method.
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