'Liberal' Papers More Likely to Criticize Clinton

'Liberal' Papers More Likely to Criticize Clinton Study: While 'Conservative' Ones Leave Bush Alone

NEW YORK -- So-called "liberal" newspapers tend to be more open-minded and willing to criticize a like-minded U.S. president than their "conservative" counterparts, according to a report released last week.

In a study for The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, Michael Tomasky looked at 510 editorials over the past decade. He found that on their editorial pages The New York Times and The Washington Post criticized the Clinton administration 30% of the time. By contrast, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times opposed the Bush White House 7% of the time.

Tomasky also found a "striking difference in tone between the two sides as well," with the conservative papers using far "harsher" language in responding to Clinton and engaging in ad hominem attacks. The two sides, therefore, "represent two different models of journalism. The conservative editorial pages are more likely to think of themselves as being 'on the team,' as it were..."

In sum, Tomasky writes, "the two sides define partisanship quite differently and envision the roles they play as political actors very differently as well." The 57-page report can be found at www.shorensteincenter.org.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you scan through the paper, you'll see that the methodology is highly suspect. In particular, though only 10 "roughly comparable events" were chosen for study, they are not equally weighted in the sample. The dominant event is coverage of Reno and Ashcroft.

Where most of the other events have on the order of 3 or 4 Opinions from each newspaper (almost ALL towing the implied "party line") the NYT alone has 33 Opinions on Reno entered, 17 of which are "Negative." Of these, 6 are critical of Reno's failure to appoint a Special Whitewater Prosecutor", 5 are cricital of Reno's handling of Waco, and 4 were critical of Reno's failure to appoint a special prosecuter in the stabbing of Yankel Rosenbaum (??who??)

The crux of this so-called unwillingness of the "conservative" press to criticize Bush lies simply in the lack of a Bush Whitewater equivalent or a Bush Waco equivalent or a Bush Rosenbaum stabbing.

Two other topics have a similar problem. On The Clinton Welfare vs Bush Steel Tariff Issue (I know, these really don't compare either...) the NYT/WP get credit for 12 of 16 Opinions being against Clinton while the WSJ/WT get credit for only 3 of 6 Opinions being against Bush.

If one were to equally weight the events, the results look more like this:

NYT/WP critcized Clinton 35% of the time
WSJ/WT critcized Bush 10% of the time

And the reason Libs were tougher on Clinton turns out to be the problems with Reno described above and their criticism that Clinton held on to Zoe Baird far too long (as opposed to Bush accepting Linda Chavez withdrawl early.)

In short, this "study" is a classic example of how to lie with statistics:

To pump up your conclusion, take three events that favor you conclusion, count them multiple times and ... PRESTO!... your conclusion looks better than it really is!

Well, the liberal (notice no quotes) media lied on behalf of Bill Clinton. When he testified under oath that he "couldn't recall" whether he had been offered a million bucks by Riady, all the networks reported that he "denied being offered" a million bucks. They lied on his behalf because the networks figured the truth would convince Americans he was committing perjury again. The networks are willing to lied for a Dem president. That's all I need to know concerning bias in the media.

Thanks for pointing out the methodology. I wonder how Tomasky (sp?) came up with that one. By choosing certain issues, he's guaranteed it won't be random. As I mentioned in a previous post, I would have taken all the editorials on the first Monday of a month, for instance. They probably would be mostly on the same topic. Most would have absolutely nothing to do with the administration, but you could use the ones that mentioned the President's name, and see what the percentage was, positive, critical, neutral.
Anyway, would you consider forwarding your post to the folks at Editor & Publisher (the email address is in the original article)? They might be interested in knowing the flaws in methodology.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.