Institutional Racism

John Lott and Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute study the coverage of
economic news by looking at a panel of 389 U.S. newspapers from 1991 to 2004, and
from 1985 to 2004 for a subsample comprising the top 10 newspapers and the
Associated Press. For each release of official data about a set of economic indicators,
the authors analyze how newspapers decide to report on them, as reflected by the tone
of the related headlines. The idea is to check whether newspapers display some kind of
partisan bias, by giving more positive or negative coverage to the same economic
figure, as a function of the political affiliation of the incumbent president. Controlling for
the economic data being released, the authors find that there are between 9.6 and 14.7
percent fewer positive stories when the incumbent president is a Republican.
Riccardo Puglisi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looks at the editorial
choices of the New York Times from 1946 to 1997. He finds that the Times displays
Democratic partisanship, with some watchdog aspects. This is the case, because during
presidential campaigns the Times systematically gives more coverage to Democratic
topics of civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare, but only when
the incumbent president is a Republican. These topics are classified as Democratic
ones, because Gallup polls show that on average U.S. citizens think that Democratic
candidates would be better at handling problems related to them. According to Puglisi,
in the post-1960 period the Times displays a more symmetric type of watchdog
behaviour, just because during presidential campaigns it also gives more coverage to
the typically Republican issue of Defense when the incumbent president is a Democrat,
and less so when the incumbent is a Republican.
Alan Gerber and Dean Karlan of Yale University use an experimental approach to
examine not whether the media are biased, but whether the media influence political
decisions and attitudes. They conduct a randomized control trial just prior to the
November 2005 gubernatorial election in Virginia and randomly assign individuals in
Northern Virginia to (a) a treatment group that receives a free subscription to
the Washington Post, (b) a treatment group that receives a free subscription to
the Washington Times, or (c) a control group. They find that those who are assigned to
the Washington Post treatment group are eight percentage points more likely to vote for
the Democrat in the elections. The report also found that "exposure to either newspaper
was weakly linked to a movement away from the Bush administration and Republicans."
Another unaffiliated group, Media Study Group, established seven categories of poor
journalistic practice: for example, the journalist stating personal opinion in a report,
asserting incorrect facts, applying unequal space or treatment to two sides of a
controversial issue; then analyzed The Age Newspaper (Melbourne Australia) for the
frequency of infraction of this code of practice. The resultant instances were then
analyzed statistically with respect to the frequency they supported one or other side of
the two-sided controversial issue under consideration. The goal of this group was to
establish a quantitative methodology for the study of bias.
A self-described "progressive" media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting (FAIR), in consultation with the Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory
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