2. Conservative Books and "Studies" Alleging "Liberal Bias"

2.7A STUDY: Analysis of Election 2000 Media Coverage by Robert Lichter's CMPA and Project for Excellence in Journalism

2.7B STUDY: Analysis of Election 2004 Media Coverage by Project for Excellence in Journalism and Robert Lichter's CMPA

2.7A STUDY: Analysis of Election 2000 Media Coverage by Robert Lichter's CMPA and Project for Excellence in Journalism

The late, right-wing Washington Post op-ed columnist Michael Kelly wrote a column promoting the findings of this "study". Not having access to LexisNexis, I am providing a link to this Word document I found on the net which has a transcript of his two op-eds on media bias from 2002. In one of the two op-eds, Kelly says this:

As to fact: In 17 years of news content analysis, especially of network evening news broadcasts, Lichter's Center for Media and Public Affairs has consistently found evidence of liberal bias, and this has not changed in the past few years.  
 
Some recent findings from content analyses of the nightly network newscasts:  
 
* In the 2000 presidential election, both candidates received mostly negative press, and largely to the same degree: George W. Bush received only 37 percent positive coverage; Al Gore, only 40 percent. By contrast, Bill Clinton received far more positive coverage than his Republican opponents in 1996 and 1992 (in '96, 50 percent positive to Bob Dole's 33 percent; in '92, 52 percent to George H.W. Bush's 29 percent). In the past six presidential elections, coverage favored the Democrat in three, and both the Democrat and the Republican received negative coverage in three ('80, '88 and '00). In none did the coverage favor the Republican.  
 
* "Only 43 percent of all on-air evaluations of George W. Bush were favorable" in Bush's first 100 days in office (compared with a similarly negative 40 percent for Clinton in his first 100). In his first 50 days, Bush received 48 percent positive coverage, but only 36 percent was positive in his second 50. Only 29 percent of on-air evaluations from nonpartisan sources (anchors, reporters, experts, citizens) were positive to Bush.  
 
* Bush did get a terrific bounce from the rallying effect of Sept. 11. From that day through Nov. 19, 2001, Bush "received the most positive coverage ever measured for a president over an extended period of time" -- 64 percent positive to 36 percent negative. But Bush's high of 77 percent positive that September was down to 59 percent within two months.  
 
* Coverage of the Bush administration's consideration of a military strike against Iraq, as seen in the network newscasts and in front-page New York Times stories from this July 1 through Aug. 25, was 72 percent negative.  
 
Is there nothing at all to the liberal complaint? No, there is something. As the above data suggest, the media are generally more negative toward public figures (including Democratic ones) than they used to be. And while right-leaning media such as talk radio have not, as my colleague E.J. Dionne argues, produced "a media heavily biased toward conservative politics and conservative politicians," they have produced a media universe where anti-establishment right-wingers (and also anti-establishment left-wingers, such as Michael Moore) are able to bypass the establishment media and to create a far more diverse national conversation.  

Before we address the specific "data" from this "study" (which certainly does not prove liberal bias at all), let me point out this game played regularly by conservative "media experts" (and the vast right-wing media machine). They create the impression that the superficial nature ("positive" or "negative") of news coverage for every candidate running for election should somehow be the same. Let's quickly test this nonsensical hypothesis. Imagine if a known fraud ran for office as a Democrat against an honest Republican. Would they be demanding that both get equally " positive" or " negative" coverage? I seriously doubt it. The same point can be made without assuming one person is a criminal. One candidate could be much worse than the other - in terms of the policies or positions he/she espouses, or in terms of his/her inability to tell the truth. What journalism demands is that both candidates be treated fairly and accurately based on their espoused positions and statements. The rush to attribute "media bias" using "studies" of "positive" and "negative" coverage is classic spin from the "liberal-media" Republicans. The fact that there is no attempt made to actually ascertain whether the "positive" coverage is accurate, or whether the "negative" coverage is accurate (among other things), should itself tell you these people (who claim "liberal media bias" at the drop of a hat) are deeply unserious about this subject.

Having said that, let's actually look at the data from the "study" to see why it, as usual, proved no liberal media bias - even if you take it seriously.

Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler responded to the above claims:

Do Lichter’s studies show “liberal bias…in the past few years?” Simply put, the claim is fiction. Kelly cites data from four recent studies. But three of the studies don’t even begin to support his much-ballyhooed thesis. Here is Kelly’s first example, concerning the 2000 White House race:

KELLY: In the 2000 presidential election, both candidates received mostly negative press, and largely to the same degree: George W. Bush received only 37 percent positive coverage; Al Gore, only 40 percent.

More on that study a bit later. Here is Kelly’s second example, concerning Bush and Clinton’s first 100 days (he quotes a Lichter study):

KELLY: “Only 43 percent of all on-air evaluations of George W. Bush were favorable” in Bush’s first 100 days in office (compared with a similarly negative 40 percent for Clinton in his first 100).

According to these data, Bush got slightly better coverage than Clinton during his first 100 days in office. And Gore got slightly better coverage than Bush during the 2000 campaign. In each case, the numbers are so close that it would be absurd to claim a significant difference; Kelly himself says that Bush and Clinton got “similarly negative” coverage. So how are these studies supposed to show continuing “liberal bias?” We leave that to the reader’s imagination—the only organ equipped to interpret Kelly’s work. And believe it or not, here’s example 3. Try to believe that he wrote it:

KELLY: Bush did get a terrific bounce from the rallying effect of Sept. 11. From that day through Nov. 19, 2001, Bush “received the most positive coverage ever measured for a president over an extended period of time”—64 percent positive to 36 percent negative. But Bush’s high of 77 percent positive that September was down to 59 percent within two months.

Only in the world of Kelly! Only there is 59 percent positive coverage for Bush a sign of continuing liberal bias! Only there does “the most positive coverage ever measured for a president” seem to show that the press won’t play fair.

But this, of course, is vintage Kelly—ballyhooed evidence which in no way supports the claim being loudly brayed. Can anyone answer the obvious question: Why in the world does the Washington Post keep putting such work into print? Regarding this latest column, were editors really unable to see the ludicrous nature of the evidence? Or is this work in the Post for political correctness, as a servile bow to conservative power—put there so the Post can defend itself against claims of “liberal bias?” Whatever the answer, we’ve long told you this: Your press corps is fundamentally lacking in purpose. They don’t seem to care about their work. It would be odd to see a high school paper put work so inept into print.

Meanwhile, a few remarks about the CMPA study on Campaign 2000. The study only covers evening network news broadcasts—one of the most pared-down parts of American news—and it only covers the period from 9/4/00 to 11/7/00. This includes the single period in the twenty-month race when the press corps clearly turned on Bush—the (roughly) three-week period after Gore jumped ahead in the polls in the aftermath of the Democratic Convention. This was the period of the subliminal RATS ad and the major-league asshole—the single period in the two-year campaign when Gore got better treatment than Bush.

At other points, the coverage was different. For example, Lichter’s study of the primary season shows Gore getting substantially worse coverage. According to the study, which Kelly ignored, the primaries broke down like this:

Bush: 53 percent positive coverage
Gore: 40 percent positive coverage

Lichter’s studies can only provide a crude measure. But those numbers tend to reflect a basic fact. Except for that three-week period through mid-September, Bush got better coverage than Gore at every point in the twenty-month race. (In June 1999, for example, Paul Gigot called Bush’s coverage “adoring.”) And remember: Lichter’s studies only involve nightly newscasts by the three nets—a small slice of the media pie. Another Lichter study shows that election coverage on these broadcasts fell almost 40 percent as compared to the ’92 race.

In this update, Somerby further debunked Lichter's study:

To state the obvious, it’s almost impossible to examine press coverage in the quantitative, “objective” way Lichter attempts. But as we mentioned, the particular study which Kelly cited covered network evening newscasts only, and it included the one brief period of the twenty-month race when Bush got worse coverage than Gore. One wider study of the 2000 coverage gives a quite different impression.

The study was released on July 28, 2000 [by the Project for Excellence in Journalism]...

Properly described, those data provide a counterpoint to the limited study cited by Kelly.

In particular, Pew’s study examined the way the press was reporting on character. According to its authors, the study “identified what we considered the six most common character themes in the race thus far, three for Bush and three for Gore.” Pew reviewed a range of newspaper/magazine stories and TV broadcasts for five separate weeks from February through June, trying to see how often the press had focussed on each of the six basic themes. All told, Pew examined 2004 newspaper stories and 400 TV and cable broadcasts. Result? “If presidential elections are a battle for control of message through the media, George W. Bush has had the better of it on the question of character than Albert Gore Jr.,” Pew said. This summary was a vast understatement.

Which “character themes” did the study select? Again, Pew identified three common themes about each hopeful. In each case, two themes were negative, one was positive. Here were the three common themes for Candidate Bush:

1. Bush is a different kind of Republican (positive).

2. Bush lacks the intelligence or knowledge for the job (negative).

3. Bush has relied heavily on family connections to get where he is (negative).

Here were the three common themes for Gore:

1. Gore is experienced and knowledgeable (positive).

2. Gore is scandal tainted (negative).

3. Gore exaggerates or lies (negative).

In each case, the positive theme was a talking-point widely used by the campaign itself. Having identified these basic themes, Pew studied the newspaper reports and TV broadcasts to see how often each theme had been mentioned.

The data were startling. In Bush’s case, the positive theme—“Bush is a different kind of Republican”—was the dominant theme by far, found in 320 stories. By contrast, the most common Gore theme was negative—“Gore is scandal tainted”—which was found in 344 stories. On balance, Gore’s negative themes appeared far more often. The contrast between the two hopefuls is stunning. Here was the actual breakdown:

Gore: 613 negative stories, 132 positive stories
Bush: 265 negative stories, 320 positive stories

Those numbers paint a startling portrait of the coverage in the spring of the year.

Were there methodological flaws with this study? Though Pew did make some basic mistakes in the way it interpreted some of the data, it is hard to find a great deal of fault with the data themselves. What complaints can be lodged against the study? Here’s one: Perhaps there was some other negative theme about Bush that Pew simply failed to look for. While this would be a logical possibility, it’s hard to guess what that theme might have been. Clearly, the idea that Bush “wasn’t up to the job intellectually” was a principal claim of the Texan’s detractors; but Pew encountered this theme far less often than either of the negative themes about Gore. Eric Black, media reporter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, cited conservative complaints about the Pew study, but those complaints seem weak. Black: “Conservatives who have rebutted [the study] point out that many issues on which they believe the media’s liberal bias works against Bush—such as the death penalty, Social Security privatization and tax cuts—are not counted.” But in fact, the media gave Bush overwhelmingly favorable coverage on the matter of privatization (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/15/02, 5/17/02, 5/20/02). Indeed, it was Gore whose character was slashed on that subject, while Bush was heralded as a “bold leader”—a theme which came straight from the Texan’s campaign. Meanwhile, there were widespread negative themes about Gore which Pew didn’t look for. As we’ve seen, reporters endlessly flogged the notion that Gore was constantly reinventing himself (for an especially ludicrous example, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/19/02); and reporters endlessly flogged the idea that Gore was constantly on the attack. Most likely, if Pew had researched longer lists of negative themes, the numbers would only have risen for Gore. The spring of the year was a season for spinning—and clearly, the press corps trashed Gore.

Evan Thomas described the phenomenon in his book-length, post-election report for Newsweek. “Gore was portrayed in the press as an attack dog who would say anything to win,” he wrote. “By April his aides were wondering if they had won the primaries but were losing the [war in the press].” With Bush, though, things were different. “While Gore was getting picked apart in the press, George W. Bush seemed to be cruising along on a wave of favorable publicity.” Thomas wrote. “By mid-May, Bush sensed that he was winning the [war in the press]. His staff was amazed at how well things were going.” Thomas’ views are subjective, of course—but Pew’s study strongly supports them. Pew’s data reflect a stark reality: In the spring of the year 2000, Gore was relentlessly slammed by the press.

Media Matters covered the Pew study further, here:

Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wrote a May 24 "Media Notes" column about the opinions of media professionals that was, in several cases, not supported by the report issued by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press upon which his article was based.

Kurtz claimed, "The survey confirmed that national journalists are to the left of the public on social issues." But Kurtz did not note that the Pew report included commentary by Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell (of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and the Project for Excellence in Journalism) that specifically warned against drawing such conclusions:

Journalists' own politics are also harder to analyze than people might think. The fact that journalists -- especially national journalists -- are more likely than in the past to describe themselves as liberal reinforces the findings of the major academic study on this question... But what does liberal mean to journalists? We would be reluctant to infer too much here. The survey includes just four questions probing journalists' political attitudes, yet the answers to these questions suggest journalists have in mind something other than a classic big government liberalism and something more along the lines of libertarianism. More journalists said they think it is more important for people to be free to pursue their goals without government interference than it is for government to ensure that no one is in need. [Emphasis added]

Kurtz wrote of the Pew report, "The 55 percent of national journalists, and 37 percent of local ones, who see the media as soft on Bush may well be reflecting their own views of the president." This may be true, of course -- just about anything may be true -- but Kurtz's speculation was his own, driven by little in the Pew report itself. Indeed, by making this suggestion -- and thus implying that the media was not too soft on Bush -- Kurtz may well have been reflecting his own view of the president. But of course, we don't know that.

Kurtz also used Pew's findings to imply that the national media is elitist: "31 percent of national journalists now have a great deal of confidence in the public's election choices, compared with 52 percent at the end of the Clinton administration. The clear implication is that many media people feel superior to their customers." While the Pew report summary did note that "national news people ... express considerably less confidence in the political judgment of the American public than they did five years ago," the report also noted, "Nonetheless, journalists have at least as much confidence in the public's electoral judgments as does the public itself." According to Pew, only 20 percent of the general public has "a great deal" of confidence in the public's election choices.

Kurtz wasn't alone in making curious choices about which results to emphasize. The Pew report itself, for example, noted that "Self-described moderates [in the media] offer a mixed judgment of the Bush coverage -- about the same percentages say it has not been critical enough (44%) and fair (43%)." Left out of the report text -- but shown in an accompanying chart -- is that only 12 percent of moderates in the media think the media has been too critical of Bush. The "mixed judgment" Pew described could alternately be described as a near-consensus that the media has not been too critical of Bush.

Pew made another interesting choice in titling a chart that showed that a majority of national print and television media professionals, as well as a plurality of local print journalists, think the media has been too easy on Bush. Pew titled the chart "Local TV Reporters: Press Not Too Easy on Bush" rather than using a title that conveyed the fact that three of the four groups shown said (by at least a plurality) that the media has been too easy on Bush.

A final point - and this is explored in greater depth in Sec. 4.1. Briefly, here's Joe Conason in Salon.com:

So when Lichter tells Kelly that journalists can't help reflecting bias in their work, he might as well be talking about himself. There is nothing "scientific" about his research into bias, since all of his organization's judgments about favorable or unfavorable coverage on newscasts are inevitably subjective. At an even more basic level of dishonesty, it's ridiculous to assume that newspapers or newscasts reflect the supposed Democratic bias of reporters, the lowest-ranking figures in the media. Why wouldn't they instead reflect the bias of editors, publishers, directors and management, all of which tend to be Republican and conservative? Editor & Publisher polled the nation's newspaper executives just before the 2000 election, and found an overwhelming preference for George W. Bush.

We also know that Jack Welch, former chief of NBC (and GE) is an ardent Republican. So was Larry Tisch when he owned CBS. So are Richard Parsons and Steve Case of CNN (and Time Warner AOL). Michael Eisner (Disney ABC) gave to Bill Bradley and Al Gore, but he gave more to Bush and McCain -- and he supported Rick Lazio for the Senate against Hillary Clinton. Rupert Murdoch and John Malone are big Republican supporters of the Cato Institute. So why isn't anybody complaining about the "conservative bias" of media executives?

2.7B STUDY: Analysis of Election 2004 Media Coverage by Project for Excellence in Journalism and Robert Lichter's CMPA

As of March 14, The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) released its annual State of the Media coverage for 2004. An overview of the results is here. First a comment on their methodology. The coverage was not for the entire year 2004 but for a randomly picked sample. For example, as they point out: "cable news study included two parts, a 20 day sample and a five day sample, in which some stories overlapped". So, let's first keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive day-by-day study in 2004.  

Now let's look at their summary on the Kerry-Bush coverage:

When it came to the campaign, on the other hand, the criticism that George Bush got worse coverage than John Kerry is supported by the data.² Looking across all media, campaign coverage that focused on Bush was three times as negative as coverage of Kerry (36% versus 12%) It was also less likely to be positive (20% positive Bush stories, 30% for Kerry).

That also meant Bush coverage was less likely to be neutral (44% of Bush stories, 58% for Kerry).

One of the follow-up articles in the Sydney Morning Herald (via this site) has this stunningly weak statement from the survey's director, Tom Rosenstiel:

Mr Rosenstiel said these figures did not necessarily reflect bias but, instead, the fact that coverage was always more intense and questioning when it came to the incumbent.

Is that the best explanation that a credible journalism organization could muster? Rosenstiel (or Kurtz or other media outlets) do not seem to understand that something is not right when an organization ostensibly measuring the quality of American journalism decides to report statistics using measures used by politicians, rather than the measures that should be used by journalists. 

Here's why:

• It is not measuring ACCURACY of news content, only TONE. The terms "positive", "negative" and "neutral" say nothing about whether the coverage was accurate or not. The coverage could be negative but accurate, and positive but fiction (as it was with Bush in most cases). It could also have been positive but accurate, and negative but fiction (as it was with Kerry in most cases). Although they don't actually say this, PEJ seems to implicitly fall for the fake spin (usually from the Right) that somehow "fair and balanced" coverage requires balance in tone, rather than accuracy in reporting!

• For example, Bush did get negative coverage on Iraq, but everything that happened in Iraq was his creation. Lack of WMDs, lack of a real Saddam-Al-Qaeda link, depraved indifference to the lives of Americans and Iraqi civilians, Abu Ghraib, unsecured arms dumps and nuclear sites, mismanagement of taxpayer dollars through massive corruption, and an endless amount of other incompetence and mendacity was all fact. Sure, schools may have been built and hospitals re-opened and Iraqis "liberated" after enduring serious bombing followed by a major cronyism-privatization campaign. Covering that objectively (however "negative" that was) is a requirement for good journalism and not something to feel "negative" about. What is distressing is that the media let the Bush administration go scot-free on lying to the public about WMDs, the Saddam-Al Qaeda link, the cost of war, and a lot more. Very little critical coverage actually occurred particularly on the first two topics. So, while some of the coverage on Bush may have been "negative", it was almost always FACT. [Sec. 4.5 at ICM covers some of the media's extremely poor coverage of Bush's AWOL record in the Texas Air National Guard].

• On the other hand, a lot of negative coverage against Kerry was FICTION - think "swift-boat-veterans" or Kerry being labeled as more of a "flip-flopper" than Bush (yeah, right) [*sentence edited for clarity]. This is analogous to what happened with Al Gore.

Bottom line? This kind of a survey is worthless to assess the quality of journalism. It is useful to assess "tone" of coverage but that is a very crude measure whose usefulness is highly limited. Being "fair and balanced" does not mean being "positive" and "negative" about the same amount. It means being factual ALL the time.

On top of this, PEJ also noted this in a footnote:

2. The analysis of election coverage begins after March 1 (Super Tuesday) after John Kerry emerged as the all-but-official Democratic candidate. The cross-media comparisons of campaign coverage included stories focused at least 50% on one candidate or the other so that deriving a sense of tone about the candidate was logical. Those totaled 250 stories. The findings, moreover, reinforce what the Project found in a separate study that looked at tone in the final month of the campaign, surrounding the debates, and in a pre-convention study using a different methodology that mapped coverage of different character themes about the candidates. The findings on tone also mirror those of Robert Lichter and the Center on Media and Public Affairs, which employs a different approach to studying tone.

I am highlighting this to emphasize that the "tone" report from Robert Lichter's CMPA for the 2004 election is likewise flawed because it ignores the factual content of the coverage.

I can understand why conservative groups like the CMPA pump money into studies of "tone" of coverage because they can use it to (unjustifiably) claim "liberal bias" at every opportunity. What I can't fathom is why reputed organizations like PEJ spend so much resources studying something which says woefully little about the quality of journalism in this country. 

UPDATE:

Watching The Watchers emphasizes the point I made earlier about the limited sample size of the PEJ study:

This study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism – to cite specifically a story in the MSM - “looked at 16 newspapers of varying size across the country, four nightly newscasts, three network morning news shows, nine cable programs and nine Web sites through the course of 2004” (link).

What the MSM leaves out in their coverage of this study are the dates that were used for the study (link):

The Newspapers & The Internet News Sites:
January- 13, 16, 23
February- 2, 13, 23rd, 29th
March- 8, 12, 13, 14, 19, 24
April- 8, 15
May- 1, 4, 20
June- 8, 9, 16
July- 19, 25
August- 10, 12
September- 4, 22, 26

Broadcast Network News:
January- 13, 16, 23
February- 2, 23
March- 8, 12, 19, 24
April- 8, 15
May- 4, 20
June- 8, 9, 16
July- 19
August- 10, 12
September- 15, 22

Cable News:
January- 13, 16, 23
February- 2,* 23
March- 8, 12, 19,* 24h
April- 15
May- 4,* 20*
June- 8, 9, 16*
July- 19
August- 5, 10, 12
September- 22

Got that?

Out of 28 dates chosen to study the Newspapers and the Internet News Sites, 5 occurred after August 4, 2004. Out of 21 dates chosen to study Broadcast Network News, 4 occurred after August 4, 2004. Out of 20 dates chosen to study Cable News, 4 occurred after August 4, 2004.

So you might be asking, “What’s the significance of August 4, 2004 and why does this foul-mouthed blogger think that the significance of this date is enough to prove that this study is horse shit, bull shit, and every other kind of shit there is?”

August 4th was the day that the smearing of John Kerry became newsworthy.

Although they began their campaign with earnest on May 4th, 2004 at a press conference, August 4th, 2004 was the day that the Swift Boat Veteran campaign finally infected the MSM. This was after the group spent $150,000 for a TV ad which was aired for free on MSNBC and the Fox News Channel starting on August 4th, 2004 and repeatedly, over and over again, along with future ads, for the next three months until election day (Media Matters).

What an excellent study. And what an excellent display of how much our bogus “watchdog” Press sucks these days.

NOTE: In their footnote, PEJ says that their "findings, moreover, reinforce what the Project found in a separate study that looked at tone in the final month of the campaign", but my point and Ron's point on sample size are still relevant as a general point. People may have lasting impressions from smears left during a particular phase of the campaign and media coverage at other times may or may not reverse this. The broader point, though, is that tone is useless here to assess bias. Accuracy is what should have been measured.