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12

Conservatives blast through the op-ed pages


That’s what this report, “Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: The Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op-Ed Columns,” from Media Matters seems to indicate.

What they did:

By contacting newspapers directly, we were able to obtain information on the syndicated columnists run by 1,377 of the 1,430 English-language daily papers in the United States, or 96 percent.5

We asked papers for two categories of syndicated columnists: those they publish regularly, meaning every week or almost every week; and those they publish occasionally, meaning at least once per month but not every week. Most of the analyses in this report are restricted to those columnists each paper publishes regularly, unless noted otherwise.

This report focuses only on nationally syndicated columnists, not each paper’s local columnists. It would have been impossible to determine the ideology of every one of the thousands of local columnists in the country, whereas the smaller number of syndicated columnists make them much easier to classify. In order to qualify, a columnist had to appear in three or more papers, and in papers in at least two states (there are many columnists who are syndicated to a few papers within one state; we established this rule to exclude those columnists). By this measure, there are 201 nationally syndicated columnists in America. In these raw numbers, the total list of columnists looks relatively balanced: there are 75 conservatives, 79 progressives, and 47 centrists.

That does not mean, however, that there is ideological balance among the nation’s syndicated columnists. The truth is that conservatives have a clear and unmistakable advantage. Conservative columnists appear in more papers than progressive columnists do, and conservatives reach more readers. Most states find their newspapers’ op-ed pages dominated by conservatives. In short, just as in so many other areas of the media, the right has the upper hand.

Go ahead and read the report, which includes graphics, for yourself. Here’s my favorite:

There’s also a chart (“Relative Ideological Voice by State”) that shows the ideological voice weight in each state.  According to the report, op-ed voices in Ohio are actually fairly balanced, relative to other states.

I only just learned what “527 media” means, about two weeks ago. Sounds ridiculous to me, to be honest, but for those who believe in that conspiracy theory, please, go to town on this new report. I would love to see the refutations.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:21 pm September 12th, 2007 in Media 

Comments

6 Responses to “Conservatives blast through the op-ed pages”

  1. 1 Devil's Advocate on September 12th, 2007 12:46 pm

    You are being tricked.

    This is the most flawed study I have read in a while, and I understand how to read social science studies.

    I have provided for you the most thorough analysis on the Internet of Media Matters’ study. You can read it below.

    Media Matters Spouts its Own Flawed Study as Fact: How They Did It, In Great Detail

  2. 2 Jill Miller Zimon on September 12th, 2007 12:51 pm

    Thanks, Copius. I hope readers will click on the link you provide.

  3. 3 Anastasia P on September 12th, 2007 2:59 pm

    I clicked and clicked off quickly. I can’t take any site seriously that has an article called “Liberalism is a mental disease.” That tells you all you need to know about the extreme bias of this analysis. Media Matters is extremely fact-oriented and reliable, and in fact, I have to question if it’s trying a little too hard to be balanced, given that it categorizes David Broder as “centrist.”

  4. 4 Jill Miller Zimon on September 12th, 2007 3:48 pm

    Agreed, Anastasisa though I confess to subscribing to some services with equally provocative headlines, just to “see” if you know what I mean. I can’t help myself.

    As for Media Matters’ report – also agree – they do an excellent job detailing how they did what they did. If someone doesn’t like how MM did it, let them do their own, the way they think it should be done. At least MM is transparent.

  5. 5 Matt Hurley on September 14th, 2007 12:16 pm

    Something else to consider is that a good deal of these syndicated columnists get the gig to balance the local editorial boards…

  6. 6 Jill Miller Zimon on September 16th, 2007 10:04 pm

    Hmm, that’s an interesting theory, Matt – what do you look to for support?

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