"If that offends them, so be it."
March 30, 2024 2:58 PM Subscribe
"Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts" A letter from The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH) editor Chris Quinn
There's a great piece of analysis from The Economist measuring the use of partisan language in American journalism: American journalism sounds much more Democratic than Republican -- Whether this reflects bias or reality is in the eye of the beholder (Dec 2023) . It's worth reading the whole thing, they have charts (and Beyoncé references), but here's a summary:
Method
> Most public estimates of news sources’ partisan leanings rely on subjective ratings. Political scientists seeking an objective approach have used the language in politicians’ speeches to set a baseline and compared stories with that.
> [...] In an effort to provide a measure of partisan slant that is comprehensive, impartial and up-to-date, we have applied this academic approach to the output in recent years of a wide range of news sources. We find that there is indeed an affinity between the media and the left, because journalists tend to prefer the language used by Democratic lawmakers. Moreover, this disparity has grown since the start of Donald Trump’s presidency. As a result, the number of media sources covering politics in balanced language has dwindled.
Results
> [...] Are conservatives right to see the media as a whole, rather than just specific outlets, as hostile terrain? Our results suggest so. Of the 20 most-read news websites with available data, 17 use Democratic-linked terms more than Republican-linked ones. The same is true of America’s six leading news sources on tv, of which Fox is the only one where conservative language predominates.
> This Democratic slant has grown over time, driven mainly by changes in once-centrist outlets. In 2017 cnn used more Republican terms than Democratic ones, while msnbc and the evening news on abc, cbs and nbc had only modestly left-leaning scores of around 1.5 phrases per 10,000. By 2022, the broadcast channels and cnn had Democratic leanings of near 2.5, and msnbc had reached 5.5, putting it twice as far from the centre as Fox.
> In written journalism the shift has been smaller but in the same direction. In 2017 the New York Times, Washington Post and cnn’s website all had mild Democratic leanings: around 1.5. This put them a bit closer to conservative sources like Fox News’s website, whose average Republican slant in 2017-22 was two, than to left-wing sites like Vox, whose average Democratic leaning in those years was seven. By 2022 these sites’ left-of-centre slants had grown to four, three and three, leaving them much closer to lefty alternatives.
Self-Critique
> [...] our scoring method cannot distinguish between media bias and asymmetric polarisation. Is journalism more left-wing, or have Republicans just sailed further from reality than Democrats? Either could raise the share of Democratic language in media—and in the case of stories describing Mr Trump’s false claims of electoral fraud as “the big lie”, for example, both have probably played a part. Yet journalists can still say that one party’s views are closer to the truth than the other’s without relying on partisan language.
posted by are-coral-made at 3:27 PM on March 30
Method
> Most public estimates of news sources’ partisan leanings rely on subjective ratings. Political scientists seeking an objective approach have used the language in politicians’ speeches to set a baseline and compared stories with that.
> [...] In an effort to provide a measure of partisan slant that is comprehensive, impartial and up-to-date, we have applied this academic approach to the output in recent years of a wide range of news sources. We find that there is indeed an affinity between the media and the left, because journalists tend to prefer the language used by Democratic lawmakers. Moreover, this disparity has grown since the start of Donald Trump’s presidency. As a result, the number of media sources covering politics in balanced language has dwindled.
Results
> [...] Are conservatives right to see the media as a whole, rather than just specific outlets, as hostile terrain? Our results suggest so. Of the 20 most-read news websites with available data, 17 use Democratic-linked terms more than Republican-linked ones. The same is true of America’s six leading news sources on tv, of which Fox is the only one where conservative language predominates.
> This Democratic slant has grown over time, driven mainly by changes in once-centrist outlets. In 2017 cnn used more Republican terms than Democratic ones, while msnbc and the evening news on abc, cbs and nbc had only modestly left-leaning scores of around 1.5 phrases per 10,000. By 2022, the broadcast channels and cnn had Democratic leanings of near 2.5, and msnbc had reached 5.5, putting it twice as far from the centre as Fox.
> In written journalism the shift has been smaller but in the same direction. In 2017 the New York Times, Washington Post and cnn’s website all had mild Democratic leanings: around 1.5. This put them a bit closer to conservative sources like Fox News’s website, whose average Republican slant in 2017-22 was two, than to left-wing sites like Vox, whose average Democratic leaning in those years was seven. By 2022 these sites’ left-of-centre slants had grown to four, three and three, leaving them much closer to lefty alternatives.
Self-Critique
> [...] our scoring method cannot distinguish between media bias and asymmetric polarisation. Is journalism more left-wing, or have Republicans just sailed further from reality than Democrats? Either could raise the share of Democratic language in media—and in the case of stories describing Mr Trump’s false claims of electoral fraud as “the big lie”, for example, both have probably played a part. Yet journalists can still say that one party’s views are closer to the truth than the other’s without relying on partisan language.
posted by are-coral-made at 3:27 PM on March 30
Artw: Automatically doing better than every single big player in American media.
They are owned by a very big player, so we'll see how long this independent editorial line lasts.
posted by clawsoon at 4:03 PM on March 30
They are owned by a very big player, so we'll see how long this independent editorial line lasts.
posted by clawsoon at 4:03 PM on March 30
Judging by the example phrase given in that Economist article, I strongly suspect the "asymmetrical polarization" critique is correct. I'm pretty certain that "Democrat Party" is one of the conservative phrases in their dictionary, for ex, and that "Democratic Party" skews liberal. But that doesn't mean outlets using the latter are showing partisan bias, it means Republicans and their outlets have invented an inflammatory slur that responsible outlets stay away from.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:08 PM on March 30 [12 favorites]
posted by Rhaomi at 4:08 PM on March 30 [12 favorites]
Are conservatives right to see the media as a whole, rather than just specific outlets, as hostile terrain? Our results suggest so.
My reading of this piece suggests their fundamental basis of inference is whack. And I think they are especially assholes because some of them must know it.
But glad to see the Cleveland PD trying to do the right thing!
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:12 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]
My reading of this piece suggests their fundamental basis of inference is whack. And I think they are especially assholes because some of them must know it.
But glad to see the Cleveland PD trying to do the right thing!
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:12 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]
Reality has a Democratic slant...
posted by Windopaene at 4:19 PM on March 30 [4 favorites]
posted by Windopaene at 4:19 PM on March 30 [4 favorites]
Newspapers on the whole talk normal human English and not MAGA nut speak, yes, that is probably true.
posted by Artw at 4:22 PM on March 30 [5 favorites]
posted by Artw at 4:22 PM on March 30 [5 favorites]
SaltySalticid: My reading of this piece suggests their fundamental basis of inference is whack.
I dunno. A free press has always been a fundamentally liberal project (whatever else you might like or dislike about liberalism). It's not surprising that conservatism, especially the reactionary sort of Louis-Napoleon-strongman/Franco-and-the-Church conservatism that we're seeing today, wouldn't be appreciated by a primary defender of the liberal part of liberal democracy.
posted by clawsoon at 4:28 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]
I dunno. A free press has always been a fundamentally liberal project (whatever else you might like or dislike about liberalism). It's not surprising that conservatism, especially the reactionary sort of Louis-Napoleon-strongman/Franco-and-the-Church conservatism that we're seeing today, wouldn't be appreciated by a primary defender of the liberal part of liberal democracy.
posted by clawsoon at 4:28 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]
On the subject of that survey of journalistic language. I really do hate the way The Centre is referred to as if it is an unchanging thing, and an automatic neutral Good Thing. It depends what you are in the centre of, obviously. If politics moves to the right, and you stand still, you do not become more left wing by any meaningful measure, except by comparison to an illusory middle ground. It's why the right wing have been so invested in shifting the overton window to make perfectly reasonable politics appear extreme, while normalising their extremity. Using democratic language isn't a measure of party bias if one side is literally talking bullshit - because bullshit doesn't merit reporting as fact. Look at the right wing press during Weimar, for example.
But ffs. The middle ground between Mussolini and Hitler isn't a neutral zone. And even putting Stalin, say, on the other end of the scale doesn't make The Centre make sense or become desirable. And that's before we even get to politics not being a single, directional line; for example, autocracy of any sort is a common ground regardless of what its dictator is doing it in the name of.
I'm not saying Biden is Mussolini - he's older and inspires fewer people, for starters (this is a joke, obvs) - but unless you can talk about what the relative positions are in themselves, then what's the point? Sure, relative to each other in meaningful ways, but not a centre. Plotting these things against a mobile central point between two non-equal expressions of ideas is worse than meaningless - it seems meaningful at the same time as poisoning meaning.
I like the OP a lot. Just because there's two sides to a story doesn't mean one of them isn't measurably wrong. But focussing on the centre as if it was a transparent thing in itself - some kind of by definition reliable anchor for the scale - is what makes truth become relative. And that's how we end up with absolutists getting away in the press with bending reality as the norm. Because navigating by the centre isn't the same as reporting the truth
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 4:49 PM on March 30 [3 favorites]
But ffs. The middle ground between Mussolini and Hitler isn't a neutral zone. And even putting Stalin, say, on the other end of the scale doesn't make The Centre make sense or become desirable. And that's before we even get to politics not being a single, directional line; for example, autocracy of any sort is a common ground regardless of what its dictator is doing it in the name of.
I'm not saying Biden is Mussolini - he's older and inspires fewer people, for starters (this is a joke, obvs) - but unless you can talk about what the relative positions are in themselves, then what's the point? Sure, relative to each other in meaningful ways, but not a centre. Plotting these things against a mobile central point between two non-equal expressions of ideas is worse than meaningless - it seems meaningful at the same time as poisoning meaning.
I like the OP a lot. Just because there's two sides to a story doesn't mean one of them isn't measurably wrong. But focussing on the centre as if it was a transparent thing in itself - some kind of by definition reliable anchor for the scale - is what makes truth become relative. And that's how we end up with absolutists getting away in the press with bending reality as the norm. Because navigating by the centre isn't the same as reporting the truth
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 4:49 PM on March 30 [3 favorites]
But that doesn't mean outlets using the latter are showing partisan bias, it means Republicans and their outlets have invented an inflammatory slur that responsible outlets stay away from.
Agreed. Their examples demonstrate this: "undocumented immigrant" vs "illegal alien" is not a balanced comparison. "Illegal alien" is a phrase intended to tap into the fear and anger that the right has been stoking in their base for 50+ years now. They want to cast immigrants as "other" and they've baked their policy right into the phrase itself; "illegal aliens" don't belong here and they should be arrested, detained, expelled. The worst you can say about "undocumented immigrant" is that it might be euphemistic, depending on usage. But it's not prescriptive. It's not dehumanizing or condemnatory. They're just immigrants who aren't documented. Do they belong here? Should they be detained or removed? It's not clear from the phrase itself. Just like the situation in actual reality, that's something that we'd need more context to understand and to develop a reasonable policy toward. It's not neatly packaged with the opinion you're supposed to have about it.
The other example is a bit murkier, but "unborn baby" is still pretty clearly intended to support a pro-birth agenda. The problem with "reproductive health" is that it's vague and it's sometimes used purposefully so by liberals like Biden who don't want to say the word "abortion". We should be better than euphemism, when it comes to the health and personal autonomy of more than half of the population. But even as euphemism, it's not the policy-baked-into-the-phrase that the Right loves so much.
I mean, maybe it's just that I'm steeped in leftist language and I can't see the slant objectively, but it seems pretty clear on the face of it that the "Democratic" language here is maybe a degree or two left at worst, while the "Republican language" is unmistakably skewed right. Unless they publish their full list and there are a lot more egregious examples of leftist language there, this seems like a pretty useless survey that tells us what we already knew. Media that aims to minimize bias avoids language with baked-in bias. No kidding.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 4:50 PM on March 30 [4 favorites]
Agreed. Their examples demonstrate this: "undocumented immigrant" vs "illegal alien" is not a balanced comparison. "Illegal alien" is a phrase intended to tap into the fear and anger that the right has been stoking in their base for 50+ years now. They want to cast immigrants as "other" and they've baked their policy right into the phrase itself; "illegal aliens" don't belong here and they should be arrested, detained, expelled. The worst you can say about "undocumented immigrant" is that it might be euphemistic, depending on usage. But it's not prescriptive. It's not dehumanizing or condemnatory. They're just immigrants who aren't documented. Do they belong here? Should they be detained or removed? It's not clear from the phrase itself. Just like the situation in actual reality, that's something that we'd need more context to understand and to develop a reasonable policy toward. It's not neatly packaged with the opinion you're supposed to have about it.
The other example is a bit murkier, but "unborn baby" is still pretty clearly intended to support a pro-birth agenda. The problem with "reproductive health" is that it's vague and it's sometimes used purposefully so by liberals like Biden who don't want to say the word "abortion". We should be better than euphemism, when it comes to the health and personal autonomy of more than half of the population. But even as euphemism, it's not the policy-baked-into-the-phrase that the Right loves so much.
I mean, maybe it's just that I'm steeped in leftist language and I can't see the slant objectively, but it seems pretty clear on the face of it that the "Democratic" language here is maybe a degree or two left at worst, while the "Republican language" is unmistakably skewed right. Unless they publish their full list and there are a lot more egregious examples of leftist language there, this seems like a pretty useless survey that tells us what we already knew. Media that aims to minimize bias avoids language with baked-in bias. No kidding.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 4:50 PM on March 30 [4 favorites]
I had a long thing about how item-response models are a perfectly cromulent way of doing ideal point estimation but then I broke through their stupid paywall and they aren't even doing that so
My reading of this piece suggests their fundamental basis of inference is whack.
Yeah, it's totally shit for brained. Absolutely 100% "Democrats are biased because they say "Obama" instead of "Fartbongo.""
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:05 PM on March 30 [4 favorites]
My reading of this piece suggests their fundamental basis of inference is whack.
Yeah, it's totally shit for brained. Absolutely 100% "Democrats are biased because they say "Obama" instead of "Fartbongo.""
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:05 PM on March 30 [4 favorites]
The article linked in the FPP is really good.
posted by biogeo at 5:06 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 5:06 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: saying "Obama" instead of "Fartbongo."
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 5:11 PM on March 30
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 5:11 PM on March 30
for the media to slant Conservative according to those measures, they'd have to start printing hate speech, slang, and lies as if it were valid discourse
posted by kokaku at 5:17 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 5:17 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]
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posted by Artw at 3:04 PM on March 30 [14 favorites]