No "Political Slant" in Times Economics Reporting? -- September 13, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for September 13, 2004

No "Political Slant" in Times Economics Reporting?

Economics reporter Eduardo Porter looks at a study from the American Enterprise Institute that alleges liberal bias in economics coverage and seems dubious about the findings.

(The study itself, which engages in highly technical analysis, can be read here.)

In his "Economic View" column Sunday, "Do Newspapers Make Good News Look Bad?", Porter writes: "Conservative pundits routinely accuse the news media of injecting a liberal bias into coverage of issues from abortion to gun control to gay marriage. Now, two months before the presidential election, the economy has been invited to the culture wars. In a new paper, Kevin A. Hassett and John R. Lott Jr., economists at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative research organization in Washington, say they have discovered that economic reporters commit the same archetypal sin: slanting the news unequivocally in favor of the Democrats….They found that Mr. Clinton received better headlines than the two Republican presidents. Even after adjusting the data to compensate for differences in economic performance under the three presidents, the Republicans received 20 to 30 percent fewer positive headlines, on average, for the same type of news, they concluded.…Among the top 10 newspapers, they said that all except The Houston Chronicle had a pro-Democratic leaning, though the margin for error in their calculations was too large to be meaningful for most of them individually."

Indeed, Times Watch has criticized the Times for headlines that play up bad economic news.

Porter strangely denies there are media watchdogs who think business reporters have a political slant: "Although many news-media watchdogs take business reporters to task for biases, few say the problem stems from a political slant. 'One of the main biases we've found in business reporting is cheerleading,' said Jim Naureckas, an editor at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, which is on the left side of the political spectrum."

Porter also quotes other critics of the study, including Slate's Jack Shafer, and later turns the tables on the researchers by rehashing old attacks and suggesting the whole issue is somehow off limits in an election year, even in the form of a technical, academic paper: "And what of the researchers' own objectivity? Critics question both their scholarship and their motivations in releasing this research in the middle of a presidential campaign in which the economy is no small issue. Mr. Hassett was an adviser to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, during his bid for the presidency in 2000, and a co-author of 'Dow 36,000,' a wildly bullish analysis of the stock market's prospects. Mr. Lott's research supporting gun ownership as a crime deterrent has also come under criticism. He acknowledged that he assumed a pseudonym--Mary Rosh--to write his own praise and defend his positions in online debate on that subject from 2000 through January 2003. Mr. Lott said that the things he had said in the guise of Ms. Rosh were, indeed, truthful."

Porter lets a liberal economist have the last word: "And Mr. Hassett and Mr. Lott said that their research is a serious attempt to quantify political bias, an area that has rarely been studied statistically. This hasn't convinced all critics, of course. 'To even base a story on Lott's work at this point in time is to demonstrate a pronounced bias toward right-wing hacks,' said Brad DeLong, a liberal-leaning economist at the University of California at Berkeley."

For the rest of Porter on the bias study, click here.

Poor Old Democrats

John Broder's Sunday Week in Review piece, while retaining an appearance of fairness, actually gives credence to an old nostrum consoling to Democrats and the liberal media: The idea that Republicans just play rougher than Democrats.

In "Republicans Pack Punch. Democrats Take It. (For Now)," Broder flubs a recent Dick Cheney quote: "Do Republicans play a rougher game of politics than Democrats? The question has been tossed around since Vice President Dick Cheney, in apparently unscripted remarks, suggested last week that electing the Democratic ticket in November would invite a devastating terrorist attack. The Democrats cried foul, but of course there's no referee in politics. And neither party has a monopoly on ruthless, unscrupulous campaigning. It just seems that the Republicans are, today at least, more adept at the black art of attack politics, according to historians and flummoxed Democratic partisans."

Broder then goes to famed Democratic attack-dog James Carville, who vows to turn that (media-founded) perception around: "'I don't think there's any question they're better at it than we are,' said James Carville, the Democratic warrior-consultant who admitted to being envious of his Republican counterparts' merciless brand of campaigning. 'But I'm fixing to do what I can to change that slightly.' Mr. Carville and a number of other veterans of the Bill Clinton wars have recently signed on as advisers to the John Kerry campaign. Their impact can already be heard in Mr. Kerry's speeches, judging from the number of times the Democratic nominee said last week that the president's middle initial stands for 'Wrong' and from the Democratic Party's interest in fueling new questions that have been raised about Mr. Bush's Vietnam-era service in the National Guard. Analysts with a longer view of American political history tend to agree that modern Republicans wage politics under tougher rules of engagement than Democrats. President Nixon did not hesitate to use the organs of government or employ a little breaking-and-entering to crush his enemies."

Strangely, the terms "Clarence Thomas" or "Robert Bork" don't appear in Broder's piece about dirty politics.

Broder does note later on that Democrats have been nasty--though his examples are a bit outdated: "Lyndon Johnson was one of the dirtiest campaigners Texas ever produced. His House and Senate campaigns were legendary for their viciousness, and his presidential campaign advertisement against Barry Goldwater in 1964 of a girl plucking a daisy before a nuclear mushroom cloud makes Mr. Cheney's remarks this week sound like a reading of 'The Pet Goat.' John and Bobby Kennedy, with their mobster friends, their union muscle and their rum-running father, were hardly pushovers in the contact sport of electoral politics."

For the rest of Broder's piece, click here.

• John Broder | George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry

Bush to Blame for Beslan Massacre?

Does Bush share responsibility in the terrorist massacre of schoolchildren in Chechnya? A sentence in Maureen Dowd's latest column from Sunday is hard to follow, but that seems to be the implication: "After 9/11, Americans want tough guys who will protect them from Al Qaeda. They seem to be willing to settle for an impersonation of tough guys by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who were so busy with their vanity war in Iraq that they missed critical opportunities to vanquish Al Qaeda and spent money on a foreign occupation that could have been used to secure American ports and come up with plans before the Beslan tragedy to protect children from terrorists."

For the rest of Dowd, click here.

Safire Hails the Blogosphere

William Safire gives a hat tip in his Monday column to Internet bloggers who first uncovered evidence suggesting memos that aired on CBS's "60 Minutes," which raised questions about George W. Bush's National Guard service, were forged: "Alert bloggers who knew the difference between the product of old typewriters and new word processors immediately suspected a hoax: the 'documents' presented by CBS News suggesting preferential treatment in Lt. George W. Bush's National Guard service have all the earmarks of forgeries."

For the rest of Safire, click here.

Kerry Vents to Times Reporter

Monday's front-page story by David Sanger, "Kerry Says Bush Has Ignored North Korean Threat, features an unusual interview with the Democratic candidate himself. Kerry apparently called Sanger to blast Bush: "In an interview, he argued that President Bush's preoccupation with Iraq let the North Korean crisis fester to the point that there were now indications that the country might be preparing to test a plutonium bomb. He presented his charges in a 15-minute telephone call he made to The New York Times."

Unusually, Sanger accuses Kerry of using "incendiary" language: "But his language on Sunday, calling the situation 'a nuclear nightmare' and directly accusing Mr. Bush of leaving the United States more vulnerable to North Korea, was far harsher and more incendiary than the language he has used before. It is also highly unusual for Mr. Kerry to seek out a reporter on a Sunday, when he had no public appearances scheduled, to attack Mr. Bush. This comes as Mr. Kerry and his aides, during this final 50 days of the campaign, have promised to draw more consistent and sharper contrasts to Mr. Bush in response to criticism from supporters that their message has been too weak."

Why would Kerry seek out Sanger? Well, the previous day's Times featured a lead story from Sanger and reporter William Broad on possible atomic moves by North Korea.

Kerry also seems to like Sanger's reporting, judging from a previous interview Kerry conducted with the paper in which he said: "And I believe if you talk with Warren Hoge or you talk to David Sanger, you talk to other people around the world, they will confirm to you, I believe, that it may well take a new president to restore America's credibility on a global basis so that we can deal with other countries and bring people back into alliances. The credibility of this country has been tarnished by this president. We can restore it. We will restore it."

For the rest of Sanger's unusual interview with John Kerry, click here.

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org