Rather Recognized Terrorists; Bush’s "Mammoth" Tax Cut; Clinton Praised Helen Thomas; Time’s Kid Liberal; Media Label Liberals More?

     Imagine the liberal world in which she lives, from which Time recruits its journalists, where it takes a one-on-one session with the Secretary of Defense to realize that maybe the anti-terrorism policies are really being made by people who are trying to enact the best policy.

     Curry wondered: "What did you learn about him or yourself from doing this interview?"
     Tatarsky said she realized how the childhoods of her and Rumsfeld mean they have different political outlooks: "What did I learn about him or myself? Well about him, I mean I grew up in the East Village in New York City so my ideas are very different from his but I definitely got to see where he was coming from. He grew up in a little Navy town so that definitely would influence him being pro-war so that gave me, I understood where he was coming from."
     Curry: "Uh huh. His position, which was more conservative I take, than, than your position."
     Tatarsky confirmed: "Right."
     Curry: "Do you want to be a journalist?"
     Tatarsky: "I was thinking about it and I realized I don't."

     She went on to say she wants to run for President when she grows up.

     As a liberal, she’ll have a lot more opportunities in the media.

     To read her Rumsfeld interview story as run in Time for Kids:
http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/news/story/0,6260,220114,00.html

5

Liberal media bias disproved by an NPR commentator’s cursory database check of ideological labeling? A "study" by Geoffrey Nunberg of Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Language and Information, first aired in a commentary in mid-March on NPR’s Fresh Air and now featured as an article in the latest edition of American Prospect magazine, was given credibility by CNN’s Jeff Greenfield on Wednesday’s Inside Politics.

     Picking up on the most misleading claim of all, Greenfield relayed how after checking newspaper labeling of prominent liberal and conservative politicians, Nunberg found: "It was the liberals who were 30 percent more likely to be labeled by the media than the conservatives."

     In fact, Nunberg’s "30 percent" gap was between how the liberals were labeled 3.78 percent of the time and the conservatives were tagged 2.89 percent of the time. If the MRC ever did a study which found that kind of puny difference we wouldn't claim a 30 percent disparity. We'd say the media basically hardly ever do x or y. So, if you buy Nunberg’s numbers he only found that newspapers hardly ever label anybody, not that liberals are labeled significantly more often.

     (For instance: A 1989 MRC study of the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, Time and U.S. News found that during 1987-88 Concerned Women for America was tagged  conservative 41 percent of the time, but the National Organization for Women was called liberal just 2 percent of the time. Now that’s a real disparity. For details:
http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1989/mw19890301stud.html)

     Greenfield asserted on the April 17 show: "In his best-selling book Bias, former CBS News newsman Bernard Goldberg argues that liberal broadcasters use such labels because they simply assume conservatives are outside the mainstream while liberals are part of it.
     "Well, in the new American Prospect magazine, writer Geoffrey Nunberg tried to test that argument. So, he took five leading conservatives -- Senators Trent and Jesse Helms, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Representatives Dick Armey and Tom DeLay. He also took five leading liberals: Senators Barbara Boxer, Paul Wellstone, Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy and Representative Barney Frank.
     "He ran their names through a database of major American newspapers, most of them with liberal editorial pages, like The New York Times and The Washington Post. What did he find? It was the liberals who were 30 percent more likely to be labeled by the media than the conservatives." Greenfield added: "Conservative jurist Robert Bork was labeled slightly more often than liberal Laurence Tribe. But liberal columnist Michael Kinsley was labeled far more often than conservatives Bill Bennett or Reverend Jerry Falwell.

     Greenfield deserves credit for not trying to claim, as have some liberal commentators in trumpeting Nunberg’s numbers, that his study disproves liberal bias. Greenfield cautioned: "Now, this doesn't necessarily prove that Bernard Goldberg or other critics are wrong. The study, after all, did not focus on TV broadcasters. And it does not disprove charges of bias in the coverage of issues or political campaigns."

     But then, Greenfield concluded by scolding both liberals and conservatives for seeing what they want to see: "Given the liberal editorial stance of most of the newspapers surveyed, it does raise an interesting question about media critics, one that knows no ideological line: Are the critics responding to what they see and hear and read or to what they think they're hearing, seeing and reading?"

     The fact that CNN, which has never once aired a story devoted to any of the hundreds of definitive studies produced over the years by the Media Research Center, so eagerly jumped on Nunberg’s numbers days after they appeared in a liberal magazine, prompts me to ask: Is CNN treating as newsworthy that which they find more agreeable over findings they don’t like?

     Now, to be fair to Greenfield, in interviewing Goldberg on his since-cancelled Greenfield at Large program a few months ago, he did cite the MRC’s documentation of bias. And Greenfield’s "at large" role now, in which he offers commentary on CNN’s American Morning and Inside Politics, allows him to pick up on off-beat topics which previously would not have necessarily received air time. I just hope that he will show an equal interest in the near future in the MRC’s ongoing documentation of liberal bias.

     As for the accuracy of Nunberg’s numbers, I hardly know where to begin. While it is possible that the media’s labeling skew has declined over time, my bottom line: Since Nunberg really didn’t do a study which would meet any basic criteria for thoroughness, I don’t take his numbers very seriously, especially since they conflict with much more solid studies conducted over the years by the MRC and the numerous anecdotes recounted by the MRC of labeling disparities in recent years between two comparable events, groups or politicians.

     Space does not permit a total refutation of all the problems I see in Nunberg’s approach, but I’ll offer a few followed by some labeling numbers and examples documented by the MRC:

     -- Nunberg’s March 19 NPR commentary and May American Prospect article were aimed as discrediting Bernard Goldberg’s claim that the TV networks are more likely to label a conservative than a liberal. Nunberg countered that not with anything about the networks, but with numbers from dozens of newspapers.

     For his Fresh Air commentary: http://www-csli.stanford.edu/%7Enunberg/bias.html

     For his nearly identical American Prospect piece:
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/8/nunberg-g.html

     -- He used the Dialog database to find the names and labels, but he didn’t check each one as the MRC always does to ensure accuracy. He explained: "I examined 100 citations by hand, by taking the first 25 hits for each of Lott, Boxer, Wellstone and DeLay. I found 12 examples in this set that could not be described as ascriptions of political bias. These were evenly balanced between conservatives and liberals. Or to put it another way, 88 percent of the hits did in fact involve ascriptions of political labels."

     For his data: http://www-csli.stanford.edu/%7Enunberg/table.html

     Doing a proper study means going through thousands of hits to categorize each one so references to Paul Wellstone’s "liberal use of sugar on his cereal," are not counted. That’s a very time-consuming process -- which is why we haven’t quickly countered Nunberg with a fresh study which would meet our standards.

     -- Each hit must be checked for duplication since databases like Nexis and Dialog often include the same story multiple times. His overall numbers included dozens of smaller papers which may in itself change the numbers because, for instance, he probably counted a single AP story many times and the wire services run a lot of stories with lists of names of officials for or against an issue, not a place where you’d add a label.

     -- His numbers are impacted by how his date ranges vary by publication.

     -- Some of the prominent names he picked are for people who have a title a reporter would be more likely to use, such as "Senate Majority Leader."

     > Some, just some, of the labeling studies published over he years in the MRC’s old MediaWatch newsletter, including ones covering the TV networks, as collated for me by the MRC’s Tim Jones:

     -- MediaWatch selected a broad sample of smaller groups in specific issue areas, surveying every news story on 14 liberal groups and seven conservative ones from 1988, 1989, and 1990 in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post. Analysts found 29 labels in 1,182 stories on liberal groups (2.5 percent), and 65 labels in 179 stories on conservative groups (36.3 percent), a ratio of 14 to one. For details:
http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1991/mw19910501stud.html

     -- MediaWatch analysts compared media coverage of the primaries in 1992 with those in 1996. Analysts reviewed evening news coverage of the four networks (ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and CNN's The World Today and in 1992 World News or Prime News) for 19 days, starting with the Tuesday before the New Hampshire primary.
     The study found the Democratic candidates or their supporters were labeled "liberal" only four times, none suggesting extremism. In 1996, GOP candidates or their supporters were labeled 73 times, 45 of the labels suggesting extremism. Details:
http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1996/mw19960301stud.html

     -- To analyze the media's use of labels to describe the political parties, MediaWatch analysts used the Nexis news data retrieval system to search for the word "extreme" within 25 words of "Republican" or "Democrat" in the three news magazines (Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report) and USA Today from January 1, 1993 to May 31, 1996.
     Analysts discovered reporters did not use many extremist labels in 1993 and 1994 -- 41 -- but 26 of those were applied to Republicans, compared to ten mentions of dual extremes and only five for the Democrats who ruled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But in the first 17 months of GOP control, Republicans were described as "extreme" in 123 stories, while only 15 found "extremes" on both sides. Just two mentioned "extreme" Democrats.
     For details: http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1996/mw19960601stud.html

     -- MediaWatch analysts used the Nexis news data retrieval system to locate every news story in 1995 and 1996 on ten liberal environmental groups, and compared that to conservative groups in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. The story remains the same: in 1,089 news stories, liberal environmental groups were described as liberal in only five stories (or 0.5 percent).
     By contrast, the largest "free-market environmentalist" think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute drew eight "conservative" labels in 29 stories (28 percent). For details:
http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1997/mw19971201stud.html

     -- As abortion advocates celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, MediaWatch analysts explored the labeling of groups active in the abortion debate. Using the Nexis news data retrieval system, analysts located every news story in 1995 and 1996 on four pro-life groups, and compared them to stories on four abortion advocacy groups in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. In 1,050 news stories, the pro-life groups were described as "conservative" or some variant in 178 out of 378 news stories (47 percent), while abortion advocates were labeled "liberal" or a similar term in only 19 of 682 stories (2.8 percent). For details:
http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1998/mw19980101stud.html

     > Finally, a couple of powerful real-life examples.

     -- The incident Goldberg cited in his book about how Peter Jennings avoided labeling liberal Senators but tagged conservative ones during the opening of the Senate’s impeachment trial. For details: http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1999/mw19990125rev.html

     -- A classic contrast occurred between how ABC, CBS and NBC labeled Dick Cheney in 2000 versus Al Gore in 1992. As recounted in a July 2000 Media Reality Check:

Cheney earned a lifetime 91 percent from the American Conservative Union while Gore was at the opposite end of the spectrum at 15 percent.

Still, the night Gore was announced in 1992, CBS reporter Richard Threlkeld claimed: "Both Gore and Clinton are centrist, some would say conservative Democrats, and white and male." Tom Brokaw announced on NBC: "Today, Bill Clinton broke the rules. He chose someone from the same gene pool: a fellow moderate Southerner of the same generation, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee." During the convention, CBS's Susan Spencer found delegates willing to accept "such a conservative pair in hopes of winning."

Compare that to how Cheney was described the day Bush made his selection official, July 25:

-- ABC: Linda Douglass referred to him as one of the "most conservative members" of Congress who had "a very conservative voting record." George Stephanopoulos dubbed him a "very hardline conservative."

-- CBS: Bill Whitaker managed three different adjectives, tagging Cheney "a bedrock conservative" and "a rock solid conservative" with a "a solidly conservative voting record." Bryant Gumbel put Cheney outside the mainstream: "Cheney's politics are of the hard right variety."

-- NBC: Anne Thompson noted his "very conservative record." Lisa Myers recalled his days in Congress: "His voting record? Very conservative."

     END of Reprint