1. Political Science PS 475G
Mark Peffley

2.  The movie, "Innocence of Muslims," that
mocks and insults the Prophet Muhammad
caused demonstrators to attack a U.S.
consulate in Libya, killing one American, and
breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy in
Cairo.

3. The impossibility of the “mirror” standard.

4. Questions for us:

5. 1) “News slant” vs. “political bias”
2) What is one of the most important
developments in the production of the news
in the last part of the 20th century?

7. Organizational
Economic processes
Governmental
marketplace pressures
Political reality
News Personal biases
of journalists,
editors,
owners??

8. Influences on what gets reported (Iyengar)

9. Vallone, Ross, Lepper. “The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased
Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the Beirut
Massacre,” 1985.

10. Vallone, Ross, Lepper. “The Hostile Media Phenomenon.”
Why do informed “partisans” think the news is biased
against their views?
• The news is too @# balanced! when it shouldn’t be—giving equal time
and credibility to the opposition view, which doesn’t deserve such
coverage. They think the news would be more fair and objective if their
position were portrayed more positively than the opposition.
• Partisans engage in selective perception by being more likely to notice
and remember the parts of a newscast go against their view and ignore
or forget those portions that are consistent with their views

11. The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Other tendencies at
work:
People over-generalize
from a single article to
news media in general
People over-estimate
the amount of influence
news has on others’
opinions
People blame the
messenger for negative,
partisan messages
People under-estimate
market & organizational
forces that shape news

13. Doing Well and Doing Good by Thomas Patterson, 2000

14.  Content analysis of 5,331 news stories, randomly
selected from those available on LEXIS/NEXIS during
the 1980-1999 period for two television networks,
two weekly news magazines, three leading
newspapers, and twenty-six local dailies.
 The content analysis was limited to the front and local
sections of newspapers (thereby excluding, for
example, the sports and travel sections) and
conventional news broadcasts (thereby excluding
programs such as NBC’s “Dateline.”)

15. 1 New York Times 35 Columbus Dispatch
2 Washington Post 36 Allentown Morning (Times)
10 USA TODAY 37 Arizona Republic (Central)
20 Omaha World Herald 38 Denver Post (Media News)
21 San Diego Union-Trib(Copley) 39 Indianapolis News (Central)
22 St. Petersburg Times 40 Dallas Morning News (Belo)
23 Cleveland Plain Dlr (Advance) 41 St. Louis Dispatch (Pulitzer)
24 Sacramento Bee (McClatchy) 42 Knoxville News Sent. (Scripps)
25 Virginian Pilot (Landmark) 43 Minneapolis Star Trib (Cowles)
26 Seattle Times 44 Louisville Courier Jrnl (Gannet)
27 Tacoma News Trib (McClatchy) 45 Kansas City Star (Capital/ABC)
28 Buffalo News (Buffett) 50 ABC
29 Austin American States (Cox) 52 NBC
30 Cincinatti Enquirer (Gannet) 60 Time
31 Orlando Sentinel (Tribune)
32 Houston Chronicle (Hearst)
33 Hartford Courant (Times)
34 S.F. Chronicle (Chronicle)

16. Thomas Patterson. 2000. “DOING WELL AND DOING GOOD:
How Soft News and Critical Journalism Are Shrinking the News Audience and
Weakening Democracy–And What News Outlets Can Do About It.
MAJOR TOPIC CODE
01 Government & policy (legislation, political
process, policy problems, policy actions)
02 Politics (campaign, vote, political strategy,
political maneuvering)
03 Political scandal
04 Political personality (focus on personal traits,
family, etc. of political figures)
05 Business & Commerce (but not unemployment,
inflation, etc. in a political/ public affairs context—
this type of story should be coded as 1)
06 Celebrity (non crime/ non scandal)
07 Celebrity crime/ scandal
08 Crime (but not as a public policy issue, which
would be coded as 1)
09 Natural disasters (including potential disasters—
such as a hurricane forming in the Atlantic
10 Manmade disasters (including auto accidents
and house fires unless caused, e.g., by a lightning
strike)
11 Science (including discoveries)
12 Technology
13 Medicine (including medical discoveries, but not
health as a public policy issue)
14 Personal health
15 Media (but not as it relates to item 16)
16 Entertainment, Arts, Fashion, Travel Food
17 Religion
18 Sports
19 Legal Affairs (but not as a public policy issue)
20 Education (but not as a public policy issue)
21 Stock Market

21.  All of these trends are more striking for Local
Broadcast News.
 Several leading journalists and foundations (e.g.,
Pew) made an attempt in the 90s to rally local
newspapers to reverse the trend toward soft
news coverage: e.g., civic journalism movement.
 But these efforts much less evident now, as the
news industry responded to market forces by
embracing more soft news coverage.

22. Note: Iyengar uses these terms interchangeably, while we try to make a
distinction between slant (due to organizational and market pressures) and
bias (due to political bias).

23.  The “wall of separation” between editorials
and news coverage.
 How do traditional journalists operationalize
“objective” coverage?—i.e., fair and neutral
reporting?
 (Official) sources make the news
 There are two (conflicting) sides to every story
 The trend toward more interpretive coverage
because it allows reporters to embrace
autonomy as well as objectivity

27. Lichter and Rothman, The Media Elite, 1986
Conclusion: Journalists are liberal = the news has a liberal bias
a) Evidence?
True that reporters are more liberal than population, and that many major prestige
newspapers (NYT, Wash. Post) have liberal editorial staffs
More journalists (60%) are liberal; 89% of Washington D.C. reporters responding to a
survey voted for Clinton in 1996.
Reporters Public , 1992
Dems 41% 34%
Reps 16 33
Inds 34 31
b) Good social science?
Sample of journalists?
Open-ended comments?
Content of the news?

28. Lichter and Rothman, The Media Elite, 1986
This Study Ignores a Lot:
1.Owners of news outlets?
2.Who controls the news story?
3.Market forces?
4. Professional norms?
5. Empirical evidence from content analysis?!

29.  Conclusion: all sampled news providers
-except Fox News' Special Report and
the Washington Times- are guilty of a
liberal bias.
 Bias, according to the authors’ method,
is reflected not in the content of the
news, but in the sources (e.g., think
tanks) you cite!
 Are all think tanks equally credible,
productive or good at marketing their
product?
 Bias has to take into account the actual
content of the news.

30. D. D'Alessio, M. Allen (2012). Media Bias in Presidential Election Coverage, 1948-2008.
Major Findings: At least in terms of Presidential election coverage:
1. News coverage has no aggregate partisan bias either way.
2. On the whole, no significant biases were found for the newspaper
industry.
3. Biases in newsmagazines were virtually zero as well.
4. Television network news showed small, measurable, but probably
insubstantial coverage and statement biases.
5. The New York Times’ straight news coverage is relatively balanced,
although another study (Benoit 2005) finds that the tone of its
coverage slightly favors Democratic over Republican candidates.
6. The Fox News channel is substantially more conservative in news
coverage than the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC), which are
mostly balanced.

31. D. D'Alessio, M. Allen (2012). Media Bias in Presidential Election Coverage, 1948-2008.
What is a meta-analysis? A method for combining results from different studies, in the hope of identifying patterns like a
weighted average of effect size across several studies, giving more weight to larger samples, etc.
Methodology:
• A meta-analysis of 99 quantitative studies containing data concerned with
partisan media bias in presidential election campaigns since 1948.
• Narrative studies supported by illustrative examples (e.g., Goldberg
2003) were eliminated due to the possibility of contamination due to
confirmation bias.
• Types of bias considered
• Selection bias, which is the preference for selecting stories from one
party or the other;
• Volumetric bias, which considers the relative amounts of coverage each
party receives (minutes, lines, inches, headlines, photographs; and
• Valence bias, which focuses on the favorability of coverage toward one
party or the other.

32. D. D'Alessio, M. Allen (2000), “Media bias in presidential elections: a meta-
analysis.” Journal of Communication 50 (4), 133–156.
With respect to potential newspaper bias, the authors looked for partisan
bias across newspapers, which does not mean individual newspapers
could not be biased. When adding the pro-Republican bias of the
Washington Times together with the pro-Democratic bias of the Herald-
Leader, the two biases may cancel each other out. The authors found no
consistent pro-Democratic or pro-Republican bias, overall.
The authors’ findings for mainstream news networks are on more solid
ground, but there the degree of bias was very small.

33. 1. Lichter is a well-known conservative 2%
2. Their study relied on other studies of 10%
news bias
3. Their study was done before Fox 0%
News and MSNBC became available
4. Their study largely ignores the 83%
content of the news
5. Their study averages across too many 5%
news outlets

34.  http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-
october-29-2009/for-fox-sake-

35. Subtle Ways of Slanting or Biasing a News Story

36. Kahn & Kenny. 2002. “The Slant of the News.” APSR
A. Advantages of study
1. Problem with studying bias in presidential elections.
2. News bias in 60 senatorial races across 3 elections (1988 to
1992): Is the impenetrable wall of separation full of holes?
a. Content analysis of paper with largest circulation in the
state between 9-1 and election day; 5,529 articles.
b. Do candidates endorsed on the editorial page receive
more favorable straight news coverage?
3. Controls for: political experience of candidates, campaign
spending, closeness of the races, and amount of coverage.

37. Kahn & Kenny. 2002. “The Slant of the News.” APSR
B. Findings: Is the tone of coverage more favorable toward one
candidate than the other?
1. Overall tone of coverage: .24 difference
2. Tone of headlines: .17 higher
_________________________________NE____E___________________
-1 0 (.14) (.38) +1
Key: NE=Not Endorsed, E = Endorsed
2. Unattributed criticisms: 12 fewer unattributed criticisms
3. Substance of Coverage:
a. Tone of issue coverage: .23 points higher
b. Image/personality coverage not affected
c. Horse race: “way ahead,” “big lead,” “safe margin.”

38. Tone of Coverage
1. "The Wyoming and National Education Associations endorsed Democratic
Senate nominee John Vinich Monday
with the NEA giving him $5,000 for his campaign against two-time incumbent
Sen. Malcolm Wallop." Casper Star Tribune, 9/20/88 (positive for Vinich, neutral for
Wallop).
2. "[Harvey B. Gantt] said during a campaign swing through the Triangle that Mr.
Helms had spent his 18 years in the U.S. Senate trying to stomp out such
'personal demons' as communists, liberals, and artists rather than worrying about
issues that matter to North Carolina families." The News and Observer, 9/23/90
(negative for Helms, neutral for Gantt).
Tone of Headlines
1. "Wallop accused of 'Grandstanding.'" Casper Star Tribune, 9/11/88 (negative for
Wallop).
2. "Helms urges support for Bush stand." The News and Observer, 9/6/90 (neutral for
Helms).

39. Attributed Criticism
1. "At a Union-sponsored barbeque at North Casper Park, Democrats Bryan,
Sharratt, and John Vinich said in inter-views that their opponents—U.S. Rep. Dick
Chaney and U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop—have systematically failed to address the
problems of Wyoming's working people." Casper Star Tribune, 9/6/88 (attributed
criticism of Wallop).
2. "The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate repeatedly has attacked
Democratic incumbent Tom Daschle for breaking his word on the anti-tax
pledge." Argus Leader, 10/18/92 (attributed criticism of Daschle).
Unattributed Criticism
1. "Vinich was obviously nervous and fatigued at the beginning of the debate."
Casper Star Tribune, 10/28/88 (unattributed criticism of Vinich).
2. "After insensitively criticizing a TV ad for Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle, her main
election opponent, Haar found herself in the spotlight." Argus Leader, 10/13/92
(unattributed criticism of Haar).

40. Tone of Issue Coverage
1. "Mr. Gantt says he is willing to consider a tax increase to finance necessary services, but he
makes little effort to define how he would tax—what taxes he would choose or not choose."
The News and Observer, 9/28/90 (negative for Gantt).
2. "South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle says he would lobby a new Clinton administration to
rewrite the nation's farm program.... Daschle, a Democrat who is running for re-election,
wants to boost prices for wheat and other crops by raising government loan rates." Argus
Leader, 10/28/92 (neutral for Daschle).
Positive Trait
"Quayle also endorsed his friend Sen. Malcolm Wallop calling him a man of‘ keen intellect....'"
Casper Star Tribune, 9/20/88 (positive trait for Wallop).
Negative Trait
"Mal Hinchley of Pierre, a chemical dependency counselor who served with the Navy Seabees
in Thailand, said Haar's comments showed a lack of compassion." Argus Leader, 10/10/92
(negative trait for Haar).
Horserace
1. "Democratic challenger John Vinich has drawn to within 10 points of incumbent Republican
Sen. Malcolm Wallop, according to a Democratic Party poll...." Casper Star Tribune, 9/10/88
(competitive for Vinich, competitive for Wallop).
2. "Sen. Tom Daschle, a Democrat, leads Republican challenger Charlene Haar 56 percent to 33
percent, with 11 per-cent undecided." Argus Leader, 10/12/92 (sure winner for Daschle, sure
loser for Haar).

41. Kahn & Kenny. 2002. “The Slant of the News.” APSR
C. Impact
1. Tone of coverage influences voters: Whom
and when?
2. Why does this happen?
3. Overall: very small, subtle political bias in
state newspapers.
Not necessarily a partisan bias because sometimes papers
endorse incumbents who are vastly superior to challengers.