The idea would be to have regular analysis of the bias in the Washington Post. One reader emailed encouragement but suggested that the New York Times is more influential.
My guess is that I do not want to take this on as a regular job. Instead, I might try it for a few weeks to try to develop a model for how it ought to be done. Then we can think about creating some sort of franchise to do it.
The goal is to create something that editors the Post might look at and recognize that there are reasonable indications of bias. Ideally, editors would start to think about how their priorities, headlines, and lead paragraphs could be altered to be less biased.
Below is a first pass at a weekly analysis. For the main news section, the emphasis will be on stories and op-eds related to Donald Trump. For stories, I will tally positive, negative, and neutral, based on bias or spin. As long as there is no spin involved, then I consider the story neutral, even if it reflects on Mr. Trump very favorably or very unfavorably.
For op-eds, I don’t begrudge the paper running negative op-eds on Mr. Trump. I think that the job of the op-ed writer is often to complain and “speak truth to power.” The Post showed bias, in my view, by regularly running op-eds favorable to the Administration with Mr. Obama in office. I will make note of any op-eds that are favorable to Mr. Trump. I expect that in many weeks that tally will be zero, and I am not saying that it should be otherwise.
I will look at other biases in the front section, as well as in the Style section that covers arts and culture and in the Metro section that covers local news. For the Sunday Outlook section of op-ed essays and book reviews, I will tally the slant of non-Trump pieces. I will count the number that appeal to closed-minded progressives, the number that appeal to closed-minded conservatives or libertarians, and the number that offer something to people with open minds.
Read below the fold for the first week’s analysis.
For the past week, I only started on Thursday, so this is about half a week’s coverage.
Thursday, December 1:
Positive (0)
Neutral (3)
1. Trump nominees map out plans…
2. Advice on Israeli-Palestinian conflict (op-ed)
3. As Trump claims to have saved Carrier jobs, details are hazy
The above story on Trump’s deal with Carrier air conditioner discusses a lot of negatives, but I think they are all legitimate. See Justin Fox or Justin Wolfers. (Pointers from Mark Thoma a and b.)
Negative (4)
2. Wealthy cabinet not populist
I should note that what strikes me about the cabinet nominees so far is that so many have been appointed with a policy purpose in mind. You may not agree with the policies, but Sessions, Price, Chao, and DeVos were not appointed to be mere figureheads. If you go back to previous first-year Administrations, you will see a fair number of empty suits (or dresses) put there because of their political status or their gender or their skin color (an uncharitable view of the offer of HUD secretary to Dr. Carson is that it fits that mold).
As I write this, the Obama Administration’s current Secretary of Commerce is a big Democratic donor appointed with zero policy purpose in mind. I cannot recall the Post going after her in any way. Accordingly, I say that choosing to make an issue of the wealth of the individuals in Mr. Trump’s cabinet is mostly partisanship.
3. Trump’s pledge to leave business prompts calls to divest
4. Voting rights advocates. . .
If and when Mr. Trump does tangle policy issues with his personal business interests, or he does gut voting rights, then negative stories about this will fall into the neutral category, by my definition. However, for now, these stories are assuming Trump will do the worst and acting as if he has already done so, which leads me to classify them as partisan and negative.
Friday, December 2.
I count five stories on Mr. Trump in the front section, and I rate all of them as neutral. They again have a story on the Carrier deal that includes negatives about it. But who am I to complain about that? Also today, Don Boudreaux attacks the deal, citing an obscure book called Specialization and Trade.
Saturday, December 3.
The lead story is on the phone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s President. The first three paragraphs say nothing about the reason for the phone call or what was discussed. Instead, they accuse Mr. Trump of “a breach of diplomatic protocol,” “likely to infuriate (China)”, “one of a string of unorthodox conversations.” This is pretty heavy-handed editorializing. So I count one story with negative bias.
Two other front-page stories present tough calls. A story on the Carrier deal emphasizes the political benefits to Mr. Trump. It might be considered positive, but I do not think it goes out of the way to spin it as such, so I will call it neutral. A second story is how a law permits Trump cabinet members to sell securities without paying taxes on capital gains. My first thought is that the Post did not make an issue of this when President Obama appointed rich people to his cabinet (and he did). But since the story clearly explains that the law that the officials will be using had a desirable intention, I will code it as neutral. A p.2 story on potential conficts of interest between Mr. Trump’s financial holdings and his role as President I also code as neutral. Overall, 1 negative and 3 neutral.
In terms of op-eds, I was surprised to find a positive one. Allan Sloan favorably reviews the Carrier deal. Wrongly, in my opinion, but even if he were right it is a surprise. On the other hand, although I am willing to forgive negative op-eds on “speaking truth to power” grounds, I have to point out that Alexandra Petri’s attempt at satire of Mr. Trump’s cabinet selection process is utterly without redeeming value. It pretends that Trump’s selections had nothing to do with his policy goals. It is not funny. It is not on target. If I were the Post, I would not have wanted that garbage on my op-ed page.
Sunday, December 4. The front-page story on Mr. Trump’s cabinet selections says that they “go a long way toward mollifying some of Trump’s Republican critics. . .are tailor-made to encourage cooperation between the administration and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill.” Although the tone is positive, I code the story as neutral. I do not think that it is straining to editorialize. It is simply a fact that Trump’s cabinet so far is turning out to be more in the Republican mainstream than many pundits of all parties expected.
On p. 2, Dan Balz talks about the deep divisions that remain between supporters and opponents of Mr. Trump. I will code his piece as neutral, even though I think he goes out of his way to minimize the Republican victory (it was much broader than Mr. Trump) and to denigrate Mr. Trump for continuing to try to campaign (President’s do that. It’s called the bully pulpit when the Post is happy about it.)
In the metro section, there is a local opinion piece in favor of a $15 minimum wage for Montgomery County. Since it is clearly labeled an opinion piece, and the Post is entitled to its opinions, I will not tally it against the paper. But it is not a good idea.
In the Outlook section, I count one piece for confirmed progressives, and none for conservatives. The one piece is on a new book pointing out that African-American martyr Emmitt Till was preceded by his father, who also was martyred. I am not saying that the review is biased in any way or that the book should not have been reviewed. I am making a larger point about the Outlook section. It tends to runs pieces that make progressives feel good about themselves (in this case, a book review on African-American martyrs reinforces their view that America is racist and good progressives are a necessary antidote), while rarely running pieces that would cause progressives to have doubts about their views and almost never running pieces that would make conservatives feel good about themselves. Any one piece, like this book review, can be perfectly legitimate. What I think you will see over a period of weeks, however, is how reviews and opinions in the Outlook section work cumulatively to close progressives’ minds.
Carlos Lozada’s list of memorable books of 2016 includes a lot of praise for mediocre progressive-reinforcement literature. However, it does condemn Arlie Russell Hochschild for offering her “faculty-lounge preconceptions.” Moreover, I give him credit for listing Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic, although Lozada’s capsule review is mostly a slam at Donald Trump, and it gives progressives no reason to believe that they would profit from reading it. If I were in a sour mood, I could accuse Lozada here of writing a piece that overall is designed to make progressives feel good about themselves, but I decided to not make that call.
I would lean more toward a negative rating on Saturday’s article about cabinet members selling securities to avoid conflicts of interest. In fact, when I read it, I immediately thought of your trial WaPo project. The original version posted (which matched the printed copy) started out saying officials got to “skip” paying taxes. If you read deeper into the piece they do explain that it is a deferment, but they had already planted the seed that rich people are getting away with not paying taxes. The online headline also said “skip.” People went after them in the comments and the editors later changed “skipped” to “deferred,” but provided no correction notice.
In addition, they appealed to a piece in the Economist (or maybe Forbes) that called out Paulson on this issue. But in that specific case, it was because he had hundreds of million in Goldman Sachs stock that he got to rebalance into a blind trust for “free,” which substantially reduced his exposure to volatility. Fine, it was definitely a plus for him. But how many rich cabinet picks are in that situation? I’m guessing that was an unusual case, or we’d be hearing of a lot more examples.
Too little too late.
Trump will be using everything at his disposal to intimidate the press. I want them to fight back with everything at their disposal.
BTW you might want to check some sources that criticize the mainstream press or the Democratic party from the left once it a while. Just out of curiosity.
I hope they find the fight that they lost during the Obama administration, which was a low point in US political coverage.
By everything at his disposal, I assume you mean Twitter.
We’ll see. I don’t like making predictions, but he certainly like suing people over trivialities, to state the obvious, and he’s made it clear that nothing about his behavior will change when he’s president, except of course that he will have much more power. A couple days ago a musician/writer I follow said his publisher just axed a planned Trump parody out of fear of being sued. He’s said he wants to “open up” liable laws to make it easier to do, whether or not this is possible. He recently had a meeting with the press in which he said that any misunderstandings should be worked out with him in private discussions.
No, I’m not going to make predictions about what specific actions he’s going to take, publicly or secretly. But the notion that he’s going to stop at twitter just isn’t consistent with his long history of sleazy behavior, or his vindictive personality.
Anyway, there’s no point in arguing with anyone who reads and still, at this point, astonishingly, is unconcerned about having this person as president.
Eh, think I’ll stop reading this blog, too.
Well, might as well mention that Naked Capitalism and Truthdig, both, left sites (i.e. not centrist “New Democrat”) have demanded retractions from WaPo for smearing them as Russian propaganda sites or something.
And now I’m gone.
About the baseline and ‘speaking truth to power.’ If bias is the question, then perhaps it requires baselining against the first-term coverage of Obama.
Very interesting, but respectfully, beneath you. As one of the rare insightful lights in our time, the world would benefit much more from your attention to just about any other topic than the crappy reporting in the crappy local paper, or even US news reporting in general. Life is too short.
It’s good that Bezos has his own personal lobbying press, but for it to carry lobbying weight it has to pander to the locals’ sense of self-importance. Most other US newspapers are similarly toxic. The WSJ is really the only one worth considering for giving precious time and clicks.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a news junkie, love information, and waste far too much time consuming it. But I do so without having to pollute my mind with all the rancid slime that is US “journalism.” There is an enormous world of press options out there that provide a wide range of views and perspectives and insights to be followed and profited from once you’ve emerged from the quagmire. If you use google news just switch your version to “Canadian English” or “U.K.” and see. International news sources are addicting though, but still, I’d rather read the next three articles from allAfrica.com than the best three US articles that you could identify after hours of searching.
I am of the same mind. It’s not the worst idea in the world to regularly critique a newspaper’s content and hope some editor there reads it and takes it into account, but that’s a task for someone with a different set of comparative advantages than our dear host.
Good start! and Good work!
I was thinking about Deirdre McCloskey’s old textbook _The applied theory of price_ with end-of-chapter problems and thought exercises often motivated from examples of falsehoods and solecisms in the newspaper.
Her favorite example that she loved to quote was Alderman Keane of the City of Chicago advocating a payroll tax for everyone employed in the City of Chicago, but it wouldn’t hurt workers one bit because it would be paid by the employer.
After all, as Aldermen Keane assured the public, “The City of Chicago will never tax the working man.”
You are wasting your time. The problem with this project is intended audience:
The bias is intentional.
To some extent the bias may be intentional.
I think there is also just the issue of laziness and stupidity, Dunning-Krueger style “illusion of competence” in which people think they know more than they do.
People (1) assume facts not in evidence, they (2) advocate for things that “sound good to them at the time” to quote Gavin McInnes.
I think it remains an empirical question, to what extent the bias is intentional (in newspapers).
I am more likely to believe that the bias is intentional in student-led campus organizations, in which people get status or engage in “virtue signaling” by moving ever more toward the Left.
As commented above, you have better uses of your words. Further, finding misleading or mendacious articles in the WaPo is like shooting fish in a barrel. Finally, again as another commenter noted, the WaPo doesn’t care.
Arnold, to do it regularly it will be a waste of time as some readers have already pointed out. You may do it occasionally as Tom Maguire does in regard to NYT articles in his JustOneMinute blog. More important, however, it is my impression that you should be clear with whom you’re dealing. You may not want to call them your enemies but you will be one of their many enemies. Please read carefully this published a few hours ago
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/the_lefts_coming_counterattack.html
You may think the author is claiming too much but in the past 50 years I have been living with lefties in several countries. Every time they lost big, they mounted counter-attacks. This time will not be different.
I will take it as a complimen!.
This seems unproductive as most people don’t get their news from WaPo or NYT! Or local paper anymore. Donald Trump won because most people get their news from TV and especially cable news TV where they regularly cut their programming to show his rallies. CNN and Fox have more impact than NYT or WaPo. So complaining about he WAPO comes across as rationalization you agreeing with Donald Trump as President. He is President and conservatives are in charge. (And can we all agree the Carrier was a giant successful PR move and the economics is really bad. It won’t matter in six months unless Trump continues with each factory.)
And that Taiwan call was major Fuck-Up all things considered and his Tweet responses showed he unprepared he is for the position. He is needlessly provoking the second most powerful nation in the world and one of our largest trading partners. I glad China is under-reacting and blaming Taiwan but it would have been nice for Trump to use China’s good will for something more productive than the securing a sweet real estate deal in Taiwan. (And realize everything bad the next four years will be tied to his businesses.)
Ummm, are you sure about that “China’s good will”?
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/12/05/china-flew-nuclear-capable-bombers-over-taiwan-before-trump-call-with-taiwanese-president.html
The narrative is that it was either a naive mistake or a well-thought out strategic error. But they aren’t considering the other possibilities. Their assumptions stem from their bias that Trump is a neophyte run by an evil cabal.
What I consider as a possibility is that Trump is using it as the simplest way to get China’s attention and put them on notice that the new deal has begun.
Your call on the Taiwan call should be neutral. It has been long standing policy for exactly that reason. This is just an indication Trump cares as little about being diplomatic as being politically correct. It does serve his agenda to insult China and this is likely why he did it. It is accurate.
Afraid I don’t think the Post is worth the effort.
The media have explicitly declared open war on Trump, so discovering bias against him isn’t likely to surprise anyone or alarm (rather than reassure) the editors of the WaPo.
To me the more interesting results of bias concern not # of pro or con stories, but, on issues that readers are unlikely to have strong opinions about already (such as Trump), the use of wording, unstated assumptions, who gets the last word, who gets the first word, and many other devices that may subtly readers’ impressions. I vote for a deep dive into one story a day to reveal–perhaps to the reporters and editors themselves–how they are inadvertently stacking the deck.
As far as the original idea of it becoming its own column, It seems like a paper would be more interested in reporting on the bias of a,competitor rather than themselves.
WaPo headline on 12/5: “Republicans look to make it easier to install Mattis as defense secretary”
“Install”. wow.
Those figures of speech and word choice seems like something Google could do.
Uff!
I remember picking up the WaPo during the midnight Comey kerkuffle and being shocked at the level of bias.
Awesome move Arnold. Bezos has turned good cloth to rag.
I think this is a great idea, and a good start. You might try a conversation with Nickolas Kristof of NYT, who claims to want to be more open to conservatives.
This project, and other critiques like it, seem quite likely to make more Democrat bubble-livers aware of their bubble, and help some of them understand how they could have news stories with facts w/o the bubble bias.
IF, a big if, the news is going to get better, such actual bias watching as this project will be of assistance.
What gets measured gets attention << in business with costs & revenue, in news, bias; in global warming, both CO2 and global temperatures.
Continuing to not read this blog any more, but “a new Harvard Kennedy School study finds that Hillary Clinton received more negative press coverage over the entire course of the presidential campaign than Donald Trump”
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/12/the-apotheosis-of-false-equivalence