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AND EVEN MORE ON CONSERVATIVE COLUMNISTS. Kate and Ezra have already referred to the Media Matters study findings on TAPPED. Those findings suggest that if you want to be an op-ed columnist in politics you'd better be very conservative. That's the way to maximize your market appeal.
The interesting question is naturally why that would be the case. But first I should point out that the opinion pages might not be quite as red as the study suggests if the local columnists the newspapers hire are mostly liberals. The study only looked at nationally known columnists, and it's not too far-fetched to think that some newspapers might have a lot of local liberal talent but not that much conservative talent. Those newspapers might then subscribe to George Will to balance their opinion pages. But in the Media Matters study they would come out looking weighted to the right.
I know, I know. This is unlikely to change the overall findings very much, as in many areas the local talent would be to the right of Attila the Hun, and the same argument would work in the opposite direction. Still, I feel more righteous for having mentioned that.
Then to the really fascinating questions: How do we decide that liberals are underrepresented among op-ed columnists? What is the basis for this? Is it voting patterns in a particular newspaper's circulation area? The percentages of newspaper readers in the country who hold certain opinions? Or the idea that each political value system should be represented by the same number of column inches?
It seems to me that it's the last measure that is being used in these discussions, but with a certain twist: For many in the media the dividing line between "liberal" and "conservative" has shifted, and the Media Matters category "centrist" is pretty much subsumed under "liberal." This is like the shifting center in general political discourse, and it means that quite extreme conservative voices are now regarded as necessary on opinion pages, to balance those polite centrists who really are rabid communists in disguise. Note that at the same time the really left voices are extremely rare in op-ed columns. The need for balance doesn't go quite that far.
--J. Goodrich
COMMENTS (5)
A recent NBER study found that newspaper editorial positions correlated to the language of the Congressional representative, which presumably represents the views of the voters (and buyers of newspapers):
"Our analysis confirms an economically significant demand for news slanted toward one's own political ideology. Firms respond strongly to consumer preferences, which account for roughly 20 percent of the variation in measured slant in our sample. By contrast, the identity of a newspaper's owner explains far less of the variation in slant."
Here is a digest of the paper
http://www.nber.org/digest/jul07/w12707.html
So while the op-ed columnists may skew one way, the editorials may not skew.
Posted by: Octavian | September 12, 2007 2:21 PM
Another useful point is not where the columnist stands purely on policy issues - as many of these columnists don't expressly advocate for policy - but what they define themselves in opposition to.
Kondracke may personally stand to the left of, say, Krauthammer, but both of them spend much of their column space criticizing liberals and Democrats.
Sowell, Cal Thomas, Parker, etc. make it their stock-in-trade to decry liberalism and Democrats.
Broder probably votes Democratic but in tone and inclination he is a pox-on-both-houses centrist with a disdain for ideological argument and a soft spot for people who he sees as somehow "beyond" partisanship - McCain, Lieberman, Bloomberg. Ditto your Fred Hiatts and Jim Hoaglands.
Even Tom Friedman, clearly a lefty, generally defines himself in opposition to both the right and the left.
Outright liberals who use their column real estate to advocate liberal policy and criticize conservatives, like Krugman, are much rarer than the equivalent Sowells on the other side.
Posted by: SDM | September 12, 2007 3:19 PM
I MISS MOLLY IVINS
Posted by: winer | September 12, 2007 3:53 PM
I wrote extensively on the Media Matters Study.
In fact, some of the arguments mirrored on this blog are almost identical to mine. Although I went much further.
You can see it below:
Media Matters Spouts its Own Flawed Study as Fact: How They Did It, In Great Detail
Posted by: Devil's Advocate | September 12, 2007 6:08 PM
if you want to be an op-ed columnist in politics you'd better be very conservative.
And you'd also better not write about Project for the New American Century, y'know, the neo-conservative thinktank that called for a transformation of the U.S. into an aggressive, military state. They also advocated fighting simultaneous, multi-theater wars, militarization of space,
and a bomb-first-ask-questions-later approach to foreign affairs. The U.S. printed media won't touch them -- broadcast media is even more inane -- even Krugman has barely mentioned the group once.
Why the blackout? Oh, could it be that they stated "the process of [military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."? And this stated in their September 2000
report! Who are these people with an uncanny ability to foresee the future? Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Perle, Zakheim, Abrams, Bolton, etc., the same group that took control of all military and foreign policy decision-making after the 2000 "election"! Makes you wonder ...
The most important information that the American people need to know, but the corporate media won't tell them.
Posted by: atomic rooster | September 12, 2007 11:14 PM