Media Biases: A Quantitative Analysis from the Columbia Journalism Review

Some time ago I extended my analysis of political centrism to the mainstream news media and argued that much of its conduct--and in particular much of the conduct that many view as problematic--is explicable in terms of centrist ideology. This particularly included the matters of the media's preference for politics to policy, and its declining to attempt to explain complex issues to the public.

As it happens a November 2023 piece in the Columbia Journalism Review setting out the results of a quantitative examination of the pre-2022 midterm coverage of domestic affairs by the New York Times and Washington Post (from September 2022 to Election Day) was consistent with exactly that reading. The analysts found that, apart from their both emphasizing campaign "horse race and . . . palace intrigue," only a very small proportion of the items had any policy content to speak of, particularly of the explicatory type. Of 219 front page stories about domestic politics during this period in the Times, "just ten . . . explained domestic policy in any detail," while of 215 stories in the Post just four "discussed any form of policy"--working out to less than 5 percent in the former case, less than 2 percent in the latter case. Indeed, the Post did not have a single front-page story about "policies that candidates aimed to bring to the fore or legislation they intended to pursue" during that whole critical period, opting instead for speculative pieces about the candidates and "where voter bases were leaning."

Remember, these are the most respected mainstream publications--the "papers of record"--the kind of publications that many of those complaining about "fake news" tell us to attend to instead of the rest of what we are apt to see online. Considering that fact, one can only judge these publications to be themselves a considerable part of the problem with regard to the deficiencies of the public's understanding of current events--with, indeed, the preference for politics over policy and the extreme paucity of explanation just the tip of the iceberg.