Monday, May 24, 2004
News Flash: Conservatives Underrepresented in Newsrooms
Editor and Publisher reports the latest release from the Pew Research Center, and NEWS FLASH: newsrooms are more politically liberal, with a lower percentage of self-described conservatives, than the public at large.
You can find the actual release here, no thanks to E&P, who don't bother providing a link to source material on their website.
(The link goes to the overview. Click on "Values and the Press" to get to the politics part.)
Here are some of the key findings.
34% of national journalists self identify as liberal, compared to 19% of the general public.
23% of local journalists self-identify as liberal.
33% of all Americans self-identify as conservatives; only 7% of national journalists, and 12% of local journalists self-identify as conservatives.
National journalists, of course, are far more likely to live and work in New York. It would be interesting to see a good regression analysis on how much of the difference between local and national journalist politics can be explained simply by the political demographics of New York City.
Unfortunately, the Pew research doesn't address regional demographics as a possible factor.
I also don't trust the idea of allowing people to self-identify as 'liberal,' 'moderate,' or 'conservative,' because New York media circles and college campuses are such political echo chambers that many liberal journalists think they're moderates--and that's part of the problem.
Indeed, some of the data in the Pew report suggests to me that even the self-identified conservatives are social moderates, since they reflect public opinion on homosexuality or the moral requirement of theism--as one would expect a 'moderate' population to do by definition--rather than camp out to the right of the population at large.
This isn't really a liberal bias website--my interest is in veteran representation in the newsroom more than in political representation. But I've argued that news coverage of military affairs is affected by the demographic pool from which employees are recruited.
Splash, out
Jason
You can find the actual release here, no thanks to E&P, who don't bother providing a link to source material on their website.
(The link goes to the overview. Click on "Values and the Press" to get to the politics part.)
Here are some of the key findings.
34% of national journalists self identify as liberal, compared to 19% of the general public.
23% of local journalists self-identify as liberal.
33% of all Americans self-identify as conservatives; only 7% of national journalists, and 12% of local journalists self-identify as conservatives.
National journalists, of course, are far more likely to live and work in New York. It would be interesting to see a good regression analysis on how much of the difference between local and national journalist politics can be explained simply by the political demographics of New York City.
Unfortunately, the Pew research doesn't address regional demographics as a possible factor.
I also don't trust the idea of allowing people to self-identify as 'liberal,' 'moderate,' or 'conservative,' because New York media circles and college campuses are such political echo chambers that many liberal journalists think they're moderates--and that's part of the problem.
Indeed, some of the data in the Pew report suggests to me that even the self-identified conservatives are social moderates, since they reflect public opinion on homosexuality or the moral requirement of theism--as one would expect a 'moderate' population to do by definition--rather than camp out to the right of the population at large.
This isn't really a liberal bias website--my interest is in veteran representation in the newsroom more than in political representation. But I've argued that news coverage of military affairs is affected by the demographic pool from which employees are recruited.
Splash, out
Jason
Comments:
Post a Comment
