Bias basics: the data clearly demonstrate that liberal journalists report the news liberally.

The data clearly demonstrate that liberal journalists report the news liberally.

IS THERE a prevailing liberal bias among the major news media? Until now, this has been largely a matter of opinion. Conservatives typically complain of it, while liberals often deny its existence. It is usually admitted, however, that political liberals are much more heavily represented among people working for the major media than among the general public. The well-known study by S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Richter, The Media Elite, based on in-depth interviews with 238 major-media journalists, found that liberals outnumbered conservatives by 54 per cent to 17 per cent. A nationwide Los Angeles Times study (August 11, 1985) administered its own poll to 3,000 reporters and editors and got almost exactly the same result: 55 per cent liberal and 17 per cent conservative. (The Times survey, which also polled 3,000 members of the general public, found that in the latter group 24 per cent were liberal, 29 per cent conservative, and 33 per cent ''neither,'' a striking contrast to the findings for journalists.)

Although this liberal tilt is usually acknowledged by the major media, it is often said that professional standards prevent it from translating into news bias. Many efforts have been made to put this claim to the test. But analyzing network news for bias is very difficult, since any in-depth research would require the tape recording of all three major networks simultaneously, and the assessment of news content would involve some interpretation. However, thanks to the invention of the CD-ROM and computer databases, it is now possible to test the print media for ideological bias by simply performing word-count searches for favorable and unfavorable labels.

For example, the word ''activist'' implies dedication, effort, and sincerity. The word ''extremist'' implies fanaticism, intolerance, and possibly even violence. If liberal media bias is prevalent, a search of media sources would find the word ''activist'' applied to liberals far more often than to conservatives, while the word ''extremist'' would be applied to conservatives much more often than to liberals.

SEARCHES of the ProQuest full-text CD-ROM listings reveal that between January 1994 and March 1995, the New York Times had 289 articles that applied the word ''activist'' to liberals, liberal causes, or the Left. Only 65 applied it to conservatives or conservative causes. This is a ratio of 4.4 to 1. The term ''extremist'' was used by the same source in only 25 articles referring to liberalism, but in 78 articles referring to conservatism, a 3 to 1 ratio.

The table on the next page contains the results of a search of the Lexis/Nexis newspaper database of about 170 publications. The figures show the phrases ''conservative attack'' and ''conservative criticism'' occurring 4.2 times more often than ''liberal attack'' and ''liberal criticism.'' Similarly, ''Republican attack'' and ''Republican criticism'' occurred 2.9 times more often than ''Democratic attack'' and ''Democratic criticism.''

The prefix ''arch,'' applied to people, is generally unfavorable. ''Arch-traitor'' and ''arch-villain'' are fairly common expressions, but not ''arch-patriot'' or ''arch-hero.'' Such terms as ''arch-enemy'' or ''arch-nemesis'' are commonly used, but not ''arch-friend'' or ''arch-ally.'' The table shows that the print media used the terms ''archconservative'' and ''arch conservative'' more than ''archliberal'' and ''arch liberal'' (both variations were included in the count) by a ratio of 20 to 1.

Furthermore, the key phrases far right, extreme right, and radical right are found almost twice as often as far left, extreme left, and radical left. Because Lexis/Nexis goes back as far as 1977 (in the case of the Washington Post), 1980 (for the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor), and 1985 (for the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times), whatever right-wing extremism developed during the early-to-mid 1990s could not have been a major cause of this slant. Indeed, the same database shows the phrase ''right wing'' occurring more than 153,000 times, far more often than ''left wing.'' These milder phrases do not necessarily refer to bomb-throwing extremists; they often refer to politicians, writers, and academics. Much the same can be said for the key word ''ultraconservative'' and its variant, ''ultra conservative,'' which the table shows occurring 3.7 times more often than ''ultraliberal'' and ''ultra liberal.''

Adding the results of the searches for the key words far right/extreme right/radical right and far left/extreme left/radical left, the ProQuest General Periodicals index showed a 4 to 1 ratio for 1993 - 94 (122 to 30); a 2.77 to 1 ratio for the 1990 - 92 (236 to 85); and a 2.4 to 1 ratio for 1986 - 89 (272 to 113). While these ratios have been increasing, they were already above 2 to 1 in the mid-to-late 1980s. In addition, there is the Public Affairs Information Service International Database, which includes books, journal articles, government documents, and committee reports all the way back to 1972. A PAIS search performed in the fall of 1995 showed a ratio of 2.28 to 1 between far right/extreme right/ radical right and far left/extreme left/radical left.

Of course, many of these articles concern purely non-political subjects. An occurrence of the word ''right-wing'' could refer to a hockey player; ''far right'' could be referring the reader to the far right area of the page; ''archconservative'' often refers not to politics, but to the game strategy of an athletic coach or the investment strategy of a financier. But there is an equal chance of this happening on either side. In addition, not all these key words will represent the newspaper's own voice. Some will be from letters to the editor, and quite a few will be the words of politicians and public figures who are simply quoted describing their opponents. But since liberal and conservative candidates have an equal incentive to describe the other side as a bunch of extremists, the news columns should not show this remarkably consistent pattern of describing one side favorably and the other unfavorably if all they were doing was quoting. Public figures typically utter many sentences during interviews or public statements, of which only a few end up in print. The media portrayal of conservatives as extreme and liberals as moderate indicates that bias affects the selection of letters to the editor and quotation from public figures just as much as it affects straight news.

IT ALSO seems to affect the extent to which wealthy Republican political candidates are referred to as such by the press, as if the word ''wealthy'' were a part of their names. Such words are rarely applied in news coverage to Ted Kennedy and other wealthy Democratic candidates. The Lexis/Nexis database shows that descriptions of Republicans and conservatives as wealthy greatly outnumbered the similar treatment of Democrats and liberals.

There is little reason to believe that this situation reflects reality. A few years ago, when the Competitive Enterprise Institute rated members of Congress on their commitment to lower taxes and less government spending and regulation, it discovered that the ten richest members of the House of Representatives had a noticeably lower score than their less wealthy colleagues. Eight of the ten wealthiest congressmen were Democrats, and three of these (Sidney Yates, Pete Stark, and Nancy Pelosi) are known for their conspicuous liberalism. When both Houses of Congress were considered, nine of the eleven wealthiest members were Democrats.

Despite the reluctance of the media to focus on it, there has never been a shortage of wealthy liberals, such as Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Candice Bergen, Katharine Graham, Warren Beatty, Glenda Jackson, and Stewart Mott (an heir to the General Motors fortune). Joan Kroc, the widow of McDonald's founder Ray Kroc, donated part of his fortune to the Democratic Party. Marshall Field III, heir to the Chicago department-store fortune, was a frequent contributor to liberal causes. Averell Harriman, a lifelong Democrat, was the son of railway tycoon Edward Harriman, one of the richest men in America. Among the supporters of the very liberal John Lindsay were more than sixty people noted for their wealth, including two Vanderbilts, a Whitney, an Armour, an Astor, A. P. Sloan Jr. (General Motors), and Henry Ford II.

About a fifth of the Lexis/Nexis newspaper database consists of business newspapers and trade periodicals, such as Pensions & Investment Age, the Corporate Legal Times, and Crain's New York Business. Liberal bias is unlikely to prevail among such publications, which means that the database used for the chart showed less bias than would a database confined to regular daily newspapers. This is borne out by other searches. At the time of search, InfoTrac's national newspaper index on CD-ROM covered the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor, for the period of early 1992 to early September 1995. Its abstracts contained over 607,000 citations, and told the same story, only more so. Lexis/Nexis's ratio of far right/extreme right/radical right/right wing to far left/extreme left/radical left/left wing was only about 2.7 to 1. But in the InfoTrac search, this group of key words on the left appeared only 28 times, while the same key words on the right came up 357 times, a ratio of 12.75 to 1.

The ProQuest and NewsBank indexes of the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Times, and the Chicago Tribune for 1990 - 94 show only 2 references to a ''liberal backlash'' and 59 references to a ''conservative backlash'' -- a ratio of 29.5 to 1. During the same five years, these four newspapers had a total of 217 articles that used the term ''arch conservative'' or ''archconservative,'' and only 9 that used the term ''arch liberal'' or ''archliberal.'' This is a ratio of over 24 to 1. They also used the terms ''conservative attack'' and ''conservative criticism'' a total of 59 times, while ''liberal attack'' and ''liberal criticism'' occurred only 6 times -- a 9.8 to 1 ratio --even though the Republicans held the White House for three of the five years in question, a period in which liberals would have been more critical than conservatives.

The question of why media bias is so pervasive must focus on why the political views of journalists -- particularly major-media journalists -- are so different from those of the public at large. Obviously, the journalists' occupation and social position play a key role, since their political views resemble the views of writers and academics, not the views of blue-collar workers.

Managerial psychologist Harry Levinson has suggested that ''With less physiological work, less handling of materials, and less action for some people, the function of work as an atonement device may be lost. People who are not working feel guilty. If work seemingly makes fewer demands on them, that makes them uneasy.'' Artists, writers, actors, and academics may be susceptible to guilt about not having to perform arduous manual labor even if they are not actually wealthy. And among those who are rich, the situation is often aggravated. Peggy Rockefeller and Laura Rockefeller were members of the far-left Students for a Democratic Society. Peggy's cousin Marion Weber actually hoped that a revolution would come along and relieve her of her wealth. Alida Rockefeller was also attracted to radicalism, and Abby Rockefeller was smitten with Marxism. Josephine Drexel Biddle Duke, who led a violent demonstration against Secretary of State Dean Rusk, was descended from James Duke, founder of the giant American Tobacco Company. For persons who regret occupying this socio-economic stratum, egalitarian politics offers a way out: if the embarrassing contrast between social positions is reduced or eliminated, there would be much less reason to feel uncomfortable about not being poor, or not being a manual laborer.

HOW closely do metropolitan and major-media journalists fit this profile? Three factors are involved. First of all, they often receive large salaries. A 1985 Los Angeles Times poll showed that only 18 per cent of the general public earned over $40,000, but over half of the newspaper journalists did. According to The Media Elite, by 1990 the starting salary for New York Times reporters exceeded $50,000; the average Washington Post reporter received nearly $60,000. At the three major networks, news anchors may now earn over $1 million per year; even some local anchors now do.

Second, journalism itself is a cushy and enjoyable job that always has many more applicants than openings.

Third, major-media journalists report what is happening in the world but do not participate in it. As the Associated Press's former General Manager Wes Gallagher has observed, a reporter records events but is divorced from them.

All of this supports the conclusion that most journalists, especially those in the major media, will be liberals. Political doctrines that promise to alleviate social inequities would have special value for them, because any lessening of the gulf between the comfortable and the deprived would reduce the philosophical uneasiness of the comfortable. This situation did not always hold true among journalists, but the further they have moved away from the workaday world, the more pronounced it has become.

It is sometimes claimed that journalists become liberals by being continually exposed to news about crime, poverty, and other social problems, the understandable response to which is a bias toward reformist viewpoints. If this were true, however, older journalists would be more liberal than their younger colleagues, having been exposed to such unsettling reports for a longer period. But the Lichter - Rothman surveys mentioned earlier showed that younger journalists are considerably more liberal than their older counterparts. Anyway, if the ''exposure'' reasoning were correct, we could expect all the reports about government misdeeds and scandals to have turned the majority of journalists into libertarians or anarchists by now.

In the past, there were many conservative commentators and newspapers. But those were also the days of hard-bitten, whisky-drinking, seat-of-the-pants journalism, hardly resembling the present-day variety. Media luminary Ben Bagdikian, in fact, has written that before World War II journalism was a way for working-class people to advance themselves, and that college educations were seldom required and may even have been a disadvantage. In 1936, only 51 per cent of reporters in Washington, D.C., were college graduates. Today, 93 per cent have degrees. The profession today is characterized by journalists and editors whose values differ markedly from the values both of their scrappy predecessors and of the masses.

Because of the unique socio-economic situation of journalists, the professional standards of the nation's newspapers have been unable to prevent the wholesale slanting of the news in the directions indicated above. It remains to be seen whether the media will act to restore the political balance that they acknowledge is needed. The first step would be to abandon their efforts to deny that this bias exists.