Media Bias, Part 4,080
Take a look at the abstract of an extremely ambitious study about how "U.S. newspapers" cover the issue of unemployment under Republican presidents as opposed to their Democratic counterparts:
We study the agenda-setting political behavior of a large sample of U.S. newspapers during the last decade, and the behavior of smaller samples for longer time periods. Our purpose is to examine the intensity of coverage of economic issues as a function of the underlying economic conditions and the political affiliation of the incumbent president, focusing on unemployment, inflation, the federal budget and the trade deficit. We investigate whether there is any significant correlation between the endorsement policy of newspapers, and the differential coverage of bad/good economic news as a function of the president's political affiliation. We find evidence that newspapers with pro-Democratic endorsement pattern systematically give more coverage to high unemployment when the incumbent president is a Republican than when the president is Democratic, compared to newspapers with pro-Republican endorsement pattern. This result is not driven by the partisanship of readers. There is on the contrary no evidence of a partisan bias -- or at least of a bias that is correlated with the endorsement policy -- for stories on inflation, budget deficit or trade deficit.Ooooooh! Smoking gun! Academics dusted for prints and finally found left-handed bias -- it's like CSI: Newspapers. But if only it was that simple.
The bulk of the study, according to its own description, looks at the 'last decade.' 10 years sounds like a long time, but when you're looking at presidencies, it only covers some of Clinton's second term (at the peak of the Dot Com boom) and Bush's presidency thus far – a period marked by economic issues, some arising form the upheaval of 9/11 and others more directly tied to policy.
This study has worth, no doubt, but not as stand-alone proof. Instead, it's an extremely solid data point for a larger look at the media's coverage of economic issues – and how those shift and change with different men in the White House.
And, as the New York Times Freakonomics blog notes:
So now we know that Republican administrations are slammed for high unemployment rates. But along the same logic, are pro-Republican newspapers pushing stories on inflation, deficits, or social issues during a Democratic president's term?Be on the lookout for a follow-up piece if the National Bureau of Academic Research – the Web site posting the study – provides me the study in its entirety. Upon first blush, the study seems to oversell itself ... but that doesn't mean that it won't be radio and TV fodder for commentators who take kindly to its premise.