There are a number of groups out there that presume to be "watchdogs" over media, and pretty much all of these dogs are watching for one reason only — so they can complain that media reports don’t slant in their direction. You can recognize which side they are on immediately — it’s the opposite side of the one that they are certain the media are not on.
Today, we received this report from a group calling itself "MediaMatters for America." I’ll let you guess which "side" they’re on. But what was intriguing this time was that the subject was the op-ed page, and the thing being measured was the one thing that (theoretically) you could use as a quick-and-dirty measurement as to whether an op-ed page "leans" one way or the other — the incidence of "liberal" vs. "conservative" syndicated columnists. Or, in the language of this report, "progressive" vs. "conservative" … oh, dang! I gave away the ideological underpinnings of this report, and I had promised to let you work it out. Sorry.
Anyway, the report concludes that (surprise!) "conservative" columnists predominate. The report is entitled "Black and White and Re(a)d All Over." A sample of the findings:
- In a given week, nationally syndicated progressive columnists are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of 125 million. Conservative columnists, on the other hand, are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of more than 152 million.
- The top 10 columnists as ranked by the number of papers in which they are carried include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives.
This naturally raises the question, "Who is a conservative columnist, and who is a "progressive?" And if you can answer that one to everyone’s satisfaction, I’m going to ask you to start answering my phone for me. But all that matters here is how MediaMatters defines the columnists.
Here’s how they break down those "top 10:"
"Progressive"
- Ellen Goodman
- Leonard Pitts
- Maureen Dowd
"Centrist"
- David Broder
- Tom Friedman
"Conservative"
- George Will
- Kathleen Parker
- Cal Thomas
- Charles Krauthammer
- David Brooks
Oooh. Way conservative, right? And this is particularly interesting because The State runs all of the above columnists, except Ellen Goodman (whom we dropped about 10 years ago, largely because I thought she was past her prime and seemed to writing the same column over and over). So that means we’re really conservative, right?
But let’s look at the list again. Using the popular definitions (and in some cases, the way the syndicates market these people) are these folks correctly categorized? I don’t think so. If you’re going to force everybody who even leans "conservative" into the "red" category, then you need to put Broder and Friedman into the "progressive." That makes their list even. And if you’re going to have a "centrist" category, I would balance it by including a couple of center-right types — specifically, Kathleen Parker and David Brooks — along with the two center-left writers.
Either way, you end up with a balanced top 10.
That said, I don’t think the organization’s scale is that far off, nationally speaking. It’s just not adjusted to South Carolina standards.
But even if you take my objections (and I can easily think of objections to my objections, but I’ll let y’all do that) to heart, The State still leans rightward since we don’t run Goodman, right?
Scroll down a bit in the report, and you’ll find that we don’t run ANY of the top 10 conservative writers beyond the five who show up in the top 10 overall. But we do run two of the lesser "progressives" — Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert — from time to time.
So does that balance out? You tell me — it’s always going to depend on the eye of the beholder, in any case. But let me leave you with three points. First is the fact that Mike Fitts does the op-ed page — I see the page each day after his selections are made, and I try not to second-guess him — and he would probably place some of the above columnists differently from the way I do, so my impressions don’t count for as much as you might think.
Second is the fact that our local contributors play just as big a role on the page as the syndicated columnists, and they are all over the place. If you want to try to keep score there, more power to you; I’ve never tried.
Finally, there is this: "Op-ed" is short for "opposite editorial." The idea is that it provides alternative views that complement, rather than matching, the views of the editorial board. So if left-vs.-right meant as much as MediaMatters seem to think, in a perfect world, liberal editorial pages would face conservative op-ed pages. It doesn’t work like that, but then neither does the world. It’s always more complicated.
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State op-ed: middle of the road, rarely left of center.
State editorial: left of that, but not much.
State news desk: usually left of center, but rarely off the left-hand side of the road.
All in all, reasonably representative of potential readership, but rarely cutting edge, except for your Edwards column. :>)
So who has the State endorsed in the last 7 presidential elections? Let’s see: Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Dole, Bush and Bush. Those endorsements say more about how the State leans than anything else.
“Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.”
I feel safer already.
Why stop at the last seven presidential elections?
When has The State EVER endorsed a Democratic Party candidate for President?
My guess would be Truman.
Let’s ask the same question about the Governors races in SC.
My guess would be other than their visceral hatred of David Beasley, which led to a Nick Theodore endorsement, the last Democratic Party nominee they endorsed would be Dick Riley.