Is the media slanted? Without a doubt, it is. The research in Left Turn shows that, conclusively. The really interesting part, though, is that the amount of bias (both left and right) will surprise you. The chart below shows some of the slant quotients from our major media outlets.
Left Turn uses three different methods to calculate the Slant Quotients of media outlets. (A Slant Quotient of 50.4 is perfectly centrist. Higher numbers indicate liberal outlets. Lower numbers indicate conservative outlets.)
One method uses think-tank citations as the basic data. According to this method, the following are the SQs of twenty of the most prominent news outlets in the U.S.
ABC Good Morning America | 56.1 | |
ABC World News Tonight | 61.0 | |
CBS Early Show | 66.6 | |
CBS Evening News | 73.7 | |
CNN NewsNight with Aaron Brown | 56.0 | |
Drudge Report | 60.4 | |
Fox News Spec. Rept. w/ Brit Hume | 39.7 | |
Los Angeles Times | 70.0 | |
NBC Nightly News | 61.6 | |
NBC Today Show | 64.0 | |
New York Times | 73.7 | |
Newshour with Jim Lehrer | 55.8 | |
Newsweek | 66.3 | |
NPR Morning Edition | 66.3 | |
Time Magazine | 65.4 | |
U.S. News and World Report | 65.8 | |
USA Today | 63.4 | |
Wall Street Journal | 85.1 | |
Washington Post | 66.6 | |
Washington Times | 35.4 |
A second method uses loaded political phrases (like “death tax” or “estate tax”) as basic data.
(These data were compiled by Mathew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro, two rising-star economists at the University of Chicago. Gentzkow and Shapiro did not compute “Slant Quotients” per se. Instead, their method solves the following thought experiment: Consider the loaded political phrases that a particular outlet reported, and suppose instead the outlet had been a member of Congress. What is the most likely conservativeness of the district of such a member of Congress, where conservativeness is defined by the vote share of George W. Bush in the 2004 election? Groseclose conducts a regression analysis [a common statistical technique], which allows him to convert Bush vote shares into a predicted Political Quotient of the district’s representative. This allows him to convert the Gentzkow-Shapiro results into Slant Quotients.) According to this method, the following are the SQs of the twenty highest-circulation newspapers in the U.S.
SQ Rank | Newspaper | Circulation | Slant Quotient |
1 | Detroit Free Press | 330,000 | 81.5 |
2 | N.Y. Daily News | 718,000 | 81.0 |
3 | Atlanta Journal-Constitution | 375,000 | 74.8 |
4 | San Francisco Chronicle | 386,600 | 71.9 |
5 | Chicago Tribune | 566,000 | 70.4 |
6 | Dallas Morning News | 411,000 | 69.8 |
7 | USA Today | 2,278,000 | 68.6 |
8 | Philadelphia Inquirer | 352,000 | 68.4 |
9 | Boston Globe | 382,000 | 67.8 |
10 | New York Times | 1,120,000 | 67.3 |
11 | Los Angeles Times | 815,000 | 66.1 |
12 | New York Post | 724,000 | 66.0 |
13 | (Long Island) Newsday | 398,000 | 65.9 |
14 | Washington Post | 699,000 | 65.9 |
15 | Newark Star-ledger | 372,000 | 65.8 |
16 | Cleveland Plain Dealer | 344,000 | 64.8 |
17 | Mineapolis Star Tribune | 345,000 | 64.0 |
18 | Arizona Republic | 433,000 | 55.5 |
19 | Wall St. Journal | 2,062,000 | 55.1 |
20 | Houston Chronicle | 503,000 | 53.8 |
A third method notes two equally-true sets of facts about the Bush tax cuts: (i) that in dollar terms, the rich received a disproportionate share of the cuts, and (ii) that the cuts made the tax system more progressive—that is, after the cuts took place, the share of the total taxes that the rich would pay actually increased. Liberal politicians and media outlets tended to report fact (i) relatively more, while conservative politicians and media outlets tended to report (ii) relatively more. The third method notes the relative frequencies that an outlet reported fact (i) or (ii). According to this method, the following are the SQs of twenty of the most prominent news outlets in the U.S.
Media Outlet | SQ |
ABC Good Morning America | 63.5 |
ABC World News Tonight | 83.7 |
CBS Early Show | 68.3 |
CBS Evening News | 86.8 |
CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports | 77.8 |
Fox News Special Report | 65.3 |
Los Angeles Times | 80.4 |
NBC Nightly News | 63.4 |
NBC Today Show | 63.5 |
New York Times | 83.9 |
Newhour with Jim Lehrer | 77.9 |
Newsweek | 100.0 |
NPR Morning Edition | 74.1 |
TIme Magazine | 100.0 |
U.S. News & World Report | 100.0 |
USA Today | 82.2 |
Wall Street Journal | 74.1 |
Washington Post | 78.9 |
Washington Times | 67.3 |