Barely a day goes by without President Trump firing off an angry tweet referring to the ‘fake news’ media. But what do we know about actual political bias in the media? Eric Merkley studied 400,000 news stories published over three decades and has found that the tone of economic news is more favorable during Democratic presidencies compared to Republican administrations.
Since even before his election over two years ago, President Donald Trump and his Republican surrogates have made a habit of responding to critical news coverage with allegations that mainstream press reports are “fake news.” This allegation, regardless of how often it is repeated, has been shown to be fundamentally without merit.
However, there has also been a long history of complaints from conservative elites that journalists are biased against conservatives and the Republican Party in their reporting for mainstream news outlets. There is evidence that most journalists identify with the Democratic Party and as ideological liberals. Consequently, these allegations cannot be so easily dismissed.
In new research, I find evidence of considerable bias against Republican presidential administrations in mainstream economic news content.
Perspectives on Partisan Media Bias
Scholarly research on partisan media bias has a history almost as long as conservative complaints about such bias. There are reasoned arguments underlying a number of different perspectives. Some scholars have argued that we might expect coverage to be biased in favour of conservatives because of corporate concentration in the news media. Others contend that editors have the ability to orient news content towards the tastes of their outlet’s readers, so we should expect bias to vary accordingly.
These perspectives implicitly minimize the role of journalists in subtly shaping content in ways they see fit. They can do this by deciding which perspectives to emphasize or deemphasize in the course of writing a story – known as framing. This process can be shaped by a number of different factors, but one of which could well be the values and perspectives brought to the table by the individual journalist.
Detecting Media Bias
How would we know if journalists are allowing their values and partisanship to affect the tenor of their content? There is no straightforward answer to this question. The crux of the problem is that negative or positive coverage may be deserved depending on the performance of politicians of the Democratic or Republican parties. For example, we might expect a lower tone than usual to be directed at the Republican Party during the 2008 Financial Crisis because they controlled the White House. Conversely, balanced coverage can be seen as biased if performance between the parties was anything but equal. It would strain credulity to expect equal treatment of the Democratic and the Republican parties in stories related to corruption under the current administration.
To address this problem, I examine economic news content. I argue that this content is likely to be biased if it is systematically more positive during Republican or Democratic presidencies even after accounting for objective economic conditions. To test this proposition I downloaded over 400,000 news stories on unemployment and inflation between 1985 and 2013 from the Associated Press newswire and an assortment of high-circulating newspapers, including prominent national newspapers like the New York Times and the USA Today, and those with histories of endorsing the Republican Party, such as the Dallas Morning News and the San Diego Union-Tribune.
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I measure the tone of news content in these articles by using the Lexicoder Sentiment Dictionary, which allows me to count the number of positively and negatively-charged words in each article in order to construct corresponding tone scores. From this, I create over-time measures of tone in unemployment and inflation coverage for my sampled news outlets, averaged quarterly. Armed with this data, I estimate what we would expect the tone of coverage to be during Democratic and Republican administrations with equivalent levels of economic performance.
I find that unemployment news content is approximately 12 percent more favourable during Democratic presidencies. The equivalent number for inflation coverage is 18 percent. Figures 1 and 2 below plot the tone of unemployment and inflation coverage, respectively. The dotted red line displays the estimated average tone during Republican administrations after controlling for economic performance, while the dotted blue line shows the equivalent for Democratic administrations.
Figure 1 – Estimated bias in media tone in unemployment coverage
Note: blue (red) dashed line indicates estimated tone during Democratic (Republican) administrations.
Figure 2 – Estimated bias in media tone in inflation coverage
Note: blue (red) dashed line indicates estimated tone during Democratic (Republican) administrations.
Biased Reaction to Changing Economic Conditions
I conduct further analyses on the media’s reaction to short-term developments in the economy. Substantial research has shown that journalists adjust their reporting largely in response to short-term changes in the economy rather than in response to long-term developments. They also change their coverage more in response to negative developments rather than positive ones.
With this in mind, we might expect journalists to react more negatively to short-term, worsening economic conditions during Republican presidencies if there is partisan bias in the news media. So, how much do we expect the tone of coverage to change in response to a 0.5 percent increase in the unemployment rate for Democratic and Republican administrations with the same starting unemployment rate?
I find that only Republican administrations are treated with more negative coverage in response to short-term increases in unemployment or the inflation rate. These results are shown in Figure 3, which plots the estimated change in average media tone in response to changes in the unemployment (left panel) and inflation rate (right panel). If the news media is a watchdog for worsening economic conditions, they appear to only do so during Republican presidencies.
Figure 3 – Estimated change in media tone in response to changes in the unemployment rate (left) and inflation rate (right) for Republican and Democratic administrations.
Note: 90 percent confidence intervals
What’s next
Trust in mainstream news media is on the decline, in no small part because of a sharp drop in this trust among conservatives. No doubt much of this is a result of manufactured outrage by conservative elites in response to deserved negative coverage. However, we can’t simply dismiss complaints of media bias outright given the dominance of non-conservatives in mainstream news outlets. If mainstream news coverage is biased for reasons unrelated to the actual performance of candidates and office-holders, it should be of genuine concern, and it would need to be addressed in order to help restore bi-partisan trust in the mainstream media.
My findings suggest that there may well be something to these complaints. But, this research is far from the last word on this question. It stands within a large academic literature littered with mixed findings resulting from a wide range of methodological approaches. Future research should continue to examine the tone of news coverage – a feature of the news content closest to the heart of conservative objections – with an eye to empirical strategies that allow us to take into account systematic differences in party performance.
Many will no doubt find these findings troubling, particularly in a heated political climate where mainstream news outlets are under constant rhetorical siege. There is, however, a possibility that the values and partisan identities of journalists may subtly shape their reporting in ways that disadvantage the Republican Party. This is something we can acknowledge while simultaneously appreciating that most journalists do a very tough job well and that the mainstream media is essential to a healthy democracy.
- This article is based on the paper, ‘Partisan Bias in Economic News Content: New Evidence’, in American Politics Research.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USApp– American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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About the author
Eric Merkley – University of British Columbia
Eric Merkley is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of British Columbia and a Joseph-Armand Bombardier SSHRC Scholar. He specializes in public opinion and political communication. He studies how different types of media bias influence public opinion using text analysis, experiments, and time series methods.
Clean, objective research and a sound article. I teach high school journalism; it’s a challenge to get students interested in national politics. It’s also a struggle to get fellow journalism teachers to see their potential bias. Admittedly, I’m a conservative in a field of liberals. I work at ensuring my students learn to research and write about topics in a well-rounded fashion, even if I personally disagree with the stance or topic. I keep hoping the profession will take a hard look at itself and find balance. Your article provides a great first step.
Here’s an example of bias from the American media. CBS recently reported that in late March, 2020, President Trump partly blamed a shortage of face masks in New York during the Covid-19 pandemic on “theft”. During the report, CBS showed Governor Cuomo responding to Trump’s “theft” assertion with, “I don’t know what he was implying.” What CBS DIDN”T mention in this report was that in early March, 2020, Cuomo said THE EXACT SAME THING in a press interview! The network made Trump out to be deflecting “blame” for the shortage, when it fact a prominent Democrat that CBS LIKES likewise wondered aloud if masks were being stolen. Bias and hypocrisy, never ending, from much of the US media.
I have to question what this study means. You have chosen to compare Democrats and Republicans, both of which are pretty “conservative” and either right-wing or centre-right in their views compared to Europe and other western nations.
Quote: “I find that unemployment news content is approximately 12 percent more favourable during Democratic presidencies.” Maybe the news is just more favourable for democrats during the time period you looked at. That doesn’t suggest bias.
Anyone living in the UK who watches American news immediately will notice that “conservative” values are widespread and unquestioned across all media outlets. Neither the Democrats or the Republicans will debate specific issues as they both agree. Socialism, liberal and the Left are used as insults.. Socialist policies like welfare are widely equated with communism and authoritarianism.
There might be some type of bias between democrats and republicans, but overall I think the more interesting question is about political bias (left/right wing).
I’d like to see more by the author. I like looking into the bias of the media as I have seen a lot of it, but this may have well been my own bias. Knowing that the author is also looking into this bias makes me feel as though I am not just trying to see something that is just not there.
I think that an interesting study might also be looking at the possible censorship of the internet – be this toward the left or right. It feels as though in some ways the press has been working toward ripping the country apart to garner larger stories. This would be an interesting story.
The fact of the matter is there is a strong liberal bias in all media. People try to blame Trump because he constantly spoke of fake media however; trust in mainstream media has declined since Watergate era and not just by conservatives but all Americans. In the Watergate era 72% of Americans trusted media today only 32% have trust in the mainstream media. The decline started well before Mr. Trump took office or even announced his candidacy. As media has become large conglomerates owned by only a few companies and drove small town papers out of business, which was also driven by introducing free news on the internet foolishly thinking ads would cover the cost. When local news is removed its hard to verify if a story is true or if the large state papers even know your there.
When media throws tough questions at one president and lobs softball at another how can trust be regained? When one president gingerly takes a step and he is laughed at and his physical and mental well being is questioned by the media and another out right falls going up a set of stairs and its the steps fault how can trust be gained. When one president may not be grammatically correct in his speeches but is coherent about what he says and another is obviously lost and cant get a sentence out then its a speech impediment he has never shown in years. No there is no trust and I sure miss the days of fair unbiased reporting.