News as Editorial
A Comparison of the Way the NYT, WSJ and WP News Sections Cover the Vigils That Took Place Last Night
When we studied Political Science at NYU, our professor told us to evaluate bias by paying attention not only to the way newspapers wrote about events, but to the amount of space they gave to opposing views. Sure enough, we found that NY papers, including the NYT, gave twice as much space or more to positions they favored.
This kind of analysis is just as valid and valuable today, applied to coverage of last night's vigils by the NYT, WSJ, and WP.
In this particular instance, the NYT comes out as sympathetic to the vigils last night, but in a buried article.
The WSJ has a sort of "guerilla theater" approach--a condensed vigil blurb, but with a tokenistic anti-vigil one-liner tossed in at the end.
The Washington Post has a sort of Uriah Heep approach. It seems at first as if the story is sympathetic. But a more careful reading turns up bias pointing in the other direction.
What is to be done, when the three biggest, and reputedly best, US papers seem to have problems about covering news that doesn't agree with the outlooks of editors and management?
Columns on the op-ed pages are not covered here, since they are usually all over the place--except for the sort of semi-column by Dana Milbank, which is presented as news in the regular news section in today's Washington Post, not on the editorial page.
The New York Times, as usual, has pro-peace stories salted away in the back--this time the vigil story is on page A-19.
But it's pretty sympathetic, after you find it.
"Thousands Gather at Vigils to Support a Mother's Protest--One woman inspires a show of solidarity by critics of the war," by Elisabeth Bumiller. There are some quotes from people participating, there's a large photo of a gathering in Boston, and the story ends with info on Ms. Sheehan's move to the farmland a mile away from the faux ranch.
The Wall Street Journal has mostly economics and business-related articles every day, so it's not a surprise that there's no article about the vigils. But the WSJ has it "What's News" feature on the front page every day--a double column of blurbs about key news stories in the day's paper, but also blurbs about important events/facts not inside the WSJ--often not inside the other main US papers either.
The surprise today is that there's a blurb there in a prominent place, and in italics, so we won't miss it:
The former FBI agent who warned about Moussaoui prior to Sept. 11 attacks is joining the antiwar protest led by a slain soldier's mother near Bush's ranch. An Ohio mother whose Marine son died with 13 others Aug. 3 rejected retreat talk at his funeral.
The WSJ lets us know that Colleen Rowley has joined Ms. Sheehan--but we have to know her name on our own. The zinger sentence about the "Ohio mother" at the end is no doubt intended to "balance" the rest--but that zinger covers a one-shot one-place one-person thing, "balanced" against a several-week multi-location multitude-of-people series of widely known events.
Not so carefully balanced.
But the WP goes way beyond the WSJ in its "balance."
On page A3, below the rubric "Washington Sketch," in bold type--possibly intended to look like some kind of opinion-piece leader-- there is "Deploying Cindy's Antiwar Army," by star WP reporter Dana Milbank.
Though the story is in fact entirely about a gathering of about 500 people outside the White House in the District of Columbia, the accompanying photo is one of a small cluster of five people elsewhere, gathered maybe 20 miles away, in a vigil out on Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda, in the Maryland suburbs.
Dana tells us that, to balance the 500 pro-peace people (since it's Dana, that means 600? 750? 800? 1000?--there was a "knot" of a dozen pro-war people nearby. Was that really 12? Or less than 12? Dana has quotes from 3 of these 12 (or less) people.
Dana has a balance of quotes from 3 of the other group of 500 (or more) people.
Dana first observes portentously, but without substantiation, that the vigil was to have been silent, but that "the 500 demonstrators were not the sort to be silenced."
Dana then goes on to devote half the remaining space in the article to quotes and views of the 500-plus, and the other half of the space to quotes and views of the "knot" of a dozen. This knot just happens to include an "organizer" for Free Republic.com.--whose organizing skills seem to have been wanting this time (Dana doesn't say that, though).
Out of about 20 paragraphs, Dana's story has 9 devoted to the pro-war knot of 12, and the rest to the the "500."
Does this seem fair and balanced? Or fairly unbalanced? Even a bit unhinged, contrasted with the present climate of public opinion as shown in a number of opinion polls.