Rainy day off! Here's a thread I had hoped to start several weeks ago, but wasn't able before taking off for blueberry season.
Back in 2008 Glenn Beck had an interesting regular feature on his radio show: "Battle of the Headlines". In order to get my news and weather during August I had to listen to a station which carried his program and thus heard a number of them.
His idea was to show that the media was in the tank for Obama by comparing several media headlines which had come out that day about Barack Obama with several media headlines which had come out that day about John McCain. Virtually every day the Obama headlines he reported were positive and the McCain ones were negative.
Unfortunately Beck didn't have a very good understanding of how to do such a comparison. Instead of choosing several sources to monitor, and reporting the headlines from those sources consistently, he selected several Obama headlines which for some reason grabbed his eye that day and several McCain headlines which for some reason grabbed his eye that day.
His sources ranged far and wide. He didn't note where he was getting his selections from, but after season I was able to find transcripts of a number of the Battles and look up sources. Far from restricting his search to headlines on news stories, he used sources such as Oprah Winfrey's show. It's almost like he was actively looking for positive headlines to use for the Obama ones and negative headlines to use for the McCain ones and didn't care how far he had to look to find them.
I've been wanting to do a thread for several years now, looking through the actual headlines which appeared during that time period in major media outlets -- The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, etc. -- to see how the results compare with what Beck found. In preparation I went through the NYTimes on microfilm and made notes of most of the headlines -- but have not had time to follow through yet. Some day...
But for now what I'm interested in doing is Battle of the Headlines 2012 -- a real time comparison of the Obama and Romney headlines in the mainstream media.
Now, this is in many ways a flawed way to measure media bias. It assumes both candidates should receive equally favorable coverage, regardless of how well they perform or what positive and negative stories come out about them.
But even so, it's a simple and interesting comparison to make. No reading of the actual news stories is needed; the comparison is simply between the headlines themselves. Things such as "Triumphant Obama/Romney delivers speech to wild crowd approval" are considered positive; things such as "Obama/Romney delivers speech to NRA convention" are considered neutral; "Obama/Romney flubs his lines in speech to NRA convention" are considered negative. Are the mainstream media more inclined to give positive headlines to one candidate and/or more inclined to give negative headlines to one candidate?
One thing I noticed in looking at the Times headlines from 2008 (and checking a couple of Tennessee papers) is that most papers really don't have that many headlines featuring the candidates names on a daily basis. It appeared to me the Times strove to have one Obama headline and one McCain headline daily. (There were other stories about the elections and about the parties, but here we're only concerned with stories in which the candidates names appear.)
So here's what I"d like to suggest. If someone here has daily access to the NYTimes, perhaps they could post a list of all the Obama and Romney headlines that have appeared there in the past few days a couple times a week -- say on Monday (the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday headlines) and Thursday (the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday headlines). Someone else could post a list of all the Obama and Romney headlines which appeared in the Washington Post -- perhaps posting these on Tuesday and Friday. And someone else could post a list of all the Obama and Romney headlines appearing in USA Today -- perhaps posting these on Wednesday and Saturday.
And on Sunday, perhaps someone who subscribes to Newsweek could post all the headlines featuring the word Obama or Romney appearing in that week's issue and someone who subscribes to Time could do the same for that magazine.
That would cover a good selection of the mainstream media.
If there were people available who could do the same for other major newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, that might be interesting too. And I'd love to see the what the headlines from the Washington Times are during this period.) But it might be good not to do too many papers in one thread, so that it's easier to see week by week what the headlines from each of the examined papers were and whether or not there is any apparent bias. If there's interest in doing more papers, perhaps there could be a spin-off thread, Battle of the Headlines 2.
Would people be interested in undertaking such a project? Unfortunately I'll be largely without computer access so won't be able to participate actively in the thread until September. But if folks with access to these papers were interested in posting the headlines regularly, and perhaps if someone were willing to do a job aggregating the results periodically (the way hgc does in the vice-presidential possibilities thread) I think it could be an interesting thread.
Back in 2008 Glenn Beck had an interesting regular feature on his radio show: "Battle of the Headlines". In order to get my news and weather during August I had to listen to a station which carried his program and thus heard a number of them.
His idea was to show that the media was in the tank for Obama by comparing several media headlines which had come out that day about Barack Obama with several media headlines which had come out that day about John McCain. Virtually every day the Obama headlines he reported were positive and the McCain ones were negative.
Unfortunately Beck didn't have a very good understanding of how to do such a comparison. Instead of choosing several sources to monitor, and reporting the headlines from those sources consistently, he selected several Obama headlines which for some reason grabbed his eye that day and several McCain headlines which for some reason grabbed his eye that day.
His sources ranged far and wide. He didn't note where he was getting his selections from, but after season I was able to find transcripts of a number of the Battles and look up sources. Far from restricting his search to headlines on news stories, he used sources such as Oprah Winfrey's show. It's almost like he was actively looking for positive headlines to use for the Obama ones and negative headlines to use for the McCain ones and didn't care how far he had to look to find them.
I've been wanting to do a thread for several years now, looking through the actual headlines which appeared during that time period in major media outlets -- The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, etc. -- to see how the results compare with what Beck found. In preparation I went through the NYTimes on microfilm and made notes of most of the headlines -- but have not had time to follow through yet. Some day...
But for now what I'm interested in doing is Battle of the Headlines 2012 -- a real time comparison of the Obama and Romney headlines in the mainstream media.
Now, this is in many ways a flawed way to measure media bias. It assumes both candidates should receive equally favorable coverage, regardless of how well they perform or what positive and negative stories come out about them.
But even so, it's a simple and interesting comparison to make. No reading of the actual news stories is needed; the comparison is simply between the headlines themselves. Things such as "Triumphant Obama/Romney delivers speech to wild crowd approval" are considered positive; things such as "Obama/Romney delivers speech to NRA convention" are considered neutral; "Obama/Romney flubs his lines in speech to NRA convention" are considered negative. Are the mainstream media more inclined to give positive headlines to one candidate and/or more inclined to give negative headlines to one candidate?
One thing I noticed in looking at the Times headlines from 2008 (and checking a couple of Tennessee papers) is that most papers really don't have that many headlines featuring the candidates names on a daily basis. It appeared to me the Times strove to have one Obama headline and one McCain headline daily. (There were other stories about the elections and about the parties, but here we're only concerned with stories in which the candidates names appear.)
So here's what I"d like to suggest. If someone here has daily access to the NYTimes, perhaps they could post a list of all the Obama and Romney headlines that have appeared there in the past few days a couple times a week -- say on Monday (the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday headlines) and Thursday (the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday headlines). Someone else could post a list of all the Obama and Romney headlines which appeared in the Washington Post -- perhaps posting these on Tuesday and Friday. And someone else could post a list of all the Obama and Romney headlines appearing in USA Today -- perhaps posting these on Wednesday and Saturday.
And on Sunday, perhaps someone who subscribes to Newsweek could post all the headlines featuring the word Obama or Romney appearing in that week's issue and someone who subscribes to Time could do the same for that magazine.
That would cover a good selection of the mainstream media.
If there were people available who could do the same for other major newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, that might be interesting too. And I'd love to see the what the headlines from the Washington Times are during this period.) But it might be good not to do too many papers in one thread, so that it's easier to see week by week what the headlines from each of the examined papers were and whether or not there is any apparent bias. If there's interest in doing more papers, perhaps there could be a spin-off thread, Battle of the Headlines 2.
Would people be interested in undertaking such a project? Unfortunately I'll be largely without computer access so won't be able to participate actively in the thread until September. But if folks with access to these papers were interested in posting the headlines regularly, and perhaps if someone were willing to do a job aggregating the results periodically (the way hgc does in the vice-presidential possibilities thread) I think it could be an interesting thread.
