Another Measure of MSM Bias

Sunday newspapers barely deserve the name newspaper. Since they're largely written and laid out well before Sunday, they contain little actual "news." Even the front section of the typical Sunday paper is filled more with features and fluff than with hard news. About all that's really news is in the sports section, which is obliged to do full coverage of Saturday's many games.

Of course, papers operate this way so that their reporters and editors can have a weekend too. The Sunday paper is largely completed by Friday. A skeletal staff does the final writing and editing before putting it to bed late Saturday night. And there it is in the driveway on Sunday morning.

The Cincinnati Enquirer is certainly no exception to this pattern. On Sunday its not-so-gentle readers can expect maybe one actual news story on the front page and one on page two. Most of the local reporting is of the investigative or analytical variety, which is often quite helpful. But in the main on Sundays the front section reads more like a monthly magazine, minus the depth, than a newspaper.

What SWNID notices about this phenomenon is the measure it allows of the interests and biases of the editors. On a typical weekday there's enough actual news to be covered that editors have relatively little discretion on what to print. That is, relative to Sunday. Since they're covering little up-to-the-minute news on Sunday, editors can choose what they think is interesting. Hence, we see what's in their heads.

And what's in the heads of the Cincinnati Enquirer's weekend editors is clearly far to the left of the paper's readers. We note the following discretionary stories in section A of today's edition:

• On p. A3 appears a New York Times report on the growing number of prisoners serving life sentences in the United States. The report frames this trend as "something never before seen in [the United States'] history and unheard of around the globe." It makes no note whatsoever of the correlation between longer sentences and lower crime rates, a statistically demonstrable correlation, by the way.
• On p. A4 appears a story with the tasty title "'Boi' or 'grrl'?" discussing teens and young adults who are deliberately blurring their gender identities. The article offers not one statistic about the actual frequency with which such things are done, nor one observation about the long-term mental health of youth who bend their genders. The tone is entirely affirming and celebratory.
• On p. A5 appears a story on an Ohio Marine who has seen most of his friends killed in Iraq. What's distinctive here is the title on this second page of the story, "Lone survivor questions war," which can only connect to a final remark in the story, where the Marine says that he's frustrated at the lack of progress he's seen in the specific part of Iraq where he serves. He makes no mention of the larger strategy or the justification for the invasion.
• On p. A10 appears a New York Times story reporting that poor families generally do not collect the child tax credit that Bush signed into law in 2001. The credit is refundable in many cases only up to the amount of taxes withheld. The story notes that black and Hispanic families receive disproportionately less of this credit. Of course, it does not note what percentage of taxes collected come from these groups to begin with.
• On p. A13 a story--more an encomium, really-- from the McClatchy News Service (indeed!) describing "[Bill] Clinton's new spotlight." A quote from a former Clinton official is boxed for emphasis: "I think he's found his voice as a former president." It similarly positively compares Clinton as ex-president to Jimmy Carter. Little is mentioned of the repeated critical comments about Republican Presidents made by either ex-P of the Ds.

Now, to be fair, we must note that the day's main local investigative story concerns a serious loophole in Ohio law that allows violent juvenile offenders who are judged incompetent to stand trial to go free, without restraint or treatment of any kind. But when it comes to the stories pulled off the wire services, the focus is overwhelmingly on the left: the triumphal erosion of traditional sexual roles, the triumphal procession of retired liberals, the awful things that conservatives do to the poor and downtrodden, and the awful state of things in Iraq.

Not one of these stories was news. All were written days before the deadline. None told a story in any depth or with any consideration of alternative points of view on its meaning.

In other words, the editors were acting at their discretion. And they showed themselves to be completely contained in the echo chamber of the left.

These are the kind of journalists who resent the accusation of bias, though they make it constantly against alternative media outlets like talk radio, Fox News and, dare we say it, bloggers. If the whole of the media were theirs, as it was until about twelve years ago, this is all that anyone would hear.

But it's not, as SWNID's gentle readers know very well.

Postscript: for an antidote to the Times stories on the prison population and the tax cuts, see Charles Murray's piece on OpinionJournal.com. Murray, bete noire of the left for his famous Bell Curve of the 1990s, writes again on the grim reality of America's underclass and its statistical correlation with unsocialized young men,traceablee statistically to fatherlessness. For a longer take on this, and a real tour de force, see Kay S. Hymowitz in the glorious City Journal, who pursues Murray's thesis with singleminded determination.