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Bias in the News

Partisanship and Negativity in Media Coverage of Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton

Support is surfacing in the popular media, and in some cases the scholarly press, for allegations that the media's perspective is tinted by partisanship and negativity. Despite great attention to these matters, analyses subjecting these claims to objective testing, using meaningful baselines with which to compare coverage, have been lacking. By studying coverage of unemployment, an issue for which outcomes are known and quantified, this research offers comparisons of coverage when presidents of both parties have produced the same results and when the unemployment rate has fallen or risen by a comparable margin. The results, utilizing a fair baseline from which to evaluate media coverage, provide no evidence of any meaningful partisan bias while offering strong evidence that the media cover bad outcomes far more than good.

The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 6, No. 3, 31-46 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/108118001129172215


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