Here's a link to an academic study about bias in the news media relating to immigration reporting. The gist of the paper is summed up this way by the PR department at Rice University:
A new study released by Rice University in Houston finds that California newspapers located closer to the border of Mexico routinely provide a more negative slant on immigration in general news reporting and on their opinion pages than the state's newspapers located further away from the border.The study, "Slanted Newspaper Coverage of Immigration: The Importance of Economics and Geography," was conducted by Rice University political scientist Regina Branton and Johanna Dunaway of Louisiana State University and published in the Policy Studies Journal.
Using content analysis, geographic information systems and contextual data, Branton and her research staff examined 1,227 California newspaper news articles and opinion pieces from 2004-05.
"We found that newspapers located closer to the Mexican border often report the more negative side of the immigration issue," Branton said. "Moreover, we found corporate-owned newspapers are more likely to report a negative slant to the issue than privately owned newspapers."
Branton said that the reason for the difference is that newspapers are trying to please their audience - the readers - and thus maximize profits.
"While all news organizations are driven somewhat by the need to make profits, a public group of shareholders seeks to maximize profits and considers that the main goal," she said.
"It's been well-documented that the media report heavily on sex, violence and crime to appeal to readers," she said. "The immigration issue is an emotional national issue that newspapers can sensationalize and provide influence on."
Holy cow! Newspapers want to appeal to readers by writing about things that readers are interested in? You don't say! God forbid that newspapers would try to please their audience and maximize profits. The horror...the horror.
Here's a news flash, professors: the entire dadgum newspaper industry is wobbling on its last legs! And you are not only shocked, but offended that newspapers struggling for their lives would actually, you know, try to create products that actual readers would pay cash money to read?!
Somewhere, a turnip truck is bumping along without two of its passengers.
Moreover, how do these academics figure that border newspapers that report the "negative" side of immigration more often than papers away from border areas are somehow guilty of slanting the coverage? Isn't it at least possible that the reporters and editors covering the story from border areas see aspects of the story that reporters and editors who live farther away do not? Isn't it at least possible that the impact of immigration on, say, the people around Laredo is substantially different from the impact on the people of Dallas, and that could account for differences in news coverage?
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College costs have become out of control, probably in part because colleges waste money employing people like this. Higher education needs to be the next bubble to burst.
I read some correspondence to Flannery O'Connor once, can't remember who wrote it to her.
Author said that the white folks up North didn't care how high blacks got, as long as they didn't get too close, white folks down South didn't care how close blacks got as long as they didn't get too high.
People who do university studies are usually very good at pinpointing the biases of folks very different from themselves. It's not usually very useful information.
Mostly fine points, Rod, but I didn't get that they were outraged. You might just have assumed that they are because they are academics, and therefore liberal until proven otherwise.
I have to admit that this is a pretty stupid story.I won't comment on the merits of the study, because I won't take to time to look up the original paper, but it's possible that the reporting on this stuff makes it sound stupider than the study itself. I think the "beauty" of social science research, from the university PR standpoint, is that it is cheap to conduct, and often the "results" can be reduced to some headline-grabbing punchline, so there is a lot of bang for the buck. What I have found so interesting when talking to students who are social science majors is the degree of cynicism about the absence of rigor in much of the work. It's the opposite of natural science research, which tends to be much more rigorous, but is expensive to conduct, and often can not be reduced to an idiot-friendly punchline.
Academic PR could be a study in media whore-dom. I say this as an academic whose research has been ridiculously overstated and packaged by university PR department, and the story gets picked up by the AP to become filler for a zillion news papers. Any day now I am expecting someone to call me about that cancer cure I apparently developed.
It seems like bad research, as it doesn't address a pressing research question (i.e. is anyone surprised by the finding? or is there an ongoing debate about the question?). But academics live in the world of publish or perish, so there they go. If they go this published, more power to them. Above all, though, the tone of the commentary says more about the commentator than about the research. Settle down, Rod! Have a pint of bitters!
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