Media Bias
The Great Canadian Newspaper Bias Index grew out of a project I started after the May 2011 election. I ask one basic question: what is the editorial bias of the major Canadian English-language newspapers? Conservatives claim that the left controls the media. The left claims that conservatives control the media. Which “side” is right? Or is no side right? Is the media actually well-balanced, enough to tick off everyone it disagrees with?
This study tracks the editorial websites of twenty of the largest newspapers from coast to coast. They range from the Globe & Mail and the National Post to the Vancouver Sun and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. I don’t join the unending debates about whether and so is a leftist or a right-winger or a centrist. Instead, I am interested only in specific, institutional and organizational connections. Whether you feel that the Conservative Party is really only centrist, or the Fraser Institute isn’t really right-wing, is a debate for another day.
Election Endorsements
The first and most obvious question, of course, is which political parties newspaper editorial boards endorse during election campaigns. Newspaper endorsements are odious and pathetic spectacles from a free press that is supposed to be non-partisan and independent, but nevertheless, there they are. As you can see, the major newspapers clearly have a preference when it comes to who should rule them:
Op-Ed Contributions
When I started the project back in 2011, I took as my main focus the easiest one to chart: the organizations and backgrounds represented by people given space on newspaper op-ed pages. Again, I don’t deal with subjective questions of “left-wing” or “right-wing” bias. Instead, I just check to see whether each guest contributor to the op-ed section of a newspaper comes from a progressive organization (including environmental and anti-poverty groups, labour unions, etc.), a social or neo-conservative group (such as Cardus or Civitas), a business trade association or free market think tank (like the Fraser Institute), or a political party. Many columnists don’t appear to fall into any of those categories.
Consistently, this study shows, the major newspapers have given privileged space to business groups, conservative politicians, and social conservative groups, as opposed to Liberal and NDP politicians and to progressive groups (labour unions, environmentalists, etc.), at a rate of roughly 2 to 1 overall.
Here’s how space on the op-ed pages has been distributed since April 2012:
In-house Columnists
In my above study, I specifically avoided looking at in-house columnists because most of them are career journalists who may be extremely ideological, but don’t have any of the objective, institutional connections that we can count with respect to guest op-eds. But my critics have argued that leaving out the in-house columnists makes my list biased and that a list of media columnists would prove that the media is, in fact, left wing. So then.
In this case, the percentages are lower because of the high proportion of professional journalists without any specific partisan or business connections. (Again, mere accusations of bias don’t count: there has to be a specific background to point to here.) For that reason, I’m organizing this part of the study a little bit differently. There are only two categories: Conservative/Business (including all conservative and business groups and political parties) and Progressive/Labour (including the Liberal Party, the NDP, and all labour and leftist groups of various kinds).
Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be much point in studying the media as a whole here. Instead, each paper gets a score based on the ratio of conservative to progressive columnists. The score is the ratio, not the number of columnists: for instance, a “Progressive 2.5″ means that the newspaper has 2.5 progressive columnists for every 1 conservative columnists. The higher the score, the more extreme the newspaper.
I really want user feedback on this part of the study. Anybody who can identify the bias of a particular columnist is invited to do so in the comments section for each paper, and the list (and score) will be updated accordingly.
- National Post — Conservative/Business +8.6 (op-ed page, finance page)
- Toronto Sun — Conservative/Business +7 (opinion page)
- Ottawa Citizen — Conservative/Business +4 (op-ed page)
- Globe & Mail — Conservative/Business +1.2 (op-ed page)
- Halifax Chronicle-Herald – Conservative/Business +1 (op-ed page)
- Toronto Star — Left/Progressive +2 (editorial page)
The following newspapers are also currently included in the study:
- Calgary Herald
- Charlottetown Guardian
- Edmonton Journal
- Hamilton Spectator
- Kitchener Record
- London Free Press
- Montreal Gazette
- Regina Leader-Post
- Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
- St. John’s Telegram
- Vancouver Province
- Vancouver Sun
- Victoria Times-Colonist
- Winnipeg Free Press
Supporting data is available here.
Posts in This Series
- Part 4: April 30, 2012: April 2012 on the Op-Ed Pages
- Part 3: April 2012: Sixth Estate Media Bias Project Relaunched
- Part 2: May 28, 2011: National Post Sells Out, Business Groups Pulling Away
- Part 1: May 11, 2011
Rob
You are AWESOME!
Just stumbled across the site.
Keep up the good work.
RF
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Marcus
Excellent work. I have been trying to get people to see this since taking a media literacy workshop and reading “Media Monopoly” several years ago. I have called reporters to discuss the lack of progressive voices in the media usually meeting vociferous denial.
Hmmmm… Now who will report on this in the media….
Sixth Estate
I’m glad to hear this, Marcus.
I’ve been thinking of reviving the project to compare year over year, but haven’t had time to do it yet. Maybe next month I’ll run through the papers again and track it. My guess is it’s pretty much the same as last year.
Rory
This is a joke and you had a huge bias before even starting e.g not including the Sun. You’re also not looking at newspaper-employed columnists which make up the bulk of newspaper op/ed pages. The Star, for instance, does not employ a single centrist or right wing columnist. Not one. And yet you claim there is no left wing version of the National Post?
Sixth Estate
Uh… you think including the Sun would have made the results look less right-wing? Give me a break.
Yes, I do claim there is no left-wing version of the National Post. With the singular exception of their decision to abandon the Liberals in the endorsement race last year, the Star is a solidly Liberal newspaper.
And this is a question of counting, not bias. I’m very sorry if reality doesn’t measure up to your expectations for it.
Rory
Dude, you said: “I’ve left out the Sun chain because I don’t think there is any serious disagreement about them leaning decidedly to the right” as if the same can’t be said about the Star or the Globe being obviously left.
I’m not disputing what you found but it’s a joke not to count staff op/ed columnists instead of just guest columns when measuring a paper’s op/ed slant considering they represent the bulk of space in any op/ed section. And the fact is the Star only employs left wing columnists – several of whom like Goar, Mcquag and Siddiqui are far to the left of even the NDP.
Sixth Estate
The op-ed page represents editorial discretion and is a useful count. If you’re so upset I suggest you draw up your own list and see how it compares. Go on. I’ll be waiting. In the meantime, the month I did this count, it is a demonstrable fact that even the Star gave more space to business representatives than union ones when it comes to guest editorials.
I picked the papers that are “indisputably” left wing for my count because I don’t think anybody would seriously argue that the Sun chain isn’t right wing. I’m not sure where you’re trying to go with this, but statistically speaking, I rigged the selections so that they should come out in YOUR favour. And they still didn’t.
The problem with counting journalists is that most of them are formally apolitical, and again, this would require a value judgement on my side about where they fall on a political spectrum. Looking at the guest editorials means I don’t have to do that, because the guest contributors normally represent specific and identifiable interest groups.
You’re welcome, of course, to come up with your own way of measuring editorial bias in the Canadian newspaper scene. But I highly doubt you will be able to demonstrate a left-wing bias in any significant fashion. Still, go ahead and prove me wrong.
But in order to do it, you’ll have to put in a little bit more effort than just rattling off some Star journalists that you claim are “left of the NDP.” I can rattle off lists of biased journalists, too, and my lists will be as long as yours are.
Rory
Ok you’re on. I’ll provide a list of columnists at the big dailies and identify whether they’re left or right wing based on whether they self-identify as such and their positions on the issues (e.g. The Star’s Heather Mallick often self-identifies as a left winger).
And, just to clarify – the current Conservative Party of Canada has adopted neo-liberal policies which are centrist or at most centre-right, the Liberals under Dion, Ignatieff and Rae have moved left from the Chretien years and the NDP is left though Layton made efforts to make the party somewhat more centrist.
Sixth Estate
Okay, but you’re now moving beyond the point of my list. I don’t find this division into left centre right helpful, because it’s too subjective. On my grid, Liberal, Conservative and NDP are literally that: they represent those parties. And the others represent business groups, progressive groups, social conservative (traditional family) groups, etc.
So we can do that, and it will be another way of measuring it, but my method would be more objective about who is getting represented, whereas yours will be a more subjective list based on political spectrum.
If you want to define the Conservative Party as liberal, which is true in the 19th century sense, then there’s really no point debating this. The mainstream media is liberal, the Toronto Star is either conservative or leftist (depending on how elitist you think they are), and we’re done. This is why political spectrum definitions are unhelpful because they are so subjective.
Still, with all those objections put up front, I’m intrigued to see this list. In the meantime, I’ll run the Media Bias project for the next month again, and we’ll see how those numbers stack up. I’ll even toss in the Toronto Sun. Deal?
Rory
Deal.
Btw, I don’t define the CPC as liberal – they’re neo-liberals (as opposed to the Bushies’ project for new american century being neo-cons). But, anyways, for this I’ll just stick to right and left wing.
Sixth Estate
Okay, but given that the Conservatives are defined as neo-liberal… how does one define right-wing and left-wing?
Rory
Even though they’re neo-libs the average person calls their overarching political ideology conservative (right wing) so I’ll go with that.
Plus, the CPC is more right wing than the Libs or NDP.
Anonymous
No data before the adscam? So what bias was the media before then?
Sixth Estate
I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Anonymous, but adscam was quite a number of years ago now. This blog, on the other hand, is only a little over a year old.
Of course, if you have access to the right sort of databases, that would be a really interesting thing to research. If you look into it and send me an email about what you find, I’ll give you space for some guest posts on the topic.
Line Merrette
It could be interesting to add The Gazette, La Presse and Le Devoir?
Also, if you are interested, a study of the (pro or con) Quebec bias would be interesting.
Sixth Estate
Line — If you mean the Gazette of Montreal (Postmedia), it actually is on the list. In terms of the French-language press, I’m afraid my French literacy is poor enough that while I could probably manage it, I’d always be a little uncomfortable with my own work.
However, if another blogger or writer (you, say?) wants to put together any sort of post or series of posts on the subject of media bias in the French-language press, I’d be very happy to link to it for my readers, and even to extend the offer of a guest post to the writer.
That offer, incidentally, is open to anyone who wants to write a rebuttal of my arguments regarding the English-language press, too, but so far nobody has taken me up on it.