Headline News

Although newspapers get most of their national and international news from larger newspapers or wire services, headlines are written locally either by editors or headline-writing specialists. Friday's (June 6) front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette contains two headlines I consider misleading.

The lead story was about General Motors' internal investigation of why it failed to recall cars with faulty ignition switches for over a decade, which caused several deaths. The investigation led to the firing of 15 GM employees. The headline reads, “GM Places Blame in Recall Mix-up.” One would expect GM's explanation of its own behavior to be self-serving, but the headline, by referring to the scandal as a “mix-up,” gives it an even more benign interpretation than GM's own corporate spin doctors, who, according to the article, cited “a pattern of 'incompetence and neglect.'”

A second article concerns long waiting times for medical care at the Veterans Administration. The headline states, “18 More Deaths Tied to VA Wait List.” The problem with this headline is the words “tied to.” As the article explains, it is not yet known whether longer waiting times contributed to these newly discovered deaths. This headline commits the opposite error of the GM headline by making the scandal appear worse than it is presently known to be.

These two cases are consistent with the possibility that, when wrongdoing is suspected, newspapers give corporations the benefit of the doubt, but are willing to believe the worst about government agencies. Of course, the VA doesn't advertise in the Post-Gazette the way Chevy dealers do.

The worst headlines are those that imply the exact opposite of the article. On May 16, we read, “FCC Pushes Net Neutrality Proposal.” This is technically correct, since the FCC's proposal deals with the issue of net neutrality, but I suspect most readers would infer from this headline that the FCC was proposing a policy of net neutrality. Only by reading the article do we find that they are actually proposing an end to net neutrality by allowing internet service providers to charge companies such as Netflix higher prices for faster data transmission, leaving the rest of us with slower service and potentially higher prices as these companies pass on their costs to the consumer.

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Headlines are important.  Not only do people use them to decide whether to read the article, but they create a first impression that can influence the reader's interpretation of the article. Psychologists call this the prior entry effect. Early information about an object or event has a greater effect on our final impression than later information. Media theorists call it a framing effect. A headline frames a news story by creating an expectation about what information is to follow. Expectations can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies when we see what we expected to see. The word "mix-up" implies that the actions of GM employees were unintentional, even though no event described in the article conforms to the everyday meaning of a "mix-up," in which one object or piece of information is mistaken for another.

How do misleading headlines get written? My guess is that, under time pressure, newspaper employees don't always read the articles carefully, but write headlines based on their own expectations of what will be in them. These examples imply that more time and thought should be given to headline-writing.

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In Denial

Motivated Reasoning

The Media Select Their Candidate

Who Cares What THEY Think?

One important way the corporate media frame political debates is with their choice of guests. Who gets a chance to appear on camera and present their views? If it's a newspaper article, who is quoted? The June issue of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's Extra! contains two content analyses of the media guest list with very similar results.

In Eunji Kim's “The Immigration Debate . . .Without Immigrants,” she analyzed television coverage of immigration reform in February on ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS nightly news programs, CNN's Situation Room, Fox's Special Report, and MSNBC's Hardball—54 reports featuring 157 sources. Only three sources (2%) were identified as current or former undocumented immigrants. The majority of sources were either politicians (71%) or journalists (21%), not including hosts or correspondents.

While 55% of immigrants are women, only 19 (12%) of sources were female. The 2011 mix of immigrants was 53% from Latin America, 29% from Asia, 12% from Europe, and 4% from Africa. Of 150 sources with identifiable ethnicity, 16% were Latinos, 11% were African-Americans, and 1% were Asians. The rest were white. But this is misleading, since President Obama made 12 of the 16 African-American appearances and Senator Marco Rubio accounted for 14 of 24 Latinos. Without them, the percentages of Latinos and African-Americans drops to 7% and 3%.

Although Kim does not try to quantify the topics discussed, she notes that the most common focus of discussion was border security, in spite of the fact that only about 20% of our immigrants have crossed the border illegally. While immigrants' opinions were largely absent, when they were mentioned, they were “mostly objectified as tools or obstacles for the U. S. economy or politics.” That is, they were discussed in terms of either the value of their labor or how they might vote in the next election.

In February, President Obama proposed raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 per hour in the State of the Union address. The same issue contained an analysis of print and television coverage of the minimum wage by Sean Cox and Steve Rendall. (Unfortunately, this one is not available online.) It covered three months (1/1 to 3/24) of articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal, plus the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news programs—32 stories with 87 sources. 

I'm sure you can guess the results. Only 3 of the sources (3%) were low wage workers, and a fourth was a union official. However, business owners provided 17 sources (20%) and business associations another 4. Therefore, businesspeople outnumbered workers by more than 5 to 1. Politicians and governments officials accounted for 31 sources (36%) and academics 23 sources (26%).

Of the 87 sources, 74 expressed an opinion on Obama's proposal, with 47% (64%) favoring the wage hike and 27 (36%) opposed. Obama himself accounted from 11 of the sources in favor, however, as many of the stories began by quoting his proposal.

It might appear that, in spite of the absence of low wage workers, the stories were slanted to the left. However, the stories tilt less toward increasing the minimum wage than public opinion. The latest Gallup poll shows 71% in favor of increasing the minimum wage and 27% opposed. More importantly, as Cox and Rendall point out, by underrepresenting workers, the stories excluded the possibility that the minimum wage should be raised to more than $9 per hour. President Obama himself had promised to raise it to $9.50 in the 2008 campaign. If it had kept pace with inflation since 1968, it would be $10.52. And if it had kept up with the growth of worker productivity, it would be over $16.54. But in the media frame, the debate was limited to between $7.25 and $9.

In both of these content analyses, the people who were underrepresented were those whose lives would be most affected by the legislation. The public is deprived of the opportunity to see or hear them and possibly identify with their situation. And of course, it is no accident that the people who were largely excluded were folks whose income is substantially lower than those who were overrepresented.

If immigrants and minimum wage workers want their opinions to be covered, maybe they should learn to march in the streets.

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Raising the Floor

The Elephants' Playground

The Media Select Their Candidate

Mitt Romney has charged that the news media are biased in favor of Barack Obama and against him. As usual, the facts are otherwise. (See my previous posts on media bias here and here.) It's not clear whether the Elephants actually believe the liberal bias claim, or are “working the refs.”

This week, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released is first survey of 2012 campaign coverage in over 11,000 news outlets. The survey analyzed two aspects of news coverage: (1) the frames used to cover campaign news between November 1, 2011 and April 15, 2012, and (2) the tone (positive, negative, or neutral) of the coverage received by each candidate, which was analyzed only from January 1 to April 15. Framing refers to the media's tendency to select certain aspects of the campaign and make them more salient, as if to suggest what is important about presidential elections. Frames were determined by human coders. Tone was analyzed with a computerized content analysis program which recognizes positive, negative and neutral words and phrases. (When the tone of a sample of stories is coded by researchers, the computer and the human coders agree 97% of the time.)

As in previous elections, the media are framing the campaign as a horserace. Pew calls this the strategy frame, and it includes reports on momentum, polling, advertising and fundraising. This frame accounted for 64% of campaign stories. Critics charge that the strategy frame does not give voters the information they need to determine the candidates' positions on issues. That information is included in the categories of domestic issues, foreign issues and the candidate's public record, which collectively account for 16% of the coverage. (Of course, in Romney's case, his past public record is all but meaningless for determining his current position on issues.)

The tone of the news stories about Obama and Romney is summarized below:

	Romney	Obama
Positive	39%	18%
Neutral	29%	34%
Negative	32%	34%

Contrary to Romney's claims, he has received much more favorable coverage than President Obama. In fact, I find it hard to imagine that a sentient being could read, listen to or watch the corporate media and actually believe they favor the President.

As shown above, the tone of stories about Romney has changed over time. They became much more favorable after the Michigan primary on February 28, when it became clear that Romney would be the Elephant nominee. The coverage of President Obama, as you can see, has been unrelentingly negative throughout all 15 weeks of the survey.

My interpretation of these data is fairly straightforward. The owners of the corporate media in this country are overwhelmingly wealthy and politically conservative, and their preferences exert a compelling influence over the behavior of reporters and editors. Previous research has shown that the media traditionally favor candidates from the Elephant Party. This accounts for the negative tone of stories about Obama. Prior to February 28, the media owners were probably split over which Elephant candidate they preferred. As long as Gingrich and Santorum were in the race, they ran quite a few negative stories about Romney. However, once Romney's nomination was inevitable, media ownership closed ranks behind the nominee of their party.

I find it particularly interesting that the media frequently report charges of liberal bias made by Elephant candidates, but almost never report studies such as this one which exonerate them of the charge.

There is no reason to think that either the predominant use of the strategy frame or the tone of the coverage of the candidates will change for the remainder of the campaign. It is also likely that the media will continue to report whatever the candidates say without evaluating whether their statements are true or false, and that they will not investigate and report whether the candidates' current statements are consistent with their past public record. All of these policies will translate into a significant advantage for Romney.