| dc.description.abstract | This study of the partisan intensity of the nation's agenda-setting liberal and conservative editorial pages finds that while the pages are more or less equally partisan when it comes to supporting or opposing a given presidential administration's policy pronouncements, the conservative pages are more partisan-often far more partisan-with regard to the intensity with which they criticize the other side. Also, the paper finds, conservative editorial pages are far less willing to criticize a Republican administration than liberal pages are willing to take issue with a Democratic administration.
This paper looks at the editorial stances during the Clinton and Bush II administrations of The New York Times and The Washington Post (the liberal papers) on the one hand and The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times (the conservative papers) on the other. It identifies ten issue areas confronted by each administration that are "roughly comparable"-for example, the controversy surrounding Bill Clinton's nomination of Zoe Baird to be attorney general, and the similar controversy surrounding George W. Bush's nomination of Linda Chavez to be his labor secretary. Editorial comment from all four newspapers on this and nine other similarly comparable topics was collected; editorials were given a "score" of being either positive, mixed, or negative; numbers were tallied with regard to how often each of the four papers supported or opposed Clinton and how often they backed or opposed Bush. Finally, certain conclusions about the papers' differing views of partisanship, as expressed on the page, were drawn. In all, some510 editorials covering a decade were included in the study.
The body of this paper (pages 10-50) will walk the reader through what each newspaper had to say about each of the ten issue areas under study. Appendices at the end will provide the raw numbers. But here is a quick sample of this study's findings:
_ The liberal papers criticized the Clinton administration 30 percent of the time. By contrast, the conservative papers criticized the Bush administration just 7 percent of the time.
_ The liberal papers praised the Clinton administration only 36 percent of the time (the balance were mixed). The conservative papers, on the other hand, praised the Bush administration 77 percent of the time.
_ The liberal papers criticized Bush 67 percent of the time. The conservative papers criticized Clinton 89 percent of the time.
The study finds that there was often a striking difference in tone between the two sides as well. The Clinton administration had barely unpacked its bags when The Wall Street Journal referred administration figures as "pod people from a 'Star Trek' episode. . .genetically bred to inhabit the public sector." That sort of language does not appear on the liberal pages. In sum, the two sides define partisanship quite differently and envision the roles they play as political actors very differently as well. | en_US |
