Appendix 2. Who Really Gets Labeled?
1) Here are the relevant labeling references
refuting Bernard Goldberg’s contention, discussed
complied by the Bob Somerby on the www.dailyhowler website,
based on a search of the programs and individuals Goldberg
specifically mentioned.
LISA MYERS, NBC Nightly News,1/23/01:
Tom [Brokaw], it was an unusual day at the Capitol. Instead
of the usual partisan sniping, many Democrats say they are
encouraged, even excited by seven—70 to 80 percent
of the president’s plan, but are prepared to do battle
over the rest. Listen to the Senate’s leading liberal
after meeting with Bush. KENNEDY (on tape): There are some
areas of difference, but the overwhelming areas of agreement
and the support are very, very powerful.
DAVID GREGORY, NBC Nightly News, 2/2/01:
Privately, some Democrats wonder who is the real George
Bush. The Republican, more conservative than he seems, who
nominates the very conservative John Ashcroft, today showing
up for work at the Justice Department? Or a true centrist
who courts the Congressional Black Caucus this week and
leading liberal Ted Kennedy, inviting him and other family
members to the White House to watch Thirteen Days, a film
based on the Cuban missile crisis?
TOM BROKAW, NBC Nightly News, 5/23/01:
Tim [Russert], a lot of people may not realize if this all
goes as we expect that it will, Monday morning Tom Daschle
will be the new Senate majority leader as the leader of
the Democratic Party. Not even power sharing with the Republicans.
Tim RUSSERT: Tom, if this happens it is a big deal. Look
at the issues. Take judicial appointments, including Supreme
Court, no longer overseen by conservative Orrin Hatch. Liberal
Democrat Pat Leahy. Education? Ted Kennedy is the new chairman.
Environment, oil drilling, nuclear power? Jim Jeffords becomes
the new chairman of that particular committee. Missile defense,
Carl Levin, liberal from Michigan. All of the Bush agenda
will have to be modified significantly in order to pass
the Senate.
TOM BROKAW, NBC Nightly News, 6/14/01:
It wasn’t all bad news for the president today. He
was part of a big victory on Capitol Hill, as members of
both parties in the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve
a major new education bill. As NBC’s Lisa Myers reports
tonight, this was a spectacular case of the old saying about
strange bedfellows and politics.
KIST MYERS: Today’s victory for
the president came thanks to a most unlikely ally, the liberal
lion of the Senate: Ted Kennedy. Why did he do it? Kennedy
says he became convinced this Republican president cares
about educating poor children.
TERRY MORAN, World News Tonight, 2/1/01:
Well, Peter [Jennings], you might call it the courtship
of Teddy Kennedy. A little while ago, Senator Kennedy arrived
at the White House with his wife Victoria. And he seemed
to be carrying some kind of gift for the president, some
kind of photo—framed photograph. This marks the fifth
time since President Bush’s inauguration that he has
met the nation’s leading liberal. It’s a personal
and political dance that has official Washington buzzing.
LINDA DOUGLASS, World News Tonight, 6/23/01:
If Jeffords switches, Democrat Tom Daschle would be the
Senate’s leader. Democrats would control which legislation
comes up for a vote. They would chair the committees. Liberal
Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee, with power over
the selection of Mr. Bush’s judges; liberal Ted Kennedy,
the Health and Education Committee, in charge of prescription
drug legislation; conservation-minded Jeff Bingaman, the
energy—overseeing Mr. Bush's energy plan.
LINDA DOUGLASS, World News Tonight, 6/24/01:
But many Democrats were already flexing their new muscle.
On the Judiciary Committee, liberals say they will now block
judges they deem too conservative.
KENNEDY (on tape):
We will not be stampeded. We will not be a rubber stamp
for the administration for ideological justices.
JOHN ROBERTS, CBS Evening News, 1/23/01:
Liberal Democrats, eager to show bipartisan support for
education reform, gave high marks to most of the plan, but
when pressed, said they will fight Mr. Bush’s voucher
proposal to help students leave failing schools and take
federal money with them.
KENNEDY (on tape): I’m opposed to
it. We’ll have chances along the way to oppose it.
He understands that.
But that was it for CBS; they only called Teddy a "liberal"
one time. Were they hiding Teddy’s liberal ways beneath
a burqa of their own making? Actually, they were hiding
Teddy altogether. We checked CBS for the month of June,
when the other two nets were calling him "liberal."
Teddy was mentioned on the Evening News only once, on a
night when Bob Schieffer subbed for Dan:
BOB SCHIEFFER, CBS Evening News, 6/15/01:
And that’s the news. Sunday on Face the Nation, we’re
gonna talk with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy and the
Senate Republican leader, Trent Lott…And Dan Rather
will be back on Monday. This is Bob Schieffer in New York.”
Source:http://www.dailyhowler.com/h030102_1.shtml
2) While the above may provide compelling
anecdotal evidence, it is not by itself the end of the story.
Geoffrey Nunberg took the question a few steps further and
generously allowed me to borrow his research for this book.
Noting that the network news broadcasts are not catalogued
in any easily checkable fashion, Nunberg subjected Bernard
Goldberg’s argument to a database search comprising
articles from thirty of the nation’s top newspapers.
For comparison purposes, he chose five liberals and five
conservatives. On the liberal side were Senators Boxer,
Wellstone, Harkin, and Kennedy, and Representative Barney
Frank. On the conservative side were Senators Lott and Helms,
John Ashcroft, and Representatives Dick Armey and Tom Delay.
Nunberg found, after eliminating extraneous mentions, “the
average liberal legislator has a thirty percent greater
likelihood of being identified with a partisan label than
the average conservative does.” Barney Frank was described
as a liberal two-and-a-half times as frequently as Dick
Armey was described as a conservative; Barbara Boxer, twice
as often as Trent Lott. Not even Jesse Helms can win this
competition. Paul Wellstone is accompanied by the word “liberal”
in excess of twenty percent more often than Helms is called
a “conservative.”
Nunberg was surprised by his own results. To double-check
his methodology, he did the same study using just three
newspapers often accused of spouting a liberal bias: The
New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles
Times. The proportions did not change. Nor did they change
when the question was applied to politically outspoken actors.
Goldberg argues, "it's not unusual to identify certain
actors, like Tom Selleck or Bruce Willis, as conservatives.
But Barbra Streisand or Rob Reiner. . . are just Barbra
Streisand and Rob Reiner." Wrong, again. Nunberg finds
that Streisand and Reiner are nearly five times as likely
to be labeled by their politics as Selleck and Willis. Warren
Beatty is labeled more frequently than Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Norman Lear even manages to out-label NRA president Charlton
Heston.
Regarding legal experts, we find exactly the same pattern.
Contra Bernard Goldberg, Lawrence Tribe and Robert Bork,
it turns out, are labeled equivalently. But John Paul Stevens
gets the liberal label more often than William Rehnquist,
or Clarence Thomas get the conservative one. When it comes
to pundits, we see more of the same. It is apparently more
newsworthy that Michael Kinsley is a liberal than that George
F. Will is a conservative. The labeling of political organizations
further disproves what’s left of Goldberg’s
phony claim. Americans for Democratic Action sees itself
labeled with greater frequency than does Young Americans
for Freedom does, and nearly three times as often as the
National Association of Scholars.
The table below, constructed in its entirety by Nunberg,
contains the results of a search done on the words "liberal"
and "conservative" within five words of the names
of prominent politicians, public figures, and organizations
-- a method that picks out the labeling of political views
with better than 85% accuracy. Except where indicated, all
searches were done on the Dialog "papersmj" database,
which includes the texts of about thirty newspapers, including
including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the
Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Miami Herald, the
San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and numerous
others. The method and results are discussed further below
in Nunberg’s notes that I have reproduced here.
| |
Total instances in newspapers database |
Pct within 5 words of relevant label |
Total instances in "liberal" papers |
Pct. within 5 words of label in "liberal"
papers |
| Liberal Legislators |
| Paul Wellstone |
2939 |
9.6% |
578 |
8.48% |
| Barney Frank |
8501 |
3.8% |
1439 |
3.89% |
| Tom Harkin |
10,147 |
3.5% |
1784 |
2.02% |
| Ted Kennedy |
17,197 |
2.6% |
2444 |
2.74% |
| Barbara Boxer |
8977 |
1.7% |
3093 |
1.78% |
|
Avg. pct. for liberals, all papers |
4.21% |
Avg pct. In
"liberal" papers |
3.78% |
|
Conservative Legislators |
| Jesse Helms |
19,874 |
8.0% |
4718 |
6.02% |
| Tom DeLay |
6351 |
3.5% |
1859 |
2.90% |
| John Ashcroft |
16,551 |
2.0% |
1157 |
3.03% |
| Dick Armey |
9222 |
1.5% |
1460 |
1.44% |
| Trent Lott |
18,048 |
1.0% |
4976 |
1.05% |
| Avg. pct. for
conservatives, all papers |
3.2% |
Avg pct. in "liberal"
papers |
2.89% |
|
Jurists/Legal
|
| John Paul
Stevens |
9444 |
5.8% |
|
|
| Antonin Scalia |
12,147 |
5.7% |
|
|
| William Rehnquist |
16,116 |
5.0% |
|
|
| Anthony Kennedy |
9567 |
3.8% |
|
|
| Clarence
Thomas |
29,089 |
3.3% |
|
|
| David Souter |
8712 |
2.6% |
|
|
| Sandra Day
O'Connor |
14,798 |
2.3% |
|
|
| Wiliam Brennan
|
5788 |
10.2% |
|
|
| Thurgood
Marshall |
9567 |
4.7% |
|
|
| Robert Bork
[1] |
6243 |
7.7% |
|
|
| Laurence
Tribe |
1850 |
7.6% |
|
|
Other
Political Figures |
| Paul Sarbanes
(L) |
5756 |
4.7% |
|
|
| Joseph Biden
(L) |
12,178 |
3.9% |
|
|
| John Conyers
(L) |
6735 |
3.7% |
|
|
| Jack Kemp
(C) |
39,227 |
3.6% |
|
|
| John Kerry
(L) |
14,111 |
3.5% |
|
|
| Maxine Waters
(L) |
3564 |
3.5% |
|
|
| Dan Quayle
(C) |
36,365 |
2.5% |
|
|
| Tim Hutchinson
(C) |
717 |
2.4% |
|
|
| Mitch McConnell
(C) |
4703 |
0.8% |
|
|
| John Warner
(C) |
4282 |
0.7% |
|
|
| Entertainers |
|
|
|
|
| Rob Reiner
[2] |
4151 |
0.65% |
|
|
| Barbara Streisand |
17,822 |
0.28% |
|
|
| Avg. pct.
Streisand & Reiner |
0.47% |
|
|
|
| Tom Selleck |
5615 |
0.18% |
|
|
| Bruce Willis |
12,957 |
0.02% |
|
|
| Avg. pct.
Selleck & Willis |
0.10% |
|
|
|
| Norman Lear |
3197 |
1.8% |
|
|
| Charlton
Heston |
8102 |
1.5% |
|
|
| Warren Beatty |
8591 |
0.23% |
|
|
| Arnold Schwarzenegger |
18,014 |
0.12% |
|
|
Others |
| Joseph Rauh
(L) |
175 |
14.3% |
|
|
| Michael Kinsley
(L) |
2030 |
6.7% |
|
|
| George Will
(C) |
7724 |
6.3% |
|
|
| William Bennett
(C) |
25,560 |
5.2% |
|
|
| Organizations |
|
|
|
|
| Heritage
Foundation (C) |
10,257 |
39.3% |
|
|
| Americans
for Dem. Action (L) |
1956 |
35.2% |
|
|
| Young Americans
for Freedom (C) |
426 |
32.6% |
|
|
| People for
the Am. Way (L) |
4154 |
29.6% |
|
|
| Center for
Law & Pub. Policy (L) |
3099 |
19.1% |
|
|
| Center for
the Study of Pop. Cul. (C) |
214 |
17.3% |
|
|
| National
Assoc. of Scholars (C) |
222 |
13.1% |
|
|
| Cato Institute
(C) |
3991 |
12.8% |
|
|
NOTES:
1. Cf. Bernard Goldberg, Bias,, 57: "Robert Bork is
the "conservative" judge. But Laurence Tribe,
who must have been on the CBS Evening News ten million times
in the 1980's. . . is identified simply as a "Harvard
law professor." But Tribe is not simply a Harvard law
professor. He's easily as liberal as Bork is conservative."
2. Cf Goldberg, Bias,, 57: "If we [the press] do a
Hollywood story, it's not unusual to identify certain actors,
like Tom Selleck or Bruce Willis, as conservatives. But
Barbra Streisand or Rob Reiner, no matter how active they
are in liberal Democratic politics, are just Barbra Streisand
and Rob Reiner."
NOTES ON THE METHOD
The database used in the study included all articles from
The Denver Post, the New York Times, the Arizona Republic,
the St Louis Post-Dispatch, the Detroit Free Press, the
Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune,
the Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle,
the Rocky Mountain News, the Miami Herald, USA Today, The
(Portland) Oregonian, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
the Baltimore Sun, the Christian Science Monitor, the Cleveland
Plain Dealer, and the St. Petersburg Times. Some of these
files went back as far as 1982, others began as recently
as 1992.
The papers used in the survey of "liberal" papers
were the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los
Angeles Times.
Dialog searches were generally done in such a way as to
pick up as many combinations as possible of names &
titles; e.g., they would have found "Senator Kennedy,"
"Ted Kennedy," "Teddy Kennedy," "Senator
Edward Kennedy" "Edward M. Kennedy" and so
forth. Instances of last names alone were not counted, not
just because of the potential for ambiguity with common
surnames like Lear and Frank, but because partisan labels
are usually restricted to the first occurrence of a name
in an article, where a full identification would be used
(E.g., "Conservative North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms
said yesterday,,,."). Care was also taken to use additional
distinguishers with common names like John Warner.
Searches were done on the strings "conservative?"
and "liberal?" so as to pick up plural forms.
Occasionally, of course, the relevant citation involved
"noise," as when someone writes: "Robert
L. Barr (R-Ga.) has spoken to Council of Conservative Citizens.
Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) has tried to distance himself
from the group." To gauge the effect of such examples,
I examined 100 citations by hand, by taking the first 25
hits for each of Lott, Boxer, Wellstone, and DeLay. I found
12 examples in this set that could not be described as ascriptions
of political labels. These were evenly balanced between
conservatives and liberals. Or to put it another way, 88
percent of the hits did in fact involve ascriptions of political
labels.
See Geoffrey Nunberg, "Label Whores," The American
Prospect vol. 13 no. 8, May 6, 2002, http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/8/nunberg-g.html,
and Geoffrey Nunberg, “On the Bias, “Commentary
broadcast on "Fresh Air," March 19, 2002.
See also http://www-csli.stanford.edu/%7Enunberg/bias.html.
Used with permission.
