Media Matters Says Florida Newspapers Dominated by Conservative Op-Ed Writers

You may recall that I wrote a bit about the liberal Web site Media Matters' analysis of op-ed columnists around the country. (I asked, for example, how the heck George Will wound up as the nation's most-published columnist?)

Now Media Matters has crunched the numbers for several states, concluding that Florida's newspapers are also dominated by conservatives, with nationally syndicated conservatives reaching the state's readers nearly 4-million more times each week than progressives.

According to their analysis, conservatives appear 121 times each week, compared to 40 appearances by centrists and 75 times for progressive columnists. Cal Thomas is the top columnist in Florida, appearing regularly in 17 different newspapers. The highest progressive on the list, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts (11 regular newspapers), is also the only person of color among the top ten, though the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page is 11th.

The St. Petersburg Times is shown featuring more progressives than conservatives, with 43 percent of columnists considered progressive and 29 percent considered conservative. Just three other newspapers in the state featured more progressive voices than conservative: The Palm Beach Post, the Ocala Star Banner and the New Smyrna Beach Observer.

According to their study, 80 percent of op-ed columnists featured by the Tampa Tribune are conservative -- only the Winter Haven News Chief, the Villages Daily Sun and the Fort Walton Beach Northwest Florida Daily News had highest percentages of conservative columnists. Only one newspaper among Florida's 38 daily newspapers, the Gainesville Sun, declined to reveal information to the site's researchers or offered no way to track their use of columnists from Washington D.C.

Read the full report here.

 

Comments

[EXCELSIOR]

Doctors have to disclose from whom they receive money to allow transparency to possible biases - in that vein, this is from www.mediamatters.org/about_us

"Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation — news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda — every day, in real time.

Using the website www.mediamatters.org as the principal vehicle for disseminating research and information, Media Matters posts rapid-response items as well as longer research and analytic reports documenting conservative misinformation throughout the media. Additionally, Media Matters works daily to notify activists, journalists, pundits, and the general public about instances of misinformation, providing them with the resources to rebut false claims and to take direct action against offending media institutions."

[Ron]

I do subscribe and regularly read the Tribune, and their editorials are not exactly conservative, although they are certainly more conservative than the St. Pete Times. I think a more accurate poll regarding the liberal/conservative position of the media would be the one that reflected that over 80% of reporters vote Democratic.

[Eric Deggans]

The title Other Views refers to the fact that the writers featured there don't work directly or the newspaper.

But I don't think any who regularly reads the newspaper would say that the unsigned editorialsm, which reflect the opinion of the institution, are appreciably more liberal than the columnists they feature.

And if you're talking about fairness, shouldn't the columns on the op-ed pages be evenly divided between conservatives, centrist and progressive -- which the St. Petersburg Times gets closer to?

[Ron]

You fail to mention that the Tampa Tribune's 80% conservative columns are published on a page called "Other Views". So you've got 80% of one page of a newspaper that is conservative, while the remainder is filled with articles from the NY times and the AP. This doesn't really make the Tribune a conservative paper.

[Alan]

Media Matters is full of you know what. The Times has no conservatives that I know of Adam whats his name is no conservative. Media Matters is run by the Clinton's and wouldn't know the truth if it hit them on the head.

[mike]

Soooo... Papers like the SPT and NYT fill their pages with left leaning spin, but since they run George Will on the op-ed page, it all evens out? That's a stretch even for a SPT writer. Somehow I suspect that democrats wouldn't want to apply their "fairness doctrine" to newspapers. I wonder, has media matters "counted the names" of democrat journalists vs. Republican? And would you be touting it if they did?

[Eric Deggans]

The difference, Bob, is that Media Matters actually did research and counted names. I'm not seeing any statistics to back your comments.

What this tells us is that, despite widespread belief by conservatives that newspapers are liberal, especialy in Florida, there are only four newspapers which feature more liberal columnists on their op-ed page than conservative.

So even if conservatives have a problem with most newspapers' news pages, it seems they should have little complaints about the op-ed sections.

Even homegrown florida columnists like Leonard Pitts and Carl Hiaasen are not the most featured columnists, which i find surprising...

[Bob Skilnik]

I'll take your estimate of Florida newspapers having more conservative columnists and counter that with the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune (Lakefront Liberals, despite the conservative tag) and add all the other liberal nuts who write for Illinois newspapers.

What does this prove? Nothing, just like the Florida study.

Give me a break. This is a group formed for the sole purpose of whining about conservatives. Why would anyone believe the results? Would you give the same weight to an Iraq assessment performed by Bush, Rice and Cheney? The notion that the media is conservative is laughable.