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Month: April 2020

By Posted on Posted in Miscellany No Comments

1.

The Hassell et al. 2020 Science Advances article "There is no liberal media bias in which news stories political journalists choose to cover" reports null results from two experiments on ideological bias in media coverage.

The correspondence experiment emailed journalists a message about a candidate who planned to announce a candidacy for state legislator, with a question of whether the journalist would be interested in a sit-down interview with the candidate to discuss the candidate's candidacy and vision for state government. Experimental manipulations involved the description of the candidate, such as "...is a true conservative Republican..." or "...is a true progressive Democrat...".

The conjoint experiment asked journalists to hypothetically choose between two candidacy announcements to cover, with characteristics of the candidates experimentally manipulated.

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2.

Hassell et al. 2020 claims that (p. 1)...

Using a unique combination of a large-scale survey of political journalists, data from journalists' Twitter networks, election returns, a large-scale correspondence experiment, and a conjoint survey experiment, we show definitively that the media exhibits no bias against conservatives (or liberals for that matter) in what news that they choose to cover.

I think that a good faith claim that research "definitively" shows no media bias against conservatives or liberals in the choice of news to cover should be based on at least one test that is very likely to detect that type of bias. But I don't think that either experiment provides such a "very likely" test.

I think that a "very likely" scenario in which ideology would cause a journalist to not report a story has at least three characteristics: [1] the story unquestionably reflects poorly on the journalist's ideology or ideological group, [2] the journalist has nontrivial gatekeeping ability over the story, and [3] the journalist could not meaningfully benefit from reporting the story.

Regarding [1], it's not clear to me that any of the candidate announcement stories would unquestionably reflect poorly on any ideology or ideological group. The lack of an ideological valence to the story is especially lacking in the correspondence experiment, given that a liberal journalist could ask softball questions to try to make a liberal candidate look good and could ask hardball questions to try to make a conservative candidate look bad.

Regarding [2], it's not clear to me that a journalist would have nontrivial gatekeeping ability over the candidate announcement story: it's not like a journalist could keep secret the candidate's candidacy.

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3.

I think that title of the Hassell et al. 2020 Monkey Cage post describing this research is defensible: "Journalists may be liberal, but this doesn't affect which candidates they choose to cover". But I'm not sure who thought otherwise.

Hassell et al. 2020 describe the concern about selective reporting as "... journalists may omit news stories that do not adhere to their own (most likely liberal) predispositions" (p. 1). But in what sense does a conservative Republican announcing a candidacy for office have anything to do with adhering to a liberal disposition? The concern about media bias in the selection of stories to cover, as I understand it, is largely about stories that have an obvious implication for ideologically preferred narratives. So something like "Conservative Republican accused of sexual assault", not "Conservative Republican runs for office".

The selective reporting that conservatives complain about is plausibly much more likely—and plausibly much more important—at the national level than at a lower level. For example, I don't think that ideological bias is large enough to cause a local newspaper to not report on a police shooting of an unarmed person in the newspaper's distribution area; however, I think that ideological bias is large enough to influence a national media organization's decisions about which subset of available police shootings to report on.

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By Posted on Posted in Race No Comments

1.

The Carrington and Strother 2020 "Who thinks removing Confederate icons violates free speech?" Politics, Groups, and Identities article "examine[s] the relationship between both 'heritage' and 'hate' and pro Confederate statue views" (p. 5).

The right panel of Carrington and Strother 2020 Figure 2 indicates how support for Confederate symbols associates with their "hate" measure. Notice how much of the "hate" association is due to those who rate Whites less warmly than they rate Blacks. Imagine a line extending horizontally from [i] the y-axis at a 50 percent predicted probability of support for Confederate symbols to [ii] the far end of the confidence interval; that 50 percent ambivalence about Confederate symbols falls on the "anti-White affect" part of the "hate" measure.

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2.

The second author of Carrington and Strother 2020 has discussed the Wright and Esses 2017 article that claimed that "Most supporters of the flag are doing so because of their strong Southern pride and their conservative political views and do not hold negative racial attitudes toward Blacks" (p. 235). Moreover, my 2015 Monkey Cage post on support for the Confederate battle flag presented evidence that conflicted with claims that the second author of Carrington and Strother 2020 made in a prior Monkey Cage post.

The published version of Carrington and Strother 2020 did not cite Wright and Esses 2017 or my 2015 post. I don't think that Carrington and Strother 2020 had an obligation to cite either publication, but if these publications were not cited in the initial submission, I think that that would plausibly produce a less rigorous peer review, if the journal's selection of peer reviewers is at least partly dependent on manuscript references. And the review process for Carrington and Strother 2020 appears to have not been especially rigorous, to the extent that this can be inferred from the published Carrington and Strother 2020, which reported multiple impossible p-values ("p < .000") and referred to "American's views toward Confederate statues" (p. 5, instead of "Americans' views") and to "the Cour's decision" (p. 7, instead of "the Court's decision").

The main text reports a sample of 332, but table Ns are 233; presumably, the table results are for Whites only, and the sample is for the full set of respondents, but I don't see that mentioned in the article. The appendix indicates that the Figure 2 outcome variable had four levels and that the Figure 3 outcome variable had six levels, but figure results are presented in terms of predicted probabilities, so I suspect that the analysis dichotomized these outcome variables for some reason, but let me known if you find an indication of that in the article.

And did no one in the review process raise a concern about the Carrington and Strother 2020 suggestion below that White Southern pride requires or is nothing more than "pride in a failed rebellion whose stated purpose was the perpetuation of race-based chattel slavery" (p. 6)?

It must be noted that White Southern pride should not be assumed to be racially innocuous: it is hard to imagine a racially neutral pride in a failed rebellion whose stated purpose was the perpetuation of race-based chattel slavery.

It seems possible to be proud to be from the South but not have pride in the Confederacy, similar to the way that it is possible to be proud to be a citizen of a country and not have pride in every action of the country or even in a major action of that country.

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3.

My peer review might have mentioned that, while Figure 2 of Carrington and Strother 2020 indicates that racial attitudes are a larger influence than Southern pride, the research design might have been biased toward this inference: Southern pride is measured with a 5-point item, racial attitudes are measured with a 201-point scale, and it is plausible that a more precise measure might produce a larger association, all else equal.

Moreover, the left panel of Carrington and Strother 2020 Figure 2 indicates that the majority supported Confederate symbols. Maybe I'm thinking about this incorrectly, but much of the association for racial attitudes is due to the "less than neutral about Whites" part of the racial attitudes scale, but there is no corresponding "less than neutral" part of the Southern pride item. Predicted probabilities for the racial attitudes panel extend much lower than neutral because of more negative attitudes about Whites relative to Blacks, but the research design doesn't provide corresponding predicted probabilities for those who have negative attitudes about Southern pride.

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4.

I think that a core claim of Carrington and Strother 2020 is that (p. 2):

...our findings suggest that the free speech defense of Confederate icons in public spaces is, in part, motivated by racial attitudes.

The statistical evidence presented for this claim is that the racial attitudes measure associates with a measure of agreement with a free speech defense of Confederate monuments. But, as indicated in the right panel of Carrington and Strother 2020 Figure 3, the results are also consistent with the claim that racial attitudes partly motivates *not* agreeing with this free speech defense.

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5.

The Carrington and Strother 2020 use of a White/Black feeling thermometer difference for their measure of racial attitudes permitted comparison of those who have relatively more favorable feelings about one of the racial groups to those who have relatively more favorable feelings about the other racial group.

The racial resentment measure that sometimes is used as a measure of racial attitudes would have presumably instead coded the bulk of respondents on or near the end of the "Warmer to Black" [sic] part of the Carrington and Strother 2020 "hate" measure as merely being not racially resentful, which would not have permitted readers to distinguish those who reported relatively high more negative feelings about Whites from those whose reported feelings favor neither Whites nor Blacks.

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