{"id":43598,"date":"2014-05-07T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43598"},"modified":"2014-05-07T09:40:07","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T14:40:07","slug":"instrumentation-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43598","title":{"rendered":"Instrumentation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via MPR’s Bob Collins, shocking news; most journalists don’t call themselves Republicans<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The research, from two professors at Indiana University, contains mostly \u201cduh\u201d conclusions. Journalists think journalism is going in the wrong direction, newsrooms are shrinking, there aren\u2019t many minority journalists, journalists are most likely to be college graduates, men make more than women, and journalists aren\u2019t very satisfied with their jobs.<\/p>\n

The Post\u2019s Chris Cillizza headlines that fewer journalists are Republicans now. Just 7 percent acknowledge that.<\/p>\n

You knew it, right? Those Democrats in trench coats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But here comes the whammy you just\u00a0knew\u00a0<\/em>was coming:<\/p>\n

And now, the rest of the story. They\u2019re less likely to be Democrats, too, the study says:<\/p>\n

Compared with 2002, the percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who claim to be Democrats has dropped 8 percentage points in 2013 to about 28 percent, moving this figure closer to the overall population percentage of 30 percent, according to a December 12-15, 2013, ABC News\/Washington Post national poll of 1,005 adults. This is the lowest percentage of journalists saying they are Democrats since 1971.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

MPR included a graphic.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But I’m going to suggest that the study buries the truth in plain sight.<\/p>\n

Party affiliation is just one symptom of political belief – and it is an indicator that one can turn on and off and change and re-cast at will. \u00a0I could call myself a Democrat – a “Sam Nunn Democrat”, what the heck – if I wanted to.<\/p>\n

But it wouldn’t explain much about me, or how I cover the news around me. \u00a0Not accurately, anyway.<\/p>\n

But I’d suspect giving journalists a survey like this would be a lot more illuminating:<\/p>\n

“For each of the following, assign a number from 1-5, where 1 = “disagree strongly”, 5 = “agree strongly”, and 3 = “I’m ambivalent.<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> I believe that “progressive” ideas are usually wrong, and that new ideas should prove themselves before being adopted.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0<\/strong>Life begins at conception.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Education should be localized, if not privatized.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> Social security should move into the private equity market.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> The Second Amendment is a right of the people, and does not refer primarily to the police or military.<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> Marriage is primarily about having and raising children.<\/p>\n

7.<\/strong> The Federal Government is too powerful; more power should be devolved down to the states, counties, municipalities, and to The People.<\/p>\n

8.<\/strong> The nation has need for Natioanal Heath Insurance; Obamacare is a fiasco and should be repealed as quickly and completely as possible.<\/p>\n

9.<\/strong> Any government function that can be performed by three or more people in your local Yellow Pages should be eliminated from the public payroll.<\/p>\n

10.<\/strong> The state has no business subsidizing businesses (including public media).<\/p>\n

Note that none of those ten questions ask anyone’s party affiliation – but they measure the the extent to which someone believes in the free market or statism.<\/p>\n

And while the number of “Democrats” may have shrunk (they outnumber Republicans in the media 4:1), I’m going to guess the number of people with scores in the twenties on my test outnumber those with scores in the forties by a solid 5:1.<\/p>\n

ADDITION:\u00a0 A comment below reminded me – while a large number of journalists refer to themselves as “independents” and always have, surveys (especially the seminalLATimessurveys in the eighties and nineties) showed the vast majority of journos who call themselves “independent” but vote Democrat is almost as large as the proportion of stated Democrats versus Republicans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Affiliation isn’t the issue; belief, underlying belief and expressed bias are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via MPR’s Bob Collins, shocking news; most journalists don’t call themselves Republicans: The research, from two professors at Indiana University, contains mostly \u201cduh\u201d conclusions. Journalists think journalism is going in the wrong direction, newsrooms are shrinking, there aren\u2019t many minority journalists, journalists are most likely to be college graduates, men make more than women, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tc-media-bias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43598"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43626,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43598\/revisions\/43626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}