Observation/Claim: Harper’s, the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly have more political content than fiction. So, “literary” is a misnomer.
I’m not promising to look at the Pew dataset, but it would help me at least if we could throw a few hypotheses up.
I’ll start with the obvious ones, for the purposes of setting them aside:
St1: All liberals are stupid.
St2: All conservatives are stupid.
Assumption 1: Stupid people don’t graduate college.
Ok, now that we have that out of the way…
F1: Conservatives are more susceptible to groupthink, usually manifested as nationalism, but sometimes manifested as a visceral dislike of contrary ideologies. Therefore, conservatives are more likely to read drum beaters like Ann Coulter; among liberals, drum beaters like Michael Moore will have a lower market share.
(The problem with this is clearly identifying “drum-beaters”. Ann Coulter is fairly clear, but Michael Moore is also a comedian: perhaps MM’s analogue is Rush.)
F2: Liberals read more than conservatives, after controlling for education.
F3: Liberals read more than conservatives, after controlling for education and gender.
F4: Conservatives read more ideological fare than liberals do.
Dang, this is tough. Look, I’m not saying I believe any of the above; I’m just trying to come up with some statements that we might be able to evaluate.
And I’ve been working exclusively with the “self-identified” liberal label. Maybe a better approach would be to compare Democrats with Republicans.
-------- Sam: Cable television, which is much more competitive and open than the ‘big three’ networks, is veering sharply to the right - not because the owners of the networks are ideologues, but because liberal programming that is tried dies a horrible death in the marketplace.
F5: Liberals, whose goals are to promote social welfare (in contrast to conservative rights-based approaches), are likely to want to evaluate a variety of methods for solving social problems. This makes them an inherently contentious lot. It also leads to ponderous electronic programing.
(Ok, but what about the web?)
Sam: Do you see a core question here? The underlying issue to me would involve a comparison between Democratic time usage and Republican time usage. Do you see that as the main underlying issue?
SS:Maybe people on the left spend more of their intellectual capital on, say, the arts? That certainly seems to be the case, adn that is supported by the one type of media that looks to have a large liberal audience - the ‘literary’ magazines.
I don’t think anyone has commented on this point yet, though maybe I missed it, but the distinction between you draw between “news media” and “literary magazines” is a rather strange one. Examples of periodicals that you describe in your posts as “literary magazines” include The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and Mother Jones.
Do you imagine that these are just magazines about “the arts”? As a matter of fact, a lot of their content is about politics and current affairs. Just take a look at some samples from the tables of contents of current issues of these periodicals:
Just “literary” magazines devoted to “the arts”? Hardly; there’s a whole bunch of news and political commentary in magazines like these.
[Note added in preview: I see that damn liberal Ludovic has beat me to the punch. Oh well, I provided the documentation. :)]
You are correct. The reason you’re correct is, to say it again, the lower down the income strata you go, the more likely you are to be liberal. See the following, which identifies party affiliation by income:
So Internet usage declines as Democratic party affiliation rises, which is what you would expect, because using the Internet usually costs some amount of money.
Ditto for cable. The least surprising part of this is that cable viewers would lean hard to the right; given that the more well to do you are the more use you will make of pay cable services or satellite TV, it’s hardly surprising that the audience is right wing.
Final ditto for magazines. Obviously, a magazine subscription is a discretionary purchase. Paying the rent is a higher priority.
There is really nothing surprising about the fact that media outlets are consumed more by conservatives than liberals. What is surprising is that it’s taken until now for the right to begin to dominate the media.
And you’re right that liberals should be worried. It will only continue to get worse as income inequality inexorably increases in this increasingly union free world. (Do I get a prize for having a sentence with five words that begin with ‘i’ in a row?)
Also, just to throw this in, the lower down the income ladder you go, the less time you have to “consume media”, as it becomes more likely you’re working more than one job. See Table 2 on page 2 of this link, although this table cuts off at a pretty low level of income, for some unknown reason. Still, the trend is clear:
I’m aware that the ‘literary’ magazines have political content. That’s why they are listed on the media survey. But they typically also have ‘arts’ content - architecture, literature, theatre, etc. The argument would be that it is this content that tends to disproportionally attract liberals.
flowbark:
Well, there are two issues, I think. One is where or not there is a real difference between news consumption of liberals and conservatives.
The seond is, regardless of what possible reasons there may be, the media seems to have started a skew to the right. If so, what effect will this have?
[p]Pantom:[/p] Well, there’s certainly a correlation. But is it the cause? It’s really hard to see the mechanism. It’s not like the poor are really lacking in free time.
Yes…I pointed to some of these in my list of sources. I agree that they are really useful. On the other hand, writing all the e-mails, letters, etc. to policymakers that together they recommend could almost be another fulltime job in itself!
While I know what you are getting at, I would tend to object to the word “democratized”…partly because I don’t see the market as an exact synonym for democracy and partly because you are ignoring the fact that much of the media is increasingly coming into the hands of a smaller and smaller group of megacorporations. For example, ClearChannel (?) now owns an incredible fraction of radio stations. And, newspapers are being bought up by Murdoch and Gannett and all those folks. Even on the internet, one is seeing a lot of consolidation of content into large providers (I heard a report on this on NPR).
What is this supposed to mean? I suppose it’s a view of the poor as all being on welfare and just sitting at home with nary a care in the world relaxing or something?
I agree with kimstu in regards to the “literary magazines”…particularly in regards to ones like Mother Jones (is that really put into that category?) which I thought was pretty much all political content.
Check the figures for multiple job holders. If your working more than one job, you have less free time.
Keep in mind that these are government figures that are sure to understate the number of people who hold down multiple jobs. Plenty of people will work “off the books” of course, and that won’t show up here.
And if you don’t have an Internet connection, you can’t log on to some liberal web site.
If you don’t have cable, you can’t watch it.
If you can’t afford a magazine subscription, you’re not going to read magazines, except maybe in the barber shop.
SS:I’m aware that the ‘literary’ magazines have political content. That’s why they are listed on the media survey. But they typically also have ‘arts’ content - architecture, literature, theatre, etc. The argument would be that it is this content that tends to disproportionally attract liberals.
You seem to be suggesting not that liberals are less interested in politics, but that conservatives are less interested in architecture, literature, theatre, etc.—which is a whole different debate.
Just because liberals may be more inclined to mix their learning about politics with learning about other intellectual areas doesn’t necessarily imply that liberals are less interested in learning about politics than conservatives are.
jshore: …particularly in regards to ones like Mother Jones (is that really put into that category?) which I thought was pretty much all political content.
Yeah, I wouldn’t have characterized MJ as a “literary magazine” myself, but Sam did:
*It is a comprehensive study of the media. And the ONLY category they could find in which liberals outnumbered conservatives was in the ‘literary’ magazines like The New Yorker and Mother Jones. *
While I think this whole trend is explained fairly well by the meaninglessness of the term “liberal” and the relative hesitancy of people to self-identify as such, I would be concerned if those of my political wing were greater consumers of media if much of said media were produced by the likes of Rush, Coulter, O’Reilly, Savage, etc. I’ve read all of Jack Dean Tyler’s posts on circumcision, but I don’t consider myself more informed as a result.
I think the relative reluctance for liberals to self-identify comes back to what I see as the fundamental difference between cons and libs–conservatives see the world in black-and-white terms, while liberals recognize nearly infinite shades of gray. (I believe conservatives call this being “wishy-washy”.) Thus, those with a conservative mindset are more likely to identify themselves as being on one side of a dividing line, while those with more liberal viewpoints will inevitably consider their position to be one of compromise and thus think of themselves as moderate.
I propose that if you let conservatives divide a particular medium’s consumers into conservatives, liberals, and “other”, you’d see these numbers even out a lot more, since a lot of those moderates would move into the liberal category.
KImtsu: Actually, I think I picked the wrong magazine. “Mother Jones” shouldn’t be on the list, as you say. The three listed in the article as representative of this group were The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Magazine.
No it’s not. If liberals and conservatives have an equal desire for intellectual ‘recreation’, then if liberals enjoy fine arts more, it must come at the expense of something. Perhaps liberals and conservatives just allocate their time differently.
Not at all. What I’m saying is that I don’t know of any evidence that shows that poor people have significantly less free time than rich people to spend on pure recreation. While there are poor people who hold two jobs, there are lots of rich workaholics who work 12 hours a day. And the professional careers require lots of extra-curricular study. But I’m willing to be proven wrong, because this is really just my impression, and I don’t think I’ve seen any research to indicate that the different in free time correlates with income to any great degree.
But you are ignoring the fact that “liberal” has become more or less a dirty word in today’s political climate. We are talking about how people SELF-identify. The hesitancy of people to self-identify with a word that is out of favor could easily skew any supposed “balance” between the two political ideologies.
The other thing you are not accounting for is the possibility that conservative types might tend to favor materials that reinforce their views, while liberals might tend to favor more objective sources. Conservatives might enjoy Rush because he spouts the same dogma that they already believe, and thus makes them feel good about themselves. But perhaps liberals want to think for themselves, and therefore eschew Donahue for that same reason. That would certainly account for any disparity between consumption of “conservative” and “liberal” media.
A trend is a broad change of habits over time. Your Pew Study shows no trends in relation to ideology, but tracks trends for viewer ages, and across different sorts of media. Again, as has been pointed out several times in this thread, you’re reading the study wrong. Willfully, apparently.
No, this is not fair to say at all. A voter who happens to vote for a democratic candidate may not consider himself liberal, or choose to identify himself as one. A voter who happens to prefer a republican candidate may not consider himself conservative. Finally, a very large percentage of the American public doesn’t vote at all, but many who do not vote may nevertheless identify themselves as liberals or conservatives.
The Pew study states clearly, twice, that there is no significant deviation between the ideological preference of most news-viewing audiences and the general public. Note:
This means, if I read it correctly, that the National Average of the percentage of conservatives to liberals is slightly less than 46% conservative and 18% liberal.
The study goes on to suggest a reason for this discrepancy as well.*
and goes on to note…
Is that any clearer, Sam?
Yes, but the premise is false, as has been pointed out about 5 times so far. Still don’t get it?
You trotted out this tired observation months ago, in a different thread, and it was roundly dismissed as a poor measure of anything. Yet you still insist on using it.
And apparently, the only evidence you have for this is the fact that O’Reilly beat out Donahue. Is Geraldo Rivera still out there? What about Michael Moore?
No, this is merely your seriously warped take on the meaning of the study, which, according to the introduction, is designed to investigate changes in news viewing habits among the population since 9/11.
No, gee – really? Do ya think?
See the beginning of my post, above. Your conclusions are based on false premises.
Well, clearly, somebody in this discussion is missing something. But frankly, your “best hypothesis” is little more a veiled insult towards those who fail to share your worldview. Clearly, in your world, the only possible explanation for such a failure is that your opponents are, by comparison to you, ignorant. And anyway, you know those artsy-fartsy liberal types. I hear that most of them are gay, as well.
I find your presumptions about liberals, as well as your conclusions, cliché and insulting. And I’m not even a “liberal.”
I don’t read this the way you did, Mr. Svinlesha. I think Pew is talking about the National Average of TV news watchers, rather than the average of the general public.
Sam, this is totally anecdotal, but my conservative friends tend to have much more interest in things like auto mechanics and spectator sports than do my liberal friends.
I suspect that if you did a similar survey on the political leanings of Car and Driver, Sports Illustrated, etc., you would find a skew to the right.
Okay, here’s some data about the percentage of declared liberals and conservatives in the population.
The data comes from the exit polls from the last federal election. The same question was asked - “do you consider yourself a liberal? A conservative? Other?” And, while more people did self-identify as conservatives than as liberals, the difference wasn’t as big as the split in the media polling. In the exit polling, the numbers were 20% liberal, and 29% conservative.
On the other hand, the ratio in most of the media is more like 40% conservative and 15-18% liberal.
So normalizing the data against the population as a whole will explain some of the discrepancy, but not all of it.
But again, for about the seventh time, the PEW survey is not the only thing we’re talking about here. We’re also talking about the failure of ‘liberal’ media, or at least its smaller audience size.
Here’s one factor that hasn’t been discussed, whcih I think might be an important one - the real split in news consumption might not be between liberals and conservatives - it might be between men and women. Since women are more likely to be liberal than are men, a split between genders would also change the political demographic of the news.
No, Sam, no. Again, these two measures are not equivalent, at least not unless you can further generalize from “distribution of liberal vs. conservative voters” to “distribution of liberal vs. conservative citizens.”
Look at it this way: approximately 51% of the American population voted during the last federal election. Assuming that the 13000 voters interviewed for this exit poll provide an accurate picture of the entire voting population, the only conclusions one can draw regarding the results are clearly limited to that 51% of the population. The distribution of “self-identifying” liberals to conservatives for the non-voting 49% remains unknown. It is entirely conceivable that there are substantially more conservatives that liberals in that 49%. In other words, the poll only measures about half the US population, at best. You’re drawing a general conclusion from a data set that’s too limited.
I’ve not been able to locate the “national average” the PEW Survey refers to, but the point is moot: even given december’s interpretation of one of the passages, above, the others make it clear that the comparison is being made between averages of new-watching populations, on the one hand, and the general population, on the other.
In your OP you specifically ask, “Are liberals uneducated? How do they learn about current policy? Do they actually study politics, history, etc?” (It’s kind of quaint, the way you refer to “liberals” as if they were another species or something.) You base the insinuation that liberals are less educated and less informed on studies like the one above. Your interpretation of that study is incorrect; now you seem to want to change the subject of the thread completely, rather than simply admitting that you misunderstood the PEW results.
As to the “failure” of the “liberal media,” you’ve presented no concrete evidence of such. I’m not sure how you define either “liberal media” or “failure,” for that matter. If you’re curious as to why the political “left” never really managed to establish a foothold with US political culture, that’s a completely different question from the one you originally posted.
