Do the Headline Experiment

The Associated Press had a long article out last Thursday afternoon detailing how Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid was closely associated with now convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff whom Democrats have been using as a political issue against Republicans in Congress. The lobbyist's firm also raised funds for the Democratic Senate leader. Here is the AP link. The AP article was out by about 4:17 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 9th. On Friday, I went to the N.Y. Times or Washington Post online, but found no trace of this major story. If any readers later find the Reid story in either paper, please let me know. I certainly didn't see it last Friday in the online frontpages of either paper (I just saw a micro-listing of AP headlines at the Washington Post site that mentioned Reid; Update: the N.Y. Times subsequently listed the A.P. story in its National section, but still has not posted its own news report on Reid and Abramoff). Instead, what I saw in Friday's newspaper headlines was more of the same: beating the Katrina dead horse to somehow find that the White House was responsible for the long-running ineptitude of the state and local governments of Louisiana, talking about Bush meeting with the same lobbyist Reid worked closely with, or a strange analysis of anxious conservatives when in fact we just had the greatest conservative victory in years with the successful confirmation of Justice Alito. Oh, and I almost forgot, more stories on the deadest of dead horses: intelligence data and leaks concerning the invasion of Iraq.

What can we make of this? More red-in-the-face hair-pulling and rage at obvious liberal bias? Let's try something different. Remember in your college days the student-run college newspaper whose sole purpose was to find anything, however trivial, with which to needle the college administration? Well, the same immaturity that confused spleen with news runs political coverage by the major newspapers. My gut instinct is that the major newspapers are chock full of the journalism-by-spleen, or better "journalism-is-spleen," types. Contrary to stereotypes, I think that the mainstream newspapers are more transparently biased than the best bloggers, many of whom have no journalism background.

But even more telling is that we can explain the coverage by the liberal newspapers by this simple theory: the stories are written to make liberals feel better. The stories are not written to portray reality--except when it comes to politically neutral events involving culture or travel--but rather to bolster the liberal world view. Yes, conservatives got Alito in, but the conservative movement is in "crisis." Yes, it's clear that the Democratic officials in Louisiana bungled the pre-hurricane evacuation, but we have to find a way to pin the blame on Bush. Yes, the Democratic Senate leader hypocritically leading the charge against allegedly corrupt Republicans was tight with the same convicted lobbyist, but let's just talk about the Republicans. So next time, you scan the headlines in the major liberal newspapers ask yourself this question: can I explain the mix of headlines by the theory of making liberals feel better? Try it, and see if this simple theory doesn't explain a lot of the political coverage.

Sunday, Feb. 12th Update: The Sunday N.Y. Times (print edition) made no mention of the Reid tie with convicted lobbyist Abramoff. As they say in the law, the fact-- in this case the silence-- speaks for itself. I guess such an article would cause too much dissonance in the liberal mind.