By Loren Mitchell
The following statistics were compiled by using various methods, including surveys, studies, random sampling and a computer program called “Nexus.” This program can scan thousands of news stories and find out things such as how many time Republicans are called “rightwing” and Democrats “leftwing.”
- Donations from news organization to political groups overwhelmingly go to leftwing causes. Groups receiving the funds also receive an inordinate amount of coverage from the organizations making the donations.
- In 650 articles published in TIME, Newsweek, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, U.S. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) was negatively labeled 10 times more often than U.S Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA).
- A similar study found the Christian conservative group, Concerned Women for America, was negatively labeled 24 times more often than the National Organization for Women, a pro-abortion group. (NOW claims 160,000 members compared to 6000,000 CWA members.)
- Researchers found that reporters used “pro-choice” 97 percent of the time but seldom said “pro-life,” instead employing the negative “anti-abortion.”
- 90 percent of all Associated Press stories from Moscow were rewrites from TASS or other official USSR agencies.
- Of nearly 200 minutes of network coverage on human rights issues, 188 minutes were devoted to abuses committed to U.S. allies. Communist atrocities received less than 10 minutes coverage.
- Between September 1988 and May 1989, while Congress debated aid to the Contras, news reports were blatantly pro-Sandinista.
- Major media have totally ignored the Communist genocide that resulted in the death of three million of the eight million people in Cambodia.
- Attorney General Ed Meese, a Republican, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Jim Wright, a Democrat, were both accused of ethical violations in 1988-89. Meese, who was later vindicated, received 17 times more news coverage by print media than Wright, who resigned in shame. The press commonly referred to the sleeze factor” in reporting the Meese investigation. Wright was portrayed as a “victim” of a “partisan atmosphere” and a casualty of an “ethics war.”
