February 2004 Archive

LIBERALS DEMAND NEW YORK TIMES CORRECTS COLUMNISTS ...conservative ones, that is. Suddenly Salon is on the case, with William Safire's pro-war columns in the cross-hairs. Funny, but the names Krugman and Dowd don't seem to be mentioned.

Now Robert Cox calls attention to another example of the same thing:

Looks like David Corn is joining the fray over The Times columnist correction policy...coming at it in The Nation from Barry Lando's Safire/Salon angle. Left, right, middle does not matter when the issue at hand is truth and accuracy in the media. Opinion columns are not a license to publish "material mistatements of fact."

I couldn't agree more; the ball is in Daniel Okrent's court. David Corn's indictment of William Safire makes the point admirably -- Times pundits should not be exempt from the necessity to correct their errors:

If a newspaper columnist writes articles that defy the reality reported by the paper's own correspondents, how should the paper's editors and publisher respond? Should they question the columnist's judgment and powers of evaluation? Should they print corrections? Columnists are certainly entitled to their views. They are free to speculate and suppose. They can draw--or suggest--connections that go beyond just-the-facts reporting. But Safire's recent work--unburdened by factchecking, unchallenged by editors--shows he is more intent on manipulating than interpreting the available information. His February 11 masterpiece is evidence his commitment to scoring political points exceeds his commitment to the truth. Under the cover of opinion journalism, he is dishing out disinformation. How is that of service to the readers of The New York Times?

A SMALL RASPBERRY SAMPLE: An examination of the partisanship rankings this early in the year plainly illustrates the effect of small sample size. Because of only a few consecutive Democratic-leaning columns, Washington Post columnist William Raspberry has moved into the Top Ten, even though he is clearly one of the least partisan pundits. Mr. Raspberry had only the 27th highest partisan score out of 33 columnists in 2003, and was 26th of 37 in 2002. He'll soon drop off this year's list, to be replaced by more reliably partisan colleagues.

Mr. Raspberry has long been one of my favorites, because he has always been willing to grapple honestly with difficult issues, addressing arguments on all sides without arrogance or vitriol. A couple of years ago I highlighted an excerpt from his commencement address here at NC State:

Yet we seldom take the effort to recruit allies from among those who hold views different from our own. Conservatives are (to liberals) people who don't care about minorities, or women, or "the little people," not decent men and women who have a different view of what works. Liberals are (to conservatives) people who want only to tax and spend the country into bankruptcy, not thoughtful men and women who want America to work for everyone. Each sees the other as enemy.

Surprisingly often, I have discovered, a focus on the problem, rather than on political enemies, could disclose common interests and lead to innovative solutions.

KAUSFILES MATCHING GAME: Match the columnist on the left with the correct Mickey Kaus description on the right (scroll down):

1. Joe Conason	a. courting major embarassment
2. David Brooks	b. the soul of a New York P.R. man
3. William Safire	c. the perfect hack

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By the early 1980s, Charles's talent had been recognized by editors, and by readers in Washington and well beyond. And the most impressive aspect of his work is the sustained level of quality over a period of more than 20 years. This is not a columnist who merely fills space and meets deadlines. Charles Krauthammer always writes with care. In his columns and essays, there is always a powerful line of reasoning, and behind it the workings of a superior intellect. When you read his words, you know you are dealing with a serious person, who assumes the same of you.

I would like to believe that Mr. Krauthammer is a serious person and that he "writes with care". But I find it difficult to square that description with the quote-doctoring incident of two months ago, and with his apparent unwillingness to address the issue.

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Robert J. Samuelson Washington Post

Dishonest Budget Talk 11 February 2004

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2D+: Democratic, Treasury secretary Robert Rubin 3D-: Democrats, Democrats, Democrats 2R+: Republican, Newt Gingrich 5R-: Bush administration, White House, administration, Bush, Republicans 2R=

And now here's the new way, which lists the references by paragraph, using bold (positive) and italics (negative) and blue (Democratic) and red (Republican) to indicate the type of reference:

Robert J. Samuelson Washington Post

Dishonest Budget Talk 11 February 2004

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2D+,3D-,2R+,5R-,2R= The most: Bush administration, White House It will: Bush, administration Democrats commit: Democrats, Bush Budget talk: Democrats, Bush To cure: Democratic, Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, Republican, Newt Gingrich This sobering: Republicans, Democrats

So "Bush administration" and "White House" in the Samuelson paragraph which begins with "The most" were evaluated as negative Republican references:

The most revealing factoid about the Bush administration's budget is this: After scouring the entire $2.4 trillion of federal spending, the White House found 65 programs that it deemed so unneeded or ineffective that they should be eliminated. How much do these programs cost? About $4.9 billion. Although that's a lot of money, it's only 0.2 percent of federal spending -- two-tenths of 1 percent. This qualifies as an aggressive assault on government spending?

A few readers have e-mailed me in the past to question my evaluation of specific references. In some cases I had made a mistake or just agreed with the reader's point and changed the evaluation; in others I've disagreed and stuck with my original decision. I welcome these kinds of comments -- evaluating columns is subjective and sometimes difficult. Feel free to chip in your two cents . .

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I think we're just seeing the effect of several weeks of consistently unfavorable news for the Bush administration. Democratic pundits are energized, pounding on Republicans over Iraq and the economy, while Republican pundits are subdued, mixing criticism of Democratic presidential candidates with criticism of the president and Congress over federal spending. But one month of columns is just a snapshot; the premise here is that a year or more of punditry will allow enough time for the true partisans to settle to the bottom (and rise to the top of the rankings).

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The basic idea is this: because of political circumstances (control of the White House, Congress, etc.), references to one party may dominate for extended periods. This generally leads to lower scores for pundits of the dominant party and higher scores for pundits of the opposition party, because columnists tend to be more strongly unfavorable toward the other party than they are favorable toward their own. I think it's impossible to completely correct for this effect, but normalizing by proportionally "devaluing" the references to the dominant party should help.

Over the past two years there have naturally been more references to the ruling Republicans than to Democrats. Applying the normalization would have added a few points to many of the Republican pundits and subtracted a few from many of the Democratic pundits. I need to recalculate past years to illustrate this -- I think that the largest effect would be to dramatically reduce the partisanship score of someone like Frank Rich, who was quite negative toward his own party. The scores of heavy hitters like Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman would not have changed much because they have been fairly "symmetric" (nearly as positive toward their own party as negative toward the other).

The twist is that so far this year the balance has shifted so that there have only been 65 Republican references for every 100 Democratic references. That adds a few points to Krugman (because he has criticized Joe Lieberman and John Kerry) and Scheer and subtracts a few from Krauthammer and Charen. I think that it's only a temporary effect because of the intense focus on the competitive Democratic presidential primaries. Once that settles down, Democratic references should fall back to Republican levels or less.

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This election year we are sure to hear a lot about "special interests." Candidates of both major parties, as well as candidates of third or fourth parties, are sure to denounce special interests both hotly and repeatedly.

The secret of these verbal fireworks from all parts of the political spectrum is that only the groups supporting one's opponents are called special interests. Politicians do not call their own supporters special interests.

But then Mr. Sowell proceeded to write a perfectly partisan column, illustrating this hypocrisy by citing only Democratic examples involving John Kerry and teachers unions and John Edwards and trial lawyers. Mr. Sowell has written ten columns so far in 2004 -- four extremely partisan screeds and six completely non-political columns (including today's), mostly about his academic specialty, economics. As a result, his median partisanship index is zero, which reduces his combined score enough to keep him just below the Top Ten. That's about the same pattern he followed last year, and very similar to that of Paul Krugman in 2000 -- very partisan in many individual columns but not relentless enough to climb to the top of the rankings.

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Among our group of new pundits, only Joe Conason and Harold Meyerson begin in the Top Ten, although Tony Blankley and Bill O'Reilly are within striking range. Both Mr. Blankley and Mr. O'Reilly have lowered their scores by writing columns criticizing Republicans on the immigration issue. The WSJ OpinionJournal's On the Editorial Page daily column, with a score of 26, has been more partisan than both The New York Times's lead editorial (16) and The Washington Post's lead editorial (13). If you're unhappy with the ranking of your favorite or least favorite pundit, remember that the rankings so far are based on only a few columns, so they will be likely to fluctuate for the next few months.

Several programming changes were implemented today:

• The Partisanship Index calculations are now being normalized for the disparity in references to the two parties. If you're interested, see the revised Methods page.
• In the "Other Statistics" section below the Top Ten, the highest and lowest values of two new statistics are presented, the Democratic Index and Republican Index.
• In the daily boxscore, the partisan references for each column are displayed differently, hopefully making it easier to see exactly which partisan references were evaluated to be positive, negative and neutral. If a column meets a fairly arbitrary definition of a "crossover" column, it will be indicated by a yellow background. Columns by those pundits who are currently classified as "inactive" will have a gray background and no score or references shown.
• The blogroll at the bottom right has been completely revamped.
• The beginnings of a Frequently Asked Questions page can be found by following the "FAQ" link at the top of the page.

Some of these changes will need to be discussed over the next few weeks.

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