News Slant and The 2006 National Intelligence Estimate

Book cover
This study examined patterns of news slant during a four week period surrounding the release of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in the fall of 2006 by reviewing headlines, stories, and editorials from a sample of national and international English-language newspapers. The positive, neutral, or negative slant of an article was determined by combining the headline slant value with the total number of NIE (positive and negative), Bush Administration, and Opposition citation values: AS = (HS +/- NIEc + BAc - Oc). Our findings demonstrated how quickly a potentially damaging story could disappear despite its initial front-page prominence in such heavyweight newspapers as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. The results, at least in the context of this project, also demonstrated how font size, frame, and placement of headlines work in conjunction with slant. We also demonstrated that while headlines provide their own slant, they do not always represent the final outcome of the story. We found numerous instances where positive and neutral headlines belied the predominantly negative text within the article. Therefore we caution against headline use as a sole method of measurement and encourage further study into the relationship between headlines and article text in general. This study also illustrated the inconsistencies of syndicated columns as well as the impact of edited wire service stories across multiple newspapers. If the media is indeed biased as so many readily claim, perhaps they are more biased against the writing of their own colleagues than the actual subject matter they are covering. In any case, the author's original text (including slant) is filtered, edited, supplemented, and repositioned, through individual newspaper editors and frequently differs from the same story published in another paper.
add to favoritesadd

Users who have this book

Users who want this book

What readers are saying

What do you think? Write your own comment on this book!

write a comment

What do you think? Write your own comment on this book

Info about the book

Series:

Unknown

ISBN:

0226293653

Rating:

5/5 (3)

Your rating:

0/5

Languge:

English

Do you want to exchange books? It’s EASY!

Get registered and find other users who want to give their favourite books to good hands!