Neutral includes stories etc that just aren’t political at all.
So the ratio of left leaning to right leaning is the following:
News: 8:1
Opinion: 4:1
Letters: 10:1
Cartoons: ∞
Now one might say as it is a centre-right government, you expect more critical stories and columns as they are the Government. But does anyone think these numbers would be reversed if it was a centre-left government?
The full spreadsheet is available here > The Press Bias Analysis Download
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
Opinion: 4:1
Letters: 10:1
Cartoons: ∞
Now one might say as it is a centre-right government, you expect more critical stories and columns as they are the Government. But does anyone think these numbers would be reversed if it was a centre-left government?
The full spreadsheet is available here > The Press Bias Analysis Download
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
6 comments:
The problem with this type of analysis is that it depends on the researcher's own political position. A Green Party supporter will regard Stuff's blatantly biased reporting on "climate change" and it's promotion of Tori Whanau as being neutral.
This type of analysis also doesn't take into account the newspaper's decisions what not to report. Stuff's reporting about a schools having their free lunches delivered late would be regarded as neutral if it happened. But that doesn't take into account Stuff's failure to run any articles on the other 99.9% of schools where there was no problem with lunches or their failure to report on educational achievements.
History tells us that reality is left leaning, meaning people naturally care about each other due to man’s herd nature. This back-of-a-cocktail-napkin exercise must have been fun for someone but it is hardly surprising that a newspaper leans towards reality.
So we have a subtle lean to the left ... no it is not subtle, it is blatant but interestingly cloaked by a lot of neutral fluff.
I have been pointing this left biased out for years. A review then gets done that suggests it 'only just ' favors the left. BS. Get your news from neutral sources, put these guys out of business. Great work as usual David
A couple of weeks ago I asked ChatGPT to run a similar analysis of NZ's "newspaper of record" the NZ Herald opinion page content for the week ending January 24, and it came up with the following:-
Coalition Bias
Anti-coalition letters outnumbered pro-coalition letters ~3.6:1
Negative letters were longer, more prominent, more frequently published.
Editorial Bias Index shows +46 for anti-coalition letters, indicating the NZ Herald letters page shows a VERY STRONG anti-coalition editorial skew.
Climate Narrative Presence
Climate-risk advocacy = largest recurring issue theme
Sceptical climate letters were rare and shorter
Climate change was framed largely as urgent/escalating/catastrophic
Climate Narrative Index Score CNI = +16
(Strong pro-climate-risk narrative dominance).
Are we surprised?
If articles were weighted by importance then we’d have endless streams of critique of the waste of taxpayer money on things like mine for landlords and handouts for tobacco companies. And now the $22b road. Balance would be good with reporting.
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