Is It True That 85% Of Journalists Are Registered Democrats
Sci Adv. 2020 April; half-dozen(14): eaay9344.
In that location is no liberal media bias in which news stories political journalists choose to cover
Hans J. G. Hassell
oneFlorida State Academy, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.
John B. Holbein
2University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA.
Matthew R. Miles
3Brigham Young Academy-Idaho, Rexburg, ID 83460, Usa.
Received 2019 Jul 30; Accepted 2020 Jan 8.
Abstract
Is the media biased confronting conservatives? Although a dominant majority of journalists identify as liberals/Democrats and many Americans and public officials frequently decry supposedly loftier and increasing levels of media bias, little compelling evidence exists as to (i) the ideological or partisan leanings of the many journalists who fail to reply surveys and/or identify every bit independents and (2) whether journalists' political leanings drain into the choice of which stories to cover that Americans ultimately consume. Using a unique combination of a big-scale survey of political journalists, data from journalists' Twitter networks, election returns, a large-scale correspondence experiment, and a conjoint survey experiment, we prove definitively that the media exhibits no bias against conservatives (or liberals for that affair) in what news that they choose to cover. This shows that journalists' individual ideological leanings have unexpectedly fiddling effect on the vitally important, but, up to this point, unexplored, early phase of political news generation.
INTRODUCTION
Unbiased political media coverage is vital for a good for you republic (one). Almost Americans want their news gratuitous from political bias; a dominant bulk (78%) of Americans believe that information technology is never adequate for a news organization to favor one political political party over another when reporting the news (2). Journalists hold stiff norms to eschew bias in their coverage of politics (3). Yet, when asked about the coverage of news organizations in America, less than one-half can identify a source that they believe reports the news considerately, less than 30% trust the media to get the facts straight, and less than xx% trust the media to report the news without bias (4). Since 1989, the number of Americans stating that in that location is a peachy bargain of bias in news coverage has near doubled (4). But put, many Americans believe that the news media do a poor job of separating facts from opinion (4). With the strong influence that the media exerts on citizens (v–vii), the increased salience of simulated news (eight–10), and the "unprecedented" levels of violence against journalists (11), understanding the potential biases of the media is vital.
Ideological bias is central to the concerns that Americans harbor almost the news media. Concerns almost liberal media bias are widespread. Many Americans believe that liberal media bias is prevalent and pernicious. According to a 2017 Gallup poll, 64% of Americans believe the media favors the Democratic Party (compared to 22% who said they believed it favored the Republican Party). Consternation over the liberal bias in the mainstream media runs rampant, making its mode into commentary of the state of the news media from political pundits (12) and academics (13), into likewise many social media discussions to even begin to mention, and even into the stages of presidential debates and town halls. There are reasons to expect that this perspective may comport with reality. Some evidence suggests that journalists have more liberal views than the general public (xiv). Given this, nosotros might expect political ideology to fundamentally shape journalists' views near what is and is non newsworthy (xv). However, it is too possible that the public perceives ideological bias in what journalists cull to cover considering they are psychologically motivated to see bias in the news (xvi).
Does ideological bias actually shape what news journalists choose to embrace? Although we know some about ideological biases in how the news is covered (the slant of the news that is covered or presentation bias), nosotros know very piffling near the potential part of ideological bias in what is covered. Previous research has focused nigh exclusively on presentation bias in the news, merely bias can also arise before: in the selection of news to cover. Ideological leanings might change journalist evaluations of the newsworthiness of a detail story (15). Despite their best attempts to maintain high standards of objectivity, journalists may omit news stories that do non adhere to their own (most likely liberal) predispositions. This type of gatekeeping bias in the earlier stages of news story generation would be vitally of import, were it to exist, because the topics focused on in the news influence what is on the political agenda and how people evaluate political data (17, 18). Afterwards all, the news media are integral to informing marginalized segments of the population about politics (19–21).
Identifying gatekeeping bias in news coverage, notwithstanding, has proven to exist incredibly difficult. In office, this is because identifying the full population of news from which journalists could select stories is difficult. Scholars of media coverage only view the final product and do not observe the full set of stories that might have been bachelor in the world for journalists to potentially comprehend. Assay of gatekeeping bias from published stories suffers from the fallacy of selecting on the dependent variable. Perceptions of biases in what journalists embrace could be the result of true media biases, or they could besides but exist the result of an underlying set of stories that journalists take to select from that are ideologically skewed (22). Perhaps the "truth" itself has a liberal (or bourgeois) bias.
We overcome this stubborn obstacle by examining how journalists answer to a potential news story available in their media market place. This study tests for ideological bias (specifically gatekeeping bias), which occurs before the cosmos of news content. Our research combines data from v sources: a large survey of journalists, a conjoint experiment embedded in our survey, election returns, Twitter data about announcer networks, and a novel correspondence experiment design. Hence, our report addresses two substantial problems in the study of media bias.
Outset, using Twitter data, we are able to estimate the ideology of half of the journalists in our sample, nigh five times larger than any previous study of journalists. In this dataset, we show that journalists are overwhelmingly liberal, peradventure even more so than surveys have suggested. Most journalists are far to the left of fifty-fifty the average (Twitter-using) American.
Second, our work addresses the nagging trouble of an unknown limerick of potential news stories through the use of a correspondence experiment. This experiment presented journalists with a potential news story (a candidate running for the state legislature) that varied only in its ideological content (i.e., the credo of the candidate). While this design may non generalize to all potential news stories, it does allow us to exam for bias in a vitally of import step in the news generation process: gatekeeping bias, in this case, related to what journalists choose to embrace on the entrada trail. Given the office that news stories play in providing much-needed attention to potential candidates, withholding coverage can exist thought of as a powerful gatekeeping tool where partisan bias may come up into play (17, eighteen). With this unique blueprint, nosotros prove that, opposite to popular narratives and despite the fact that journalists skew to the left, there is little to no liberal bias in what reporters choose to comprehend. Our well-powered correspondence experiment allows us to confidently rule out even very slight biases against conservatives. This implies that journalists do not showroom ideological gatekeeping bias: that liberal media bias does not manifest itself in the vital early phase of news generation despite strong reasons to retrieve it might.
RESULTS
To test for ideological bias in the news that journalists choose to cover, nosotros combine the five data sources just mentioned. The survey of journalists allows united states to encounter whether journalists, indeed, skew in the liberal management. Previous studies have tended to show that this is the case (14, 23). To replicate and extend previous surveys, we collected our listing of journalists using the U.Southward. Newspaper List (usnpl.com), a comprehensive national media directory of newspapers, boob tube stations, and radio stations operating in the United States. This immune us to identify the full sample of newspapers in each country. Using this site, a squad of 4 researchers visited the website or Facebook page of every newspaper in each state and searched for the electronic mail addresses of political journalists and editors between May 2017 and July 2017. In many cases, this team was able to identify journalists who were explicitly assigned to a political beat. Withal, in the case that a specific reporter was not explicitly designated as being a political reporter, all reporters were nerveless. This process resulted in a sampling frame of simply more than 13,500 journalists with working e-mail addresses. We invited these individuals to participate in the survey by e-mail in tardily August and early September 2017. A total of 1511 journalists responded to the survey for a response rate of 11.3% [among the emails that did not bounce, our response rate was 13.1%, a rate almost double of other recent surveys of journalists (24)]. Among other things, the survey asked the reporters to disclose their political ideology.
Consistent with previous surveys of journalists, we find that a majority of surveyed journalists (54% non including cocky-identified independents who indicated that they leaned toward a party; 78% including independents who leaned toward a party) do take ideological leanings and preferences. Figure i shows the breakdown of journalists' self-reported ideology and partisan preferences. For the partisan preferences, we asked individuals who identified as independents to indicate which party they leaned toward. As can be seen, among journalists willing to identify a partisan or ideological preference, Democrats/liberals are much more numerous than Republicans/conservatives. While there is certainly an ethos of independence among this grouping, a majority of journalists are willing to self-report being attached to a specific political management, and among this grouping, a dominant majority of journalists affiliate with the left.
Ideological composition of journalists (survey).
The figure displays the ideological/partisan leanings of journalists amid those willing to attach themselves to a specific ideological/partisan direction. Among all surveyed journalists, lx% indicate being Democrats or Autonomous leaners and 23% identify as independents (46% identify as independents when including independents who lean toward a party). This data comes from our survey of journalists (2017; N = 1511). Every bit a reference, Willnat and Weaver (23) report 79% of partisan identifiers equally beingness Democrats.
There are, however, two large problems with using surveys of journalists, every bit previous work has done, to measure their credo. Start, many journalists report beingness independents. (Despite asking them to which political party they leaned, 23% still self-identified equally pure independents.) 2nd and perhaps more importantly, despite having a loftier response rate for surveys of this nature, many journalists choose non to respond to surveys. This determination could be directly related to their willingness to divulge their partisan and ideological leanings. The truth is that surveys get out a large number of journalists without ideological scores. Hence, there is a dandy benefit to sympathize where a larger pool of journalists fall on the ideological spectrum, something that no report has achieved in the past.
To do then, we use our second dataset: information on the comprehensive list of people whom journalists follow on Twitter. To collect this information, we searched for each of the journalists in our sampling frame on Twitter using their name, their email accost, and the outlet for which they worked. Once nosotros had this information, we use the frequently used approach developed and validated in (25). This uses a Bayesian platonic indicate approach. The logic of this methodological technique is that individuals display their preferences (in this case, for ideological homogeneity) through their actions (in this instance, who they follow on Twitter), but as they exercise with many revealed preferences. Barberá (25) shows that this approach produces ideology measures that are strongly related to individual self-reported measures of credo and validated political party registration records among both the public and elites. (We bear witness that this likewise holds truthful amongst the journalists who answered our survey; run into fig. S4 in the Supplementary Materials.) Every bit Barberá (25) notes, this approach comes with the distinct advantage that it "allows u.s. to estimate ideology for more actors than any existing alternative, at any betoken in time and beyond many polities." This is truthful in our case; this method allows us to have much more coverage than any previous effort at measuring announcer credo, providing u.s.a. with the ideology of a total 50% of journalists in our sampling frame. (Nigh surveys of journalists take response rates less than 10%.)
Figure two shows the distribution of ideological positions of journalists based on their Twitter interactions. As can exist seen, journalists are dominantly liberal and often fall far to the left of Americans. A full 78.ane% of journalists are more liberal than the average Twitter user. Moreover, 66% are even more liberal than former President Obama, 62.3% are to the left of the median Senate Democrat (in the 114th Congress), and a full 14.5% are more liberal than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (one of the most liberal members of the House).
Ideological composition of journalists (Twitter networks).
The effigy displays a kernel density of ideological/partisan leanings of journalists based on the people they choose to follow on Twitter. The measure uses the Bayesian ideal point arroyo by Barberá (25). N = 6801.
In short, journalists are overwhelmingly liberal/Democrats, and many journalists appear to be far to the left of the average American. Yet, being liberal and expressing liberal gatekeeping bias in the pick of news to cover are clearly two different things. Afterward all, journalists country that they strongly value objectivity in reporting the news (26). Does the strong ideological skew that we find actually influence the potential news that journalists cull to cover?
To test this possibility, in the leap of 2018, we ran a correspondence experiment of roughly 13,500 journalists in our sampling frame. Correspondence experiments are widely used in many contexts to test for bias (27). However, to our knowledge, this constitutes 1 of the starting time correspondence experiments of journalists (the only exception of which we are aware is by Graves et al. (28), who examined the event of diverse messages on the fact-checking behavior of journalists rather than to look for partisan or ideological bias).
Correspondence experiments are built on the premise that one tin elicit and measure out bias past providing individuals with a standardized task. The condition that one desires to test for bias is then randomized. If individuals deport differently toward individuals of different backgrounds (in this case, the ideological leanings of the candidate running for function), then nosotros tin can infer discrimination. As in all correspondence experiments, the primary issue hither is whether an individual responded to the enquiry. Nosotros avoid measures of response quality, as these are just observed among those who reply, and hence, they are particularly susceptible to posttreatment bias (29).
While correspondence experiments do not capture all forms of potential bias, they come with the distinct advantage of being couched in an experimental blueprint that allows us to rule out other potential factors [an aspect distinct from Implicit Mental attitude Tests (IATs), resentment scales, or other means of measuring private bias]. If journalists systematically exhibited ideological bias in the political news that they choose to cover, and so we would look to meet differences in response rates across the treatment conditions. If journalists' gatekeeping decisions were shaped by their own ideological positions, those of the news arrangement for which they work, or those of their readership, and so we would expect to meet heterogeneous handling effects forth these dimensions.
To run our correspondence experiment, we created an artificial campaign email address for a fictitious candidate for the state legislature. We emailed the journalists on our listing, asking them to cover the potential candidate. Roofing campaigns and the people who run in them is a vital office of political journalists' jobs. A brusk follow-up survey conducted in October 2019 (full details are available in the Supplementary Materials) on the relative interest in different types of news stories confirmed that this sort of request would exist common and more often than not idea of as newsworthy. At the aforementioned time, a story on this topic would non exist then of import that it eliminates journalist discretion almost whether to comprehend the topic depending on the journalist'south perception of the nature of the story, the presence of other ongoing news stories, and the fourth dimension required to follow up on the story. In short, this story appears to be something that is mostly considered newsworthy but is subject to announcer discretion and is exactly the type of story where gatekeeping biases could be manifest.
Our email appeared to be from a entrada staffer, indicating that the candidate was about to announce his candidacy inside the next week and asking whether the journalist would be interested in sitting down with the candidate sometime in the post-obit week to discuss his candidacy and vision for state government. The text in each of the emails was identical except for the bio of the candidate that we included at the stop of the message. In the cursory bio, we randomly varied the candidate's ideological description. Each email described the candidate as beingness either a "conservative Republican," "a moderate Republican," "a moderate Democrat," or a "progressive Democrat." (Nosotros landed on four labels to maximize statistical power.) We chose these labels to magnify the difference between the ideologies of the candidates running in the master; the progressive/conservative modifiers signal ideological strength. The full text variation is detailed in fig. S1. As we describe in Materials and Methods, nosotros found no prove that journalists believed that the candidate was fictitious.
Overall, we received responses from 18.3% of journalists (22% among those that did not bounciness), which is slightly on the lower end of response rates in correspondence studies (30), but indistinguishable from correspondence studies of members of Congress [that accept seen a xix% response rate; see (31)], mayors in the United States [10% response rate; see (32)], and elected officials in Southward Africa [21% response rate; see (33)]. (That our overall response rate was on the lower side likely reflects that many correspondence studies are conducted on elected officials who have staffs to help them answer to their emails; most journalists practice not take such a luxury.)
Figure 3 shows the results of our correspondence experiment. It displays the causal effect of candidate ideology on the probability of receiving a response to the campaign's research nearly setting upward an interview to cover the candidate. To do so, information technology makes two comparisons. In the panel on the left, it shows mean response rates by treatment condition. In the second, information technology provides coefficient plots benchmarking response patterns to the base category of a stiff progressive Democrat. (The conclusions that we are able to describe are the same if we use a unlike left-out category.)
Upshot of candidate ideology on journalist responses.
The figure displays raw response rates by handling condition (left) and the coefficients from a regression that benchmarks the 3 treatments listed to a strong progressive (correct). Bars (left) display hateful levels; points (right) are coefficient estimates. Lines surrounding points/bars are 95% confidence intervals. Both are labeled in the figures. The figure also labels the management of ideological biases in the effigy, be they liberal or conservative. The distributions to the right prove results from permutation tests that randomly shuffle the data and approximate a handling outcome for each shuffle. The model includes controls for journalist'south position, topical focus, gender, and pct democrat in their constituency, forth with state fixed effects. Model N = 13,443.
As can be seen, there is no statistical or noun difference in the probability of a announcer responding to the email based solely on the treatment conditions. Comparing the two poles, strong conservative candidates are, on boilerplate, a mere 0.four percentage points less likely to get a response than strong progressive candidates. This effect is miniscule (being equivalent to 0.47% of an SD) and is far from significantly different from 0 (P = 0.87). (The same holds true comparison the other handling conditions.) This nothing outcome is very precisely estimated: Using equivalence testing (34), we can confidently (P < 0.05) dominion out bias in favor of a progressive candidate greater than 2.35 percentage points (which is a paltry 6% of an SD). On the right panel of Fig. 3 is some other way of seeing how notable the null is. There, we plot the distribution of coefficient estimates from one thousand permutation tests or random shuffles of the data. As can be seen, the coefficient plots autumn right in the heart of the distributions from random information shuffles. This suggests that our effects are no different from what we would see with random take a chance and no relationship between independent (ideological treatment conditions) and our dependent (response to the enquiry) variables. Another (imperfect) way to benchmark our furnishings is to compare them to other forms of bias shown by correspondence studies. While knowing what treatment is most comparable to a partisan manipulation is difficult, this approach allows usa to get some sense of the substantive size of our furnishings. Although branching out in contempo years, virtually of correspondence studies take looked for racial bigotry (30, 35), thus making the evidentiary base for this class of bias the strongest in the correspondence study literature. Co-ordinate to a recent meta-assay of these studies in (30), the average racial minority discriminatory consequence in correspondence studies is 9.iv pct points. That means that the maximum feasible size of liberal media bias (based on the lesser of our 95% confidence intervals for the treatment effect on the left) is only 24.4% of the size of the average level of discrimination toward minorities. Our average treatment effect is a paltry two.1% of the meta-analytic pooled average treatment effect for racial minorities. This difference is not just highly statistically singled-out but as well substantively meaningful.
In brusque, despite being dominantly liberals/Democrats, journalists practice not seem to be exhibiting liberal media bias (or conservative media bias) in what they choose to cover. This null is vitally of import, showing that, overall, journalists do not display political gatekeeping bias in what they choose to cover.
A possible reason why we observe no discrimination in our correspondence experiment is that the ideological makeup of a customs influences response patterns. Given marketplace need, a reporter working for a newspaper whose subscribers are conservative (for example) might feel more pressure to cover an emerging conservative candidate than they would an emerging progressive candidate, given their want to bring in potential readers (and the accompanying additional revenue that would come up with this).
To test this possibility, we comprise data from the 2016 presidential election and look for heterogeneous treatment effects by presidential vote share. (In the Supplementary Materials, we exam for heterogeneities past journalist-perceived newspaper credo; the results are the same.) Effigy 4A shows the results from this test. Information technology breaks counties by presidential vote share at the median level. Figure 4A shows that there announced to be very little differences in treatment effects past the underlying limerick of the surrounding area. None of the interaction terms are significant at traditional levels (moderate progressive, P = 0.42; moderate bourgeois, P = 0.85; and strong conservative, P = 0.081). These differences are too not substantively interesting; the furnishings among subgroups are all small, and (using equivalence testing) they all allow us to rule out fifty-fifty moderately sized event. In brusque, we find that a journalist working for a newspaper in a county that voted for Trump is just as likely to respond to a request for an interview with a progressive candidate as they are to a asking from a conservative candidate. This shows that fifty-fifty despite powerful economic incentives from the readership of ane'due south newspapers, journalists yet bear witness no signs of ideological gatekeeping bias in what they cull to comprehend.
Experimental effect by social context and journalist ideology.
Correspondence experiment effects by newspaper readership and journalist ideology are shown. Both panels display the coefficients from a regression that benchmarks the iii treatments listed to a strong progressive. Black lines are 95% confidence intervals; points are coefficient estimates. Both models control for announcer'south position, topical focus, and gender. Panel (A) breaks the regression models past Trump vote share in the 2016 ballot. Panel (B) models are broken into terciles by the Twitter ideology scores. Model N (peak left) = 6717; model N (top right) = 6726; model N (bottom left) = 2233; model North (bottom middle) = 2242; model North (lesser correct) = 2307.
Although we do not find evidence of wide, systematic ideological bias or ideological bias depending on the credo of the potential readership, 1 might expect that individual biases would shape response patterns. Put differently, while nosotros practice not detect conservative or liberal candidates to be systematically disadvantaged overall, at that place are strong theoretical reasons to expect that political reporters will be more responsive to candidates with whom they share their political credo. Afterwards all, research into the psychological underpinnings driving personal interactions suggests that individuals strongly prefer to associate with those with whom they are ideologically aligned (36). If this were occurring, then we might not see evidence of bias overall, but instead, we would see polarized coverage. If journalists were exhibiting biased beliefs, then progressive-leaning journalists should be less likely to do a news story on conservative political candidates (and vice versa).
Figure 4B shows our treatment furnishings by journalist credo (which are broken into terciles, with the bottom tercile representing the well-nigh liberal journalists, the middle representing more moderate journalists, and the meridian tercile representing relatively conservative journalists). Every bit seen in Fig. 4B, we find that journalists, regardless of their ain ideology, treat candidates from different ideological backgrounds the aforementioned. (We find the aforementioned result if nosotros use self-reported ideology.)
Last, we replicate our finding of no liberal media bias in a conjoint experiment embedded in our original survey of journalists. The conjoint job presented journalist respondents with two pairs of hypothetical candidates who were announcing their candidacy for governor in the state. Nosotros indicated to journalists that they were in a situation where the timing of the announcements, their location, and the staffing limitations of the paper are such that the paper is unable to have a reporter at both announcements. Later displaying basic data virtually each candidate, we asked respondents to indicate which of the ii candidate announcements they would ship a reporter to cover in person. We randomized the political party of the participant forth with other characteristics of that individual (see the Supplementary Materials for more information on this experiment). Each respondent was shown two scenarios.
As we show in Fig. 5, when presented with various attributes of a potential story, the partisan nature of that story has no effect on whether journalists report that they would exist willing to cover that story. If anything, they are more predisposed to encompass Republican candidates. However, this effect is not statistically meaning. Using equivalence testing, we can rule out whatsoever meaningful levels of liberal media bias with a very loftier degree of confidence. This suggests that the null effect that nosotros observe is not unique to the specific nature of the correspondence report.
Event of candidate ideology on journalist responses (conjoint experiment).
The figure displays favorable coverage indicated past the two partisan conditions in the conjoint experiment that was embedded in our survey of journalists. Bars indicate mean levels; lines show 95% confidence intervals (P = 0.17). Experimental N = 3276. The other conditions randomized in the conjoint experiment had to do with the race, gender, candidate quality, social class, entrada managing director connections and experience, and issue existence addressed.
Word
Narratives of the media beingness biased confronting conservatives and toward liberals take come up to boss modern discussions of the media. A majority of Americans think that the media favors Democrats and that journalists are liberal and identify with the Democratic Party. There is evidence that the public is not incorrect; near journalists are far to the left of a typical American, regardless of whether we measure their ideology using surveys or the observed-behavior approach that we have used higher up. Nevertheless, no research (upward to this point) has explored whether ideological biases drain into a crucial stage of the news-generation process: when journalists make vital decisions about what to cover. Here, we have shown that despite theoretical reasons for bias and popular narratives, journalists show no signs of ideological gatekeeping biases. They show that despite the overwhelming liberal composition of the media, there is no evidence of liberal media bias in the news that political journalists choose to cover.
These results pigment a relatively positive view of the journalistic profession, i that is often missed in pop discussions near the potential for media bias. Some may wonder why we detect no bear witness of political bias in what journalists choose to comprehend, when some previous studies accept shown that there is political bias in how journalists comprehend the news. One possibility is that studies showing news media bias rely on national newspapers or cable news, whereas nosotros study political reporting of both national and local news outlets. While information technology is difficult to know for certain what mechanisms are driving our findings, our results are consistent with a mix of self-policing by journalists or oversight of newspaper managers [which may not be as liberal as journalists themselves; see (vi, 37–39)] constraining journalists in the news stories that they choose to embrace (three, 37) or both. As we have discussed in our test for heterogeneous treatment furnishings, at that place are strong economic and individual ideological pressures for journalists to showroom bias in what they choose to cover. The fact that they do not suggests that some other stiff force, perhaps the ethos of ideological balance that is often discussed in journalism training programs, constrains these powerful private and economic forces. Future work would do well to explore why these forces do not constrain how the news is covered in national news outlets.
Regardless of the exact reasons for a lack of ideological bias, our results provide physical evidence that counters pop narratives past political pundits, academics, and even President Trump himself. Despite repeatedly claiming that the media chooses to embrace merely topics that are detrimental to his campaign, presidency, and followers, we find little evidence to acquit with the idea that journalists beyond the United States are ideologically biased choosing what political news to cover.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
In the correspondence experiment, we clustered on city and newspaper to minimize potential stable unit of measurement treatment value assumption (SUTVA) violations amongst reporters because larger newspapers accept more reporters and reporters in smaller cities may contact each other even when they work for different newspapers. (For this reason, in our models in the paper, we cluster our SEs at the same level.) We then randomly assigned each announcer in the full sample to receive one of 4 possible emails. To avert having our messages marked as spam, we sent out our emails in randomly ordered batches of 400 per day. Thinking of other potential SUTVA violations, nosotros fabricated certain that journalists from the aforementioned newspaper received their e-mail on the same twenty-four hour period.
Although our requests were sent out about 6 months subsequently the initial survey, information technology is important to demonstrate that the requests were perceived as real rather than related to a detail enquiry project. To gauge the reception of the emails, nosotros had a team of inquiry assistants read all of the email responses and code them to gauge the response of the journalists to such a request. Our results propose that the emails were perceived as apparent. Over 75% of the responses included a follow-upward question requesting more details about the individual'south candidacy (such as what specific district he was running in, whether he was running for state House or Senate, when and where he would announce his candidacy, and requests for more details on his professional groundwork), x% immediately tried to schedule an interview, 11% referred us to another department or journalist at the newspaper, and well-nigh 3% requested a photograph that they could use in a story. None showed any indication that they believe the emails were part of a written report or were noncredible.
We received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval at both Cornell College and Brigham Immature University-Idaho. The IRB adamant that the deception and time required in our studies were minimal compared to the potential benefits of this study.
Supplementary Material
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for the feedback from scholars at the University of Michigan, Brigham Young University, and the Midwest Political Scientific discipline Association'southward (2019) Annual Coming together. We are also thankful to the following research administration: A. Alvarino, Due west. Anderson, T. Buddle, Thousand. Christiansen, D. Fernandez, A. Kohl, J. Nunamaker, M. Stern, Z. Stoll, and Thou. Valdez. Funding: The authors have no funding sources to disclose. H.J.One thousand.H. and Thousand.R.M. conceived the original survey of journalists and the conjoint experiment. H.J.G.H. nerveless the journalists' electronic mail addresses, Twitter handles, and carried out the original survey of journalists. M.R.M. performed the Twitter network analysis. H.J.G.H., J.B.H., and M.R.Thousand conceived the correspondence written report. M.R.K. carried out the correspondence study. H.J.Yard.H, J.B.H., and M.R.M. conducted the analysis. H.J.Thou.H, J.B.H., and M.R.Thou. contributed to writing the manuscript. Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to this project. Competing interests: The authors declare that they accept no competing interests. Information and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the newspaper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this newspaper may be requested from the authors. The replication data/code are posted at the Harvard Dataverse site for this article.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS
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Is It True That 85% Of Journalists Are Registered Democrats,
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7112764/
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