Media Matters get mix wrong

By Journal Editorial Board | Monday, October 15, 2007

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Media Matters for America released a report on the lineup of nationally syndicated columnists in South Dakota newspapers last week as part of its “Black and White and Re(a)d All Over” study.

In it, Media Matters listed the breakdown of conservative, progressive (the new word for “liberal”) and centrist voices printed on the op-ed pages in each of the state’s 11 daily newspapers. According to the media watchdog group, South Dakota newspapers, including the Rapid City Journal, are heavily weighted with conservative commentators. Fifty-seven percent of the nationally syndicated newspaper columns printed in South Dakota papers are written by conservatives and 26 percent are written by progressives, with the remainder from centrists.

Those results dismayed the liberal-minded Media Matters, as well as some conservatives who see the “liberal media” as the source of all America’s problems.

We were dismayed by the study, too, for far more practical reasons.

Media Matters’ data for the Journal’s columnist count was completely erroneous. The study claimed that 63 percent of our weekly columnists were of the conservative persuasion, while just 13 percent were progressive. It came to those conclusions by listing us as running five conservatives, two centrists and just one progressive: Ellen Goodman.

In fact, the Journal runs 16 national columnists each week:

Conservatives are Bill O’Reilly, Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Cal Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Kathleen Parker and Rich Lowry.

Progressives are Susan Estrich, Garrison Keillor, Ellen Goodman, E.J. Dionne, Richard Cohen and Robert Scheer, a columnist whose views are so liberal that many an irate Journal reader has called to question his politics, his patriotism and, more than once, his sanity.

Media Matters lists David Broder and Joseph Galloway, both of whose columns we carry, as centrists.

By our count, that makes for a national columnist lineup that is 50 percent conservatives, 38 percent progressive and 12 percent centrist. Still conservative, but hardly the overwhelming majority that Media Matters suggests.

In their defense, Media Matters says the Journal confirmed its columnist numbers in June in an email to the editor.

 Whatever the cause of the miscommunication, the Media Matters numbers, at least  for the Journal, need to be corrected.