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Op-Ed Pages: Rightward Slant?

Posted Sep 22, 2007 by William March

Updated Sep 22, 2007 at 04:45 PM

A study by a research group that describes itself as “progressive” says op-ed pages of Florida newspapers, along with newspapers nationwide, are dominated by conservative columnists.

The study was done by Media Matters for America, whose web site describes it as “a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”

“Op-ed pages,” BTW, means “opposite the editorial pages”—the pages found across from the newspaper’s own, unsigned opinion columns, carrying syndicated and guest opinion columns, letters to the editor and other commentary.

The study was based on information the organization obtained from daily newspapers about their circulation, what syndicated columnists they run and how often. In Florida, it looked at 37 daily newspapers, omitting the Gainesville Sun, which didn’t respond to the survey.

The results: Syndicated columnists Media Matters considered “conservative” appeared a total of 121 times a week, those it called “centrists” 40 times, and “progressives” 75 times.

Taking circulation into account, that’s about 23 million column appearances per week. Conservatives accounted for 49 percent of those appearances, about 4 million more than progressives, who represented 32 percent.

The organization called such columnists as Cal Thomas and George Will, among others, conservative; David Broder and Thomas L. Friedman centrist; and Ellen Goodman and Maureen Dowd progressive.

The report said Thomas is the most widely printed columnist in Florida papers, followed by Will, Broder, conservative Kathleen Parker and progressive Leonard Pitts Jr.

It said the Tampa Tribune has 80 percent conservative and 20 percent progressive columnist appearances.

Here’s the Florida study.

The nationwide study found a similar conclusion, looking at 1,377 of the 1,430 daily, English-language newspapers. In a given week, it said, nationally syndicated progressive columnists get about 125 million appearances and conservative more than 152 million.