Ashley K. Vroman

05 May 1999

When partisan groups or magazines label newspapers "liberal" or "conservative," these labels are often biased and not valid or reliable. Because attempts made by partisans to determine the ideology of a newspaper are themselves biased, reliance on such "findings" will mislead more than enlighten.

The asserted conservatism or liberalism of a newspaper varies with the ideology of the person reading it and the measurements or methods used. If a newspaper is "assigned" an ideology, either validity, or reliability, or both, must be sacrificed.

The purpose of this article is to show that methods used to measure the ideology of a newspaper are likely to yield results so divergent that "measurement" cannot be said to have occurred. I demonstrate this three ways: first, I analyze methods used by three sets of authors. Then, I compare these methods to an article, written by a partisan magazine, labeling the top five liberal and conservative newspapers across the country. Third, I test two other methods, presidential endorsements and the editorial content of newspapers, to compare them to that magazine’s results.

No reasonable observer of the press considers media utterly unbiased; therefore critics tend to make three sorts of assertions regarding systematic biases in newspapers. Some critics insist that newspapers are mostly liberally biased; some find newspapers conservatively biased; and others state that newspapers feature both slants. Partisan groups or people who are very conservative or very liberal usually argue the first two biases because they are much more conscious of and alarmed by biases opposite to their own. Because the ideology of a newspaper tends to lie in the eye of the beholder, the methods used to behold bias will vary with the assertions favored by those who "discover" biases.

L. Brent Bozell and Brent H. Baker argue that the media consistently invest news with a liberal slant. Their book, And That’s the Way It Isn’t, collects more than forty "studies" that purport to show the media to be liberally biased. They study the ideology of reporters because they argue that reporters’ ideology influences how they construct and disseminate the news. According to Bozell and Baker, most journalists are more liberal than the public. Consequently, they argue that the news journalists report is liberally biased.

Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon share with Bozell and Baker the view that the media are biased because they argue the media are conservatively biased. Lee and Solomon focus on foreign policy issues more than social issues. Because Lee and Solomon identify "conservatism" with foreign policy and parroting the U.S. government’s slant on events, they are able to find ample evidence of a conservative press.

Robert Entman describes the news as objective, meaning that journalists report the news with the "safest bet" in mind. He argues that journalists do not have much power when writing the news. "(Objectivity) sharply limit(s) the ability of journalists to offer audiences explicit assessments of truth, distortion, and falsehood." Entman argues that objectivity consists of meeting or attempting to meet two requirements. The first is "depersonalization" which "demands that reporters refrain from inserting into the news their own ideological or substantive evaluations of officials, ideas, or groups." The second is "balance" which "aims for neutrality. It requires (that) reporters present the views of legitimate spokespersons of the conflicting sides in any significant dispute, and provide both with roughly equivalent attention." Newspapers are not biased in a liberal slant or in a conservative slant because they incorporate both aspects of liberalism and conservatism. They are or attempt to be neutral when printing the news.

In sum, each author emphasizes different points. Bozell and Baker focus on the subjective views of reporters. Lee and Solomon center on the government’s propaganda, and Entman emphasizes the production-process behind the news media.

It is apparent from the previous section that the choice of issues to be analyzed and the methods by which to analyze them matter. Issues need not be reported with the same "slant," nor need they be reported with opposite slants. Indeed, without systematic methods that are reliable and valid, the bias of coverage of an issue may vary among analysts. Only a solid methodology can free judgements from the eye of the beholder.

In what follows, I shall focus on Bozell and Baker’s And That’s the Way It Isn’t to show how and why their methods are not reliable. They do many studies trying to prove newspapers are biased and have a liberal slant. They often do not tell how their studies were done, only that they were done by Bozell’s own organization, the "Media Research Center." Their studies pose a reliability issue because in order for the studies to be reliable they must be able to be repeated with approximately the same results produced each time.

One could not replicate many of the studies in And That’s the Way It Isn’t. For example, Bozell and Baker do a study titled, "Notable Quotes from Members of the Media." In this study, they cite many media figures, such as journalists, political analysts, producers, and correspondents, and ask their personal views on political issues. Bozell and Baker then compiled these results to show how many of the people supported liberal issues. For each political issue, they quote five selected people or fewer. They did not take a representative sample, thus their results are likely biased. In addition, this study is less reliable because if I asked these people the same questions, they might answer differently.

For example, under the issue "Political Tilt," Bozell and Baker take seriously the quote by Mickey Kaus, a Newsweek senior writer who says, "I can only speak for myself, but I was a longhaired Ivy League leftist in the late ‘60s and I’m still basically proud of what I did then." Bozell and Baker assume that because Mickey Kaus says he was a "leftist" in the ‘60s, he still is. This is neither proven nor reliable. If one asked Mickey Kaus this same question in 1999, chances are he might answer differently. For example, Kaus could have been contrasting his youthful enthusiasm with his "mature" views today. The fact is no one but Kaus, knows how he would answer. Bozell and Baker assume Kaus is liberal based on one quotation, which is not a reliable indicator of how biased the media may be. Many of the other quotes raise the same reliability issues.

In addition, these studies are not very valid because Bozell and Baker base most of them around their core "study" that journalists are more liberal than the rest of the public. Because in this instance validity concerns measuring how conservative or liberal newspapers are, the "ideology of a journalist" method is measuring just that: the ideology of journalists, not newspapers. Therefore, Bozell and Baker’s method (that journalists are more liberal) is invalid because Bozell and Baker purport they are measuring the ideology of newspapers, but instead, they measure the ideology of the journalists who work for the newspapers. This method, that a journalist’s ideology directly influences a newspaper’s (presumed) ideology, is a flawed inference by Bozell and Baker. As a faulty inference, this "measure" is not measurement at all but argument.

In another study, Bozell and Baker ascertain that journalists submit their own extra-curricular articles to liberal publications more so than conservative publications. Like the journalists’ personal ideologies, this indicator need not reveal with how liberal or conservative newspapers are. The two methods analyzed are very different. Why more journalists submit stories to liberal publications (even assuming that such a finding were replicated) need not say much about newspapers. Indeed, journalists may submit their articles to liberal publications precisely because they are constrained when writing for their newspapers. In that case, submission to liberal periodicals would show how newspapers diluted the liberal biases of their reporters. Bozell and Baker may have found evidence that points away from their thesis!

Overall, Bozell and Baker conduct their research to produce the results they hypothesized. They argue the media are liberally biased based on their studies that journalists are liberally biased. People can refute this accusation easily because many of Bozell and Baker’s studies undermine reliability and validity. Bozell and Baker are assume that journalists incorporate their own opinions into their articles but do have to follow a standard by the owners, which allows them to report the news neutrally. Because Bozell and Baker base many of their arguments around the ideology of journalists, which is not a valid or reliable method to label newspapers, their conclusions that the media are liberally biased are also invalid and unreliable.

To test my hypothesis that people cannot classify newspapers as liberal or conservative, I began searching for any source attempting to classify newspapers ideologically. The sole article I came upon was "Rating the Top 10, Left and Right" from Insight magazine, written by Keith Russell. Insight rates what they deem to be the top five liberal newspapers and top five conservative newspapers in the country. A possible explanation of why I could only find one article in this search is because people, including scholars and academics and most popular magazines, do not try to measure how liberal or conservative newspapers are. Some may know that they cannot do it reliably and validly because different methods yield different results. Perhaps others do not formulate methods or measures lest they expose problems of reliability and validity. Unsupported assertions may be politically and tactically superior to dubious investigations.

Insight magazine claims to be a conservative magazine. Therefore, its results are likely to be biased to the right. Insight labeled the newspapers according to what political pundits said of the newspapers. They provided no evidence to justify their categorizing of the newspapers. Insight determined the following to be the top five liberal newspapers in the country: New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune. Those they rated the top five conservative newspapers are the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, New York Post, Manchester (NH) Union-Leader, and Daily Oklahoman.

In the article, Insight claims that no newspaper can be completely objective. "Everyone has an opinion. Despite all of that mumbo-jumbo in journalism ethics courses about ‘objectivity,’ even the most sophisticated editor inevitably finds fence-straddling to be uncomfortable and sometimes impossible . . . most give up on objectivity in favor of fairness."

Attempting to categorize newspapers by their ideology the way Insight does poses reliability and validity problems because Insight’s methodology is flawed. Because Insight does not have a straightforward method for measuring how liberal or conservative each newspaper is, their conclusion that the respective newspapers are either liberal or conservative is not as reliable as it might had been had they used a method. They only use "media watchdogs from both ends of the political spectrum" to decide which newspapers are liberal and conservative. Because they did not explain actual methods, there is no basis for their "measure" to be reliable. Instead, Insight uses the opinions of biased political pundits. Depending on which pundits they ask and the mood the pundits are in, they could get very different results. This is not credible because political pundits can change their minds with no consequences, and the answer can change depending on which pundit asked.

Insight is not only unreliable, but it is also invalid. Insight’s article attempts to examine the top ten newspapers’ (liberal and conservative) ideologies. Are they measuring every aspect of the newspaper? Are they only measuring specific sections of newspapers? They are measuring the newspapers only by the unspecified views of specific pundits. By one set of standards, one pundit might deem a specific newspaper conservative, while another deems the same newspaper liberal. This is a violation of construct validity because when a pundit measures the ideology of a newspaper, all people must define ideology as the pundit did. A libertarian pundit, for instance, might consistently and reliably rank newspapers differently from a Christian Right pundit.

For example, the Chicago Tribune was rated a liberal newspaper because Insight based their rating on a quotation which said Bill Clinton and his political strategist, Dick Morris, were, "unfaithful to their wives and children." However, the Tribune retracted the comment saying, "Neither man has admitted to being or been proven to have been unfaithful. The Tribune regrets the error." Not coincidentally, Bozell named this "Quote of the Year in 1996" for his Media Research Center. This quotation is not a reliable indicator for determining if the Chicago Tribune is liberal or conservative because not every issue the Chicago Tribune prints includes quotes like this. If subsequent issues of the Tribune were sampled, one might find different quotes leading him or her to believe the Tribune was a neutral or conservative newspaper.

However, before dismissing the idea that we can rate newspapers ideologically, we should discuss whether methods to rate newspapers reliably, validly, and accurately are available. There are many different methods one could use: whether newspapers endorse presidential candidates who are liberal or conservative; or analyzing the newspaper’s editorial section to see how liberal or conservative newspapers are on specific issues.

If one employed both methods, the results might be more reliable and valid than Insight’s, because Insight did not have a method for measuring the newspapers. This does not mean these aforementioned methods are completely valid or reliable, or that newspapers can reliably and validly be categorized this way. In fact, because there are many methods to use, the results are likely to be mixed, with the presidential endorsements suggesting a newspaper is conservative, while the editorials suggesting the opposite.

Every fourth year, many newspapers across the nation endorse a candidate for president. I recorded which president each newspaper endorsed. For this study, I chose to analyze the endorsements of Insight’s ten newspapers between the years 1948-1996.

Noting that not all newspapers choose to endorse a candidate every presidential election year is important. In fact, two of the ten newspapers on Insight’s list, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, do not endorse presidential candidates for any presidential election. In addition, in many election years a newspaper might decide not to endorse a candidate. For example, in 1988, the Washington Post did not endorse a candidate because they felt that the election race was "a terrible campaign, [sic] a national disappointment." Many newspapers choose not to endorse presidential candidates because they want to remain neutral. Many newspapers want to be unbiased even in their editorial pages where endorsements appear.

Most newspapers across the country consistently endorse the Republican and more conservative candidate. In most elections, the Republican candidate is identified as the conservative candidate because the Republican is usually more conservative than the Democratic candidate. In fact, every election year, except 1964 and 1992, of the newspapers that did endorse a candidate, more endorsed the conservative candidate. Since 1948, newspapers supported the Republican candidate 86.7%, while the Democratic candidates received 13.3% of the endorsements.

These data are very different from Insight’s results. Insight rated the Chicago Tribune as liberal because of one quotation. Based on the presidential endorsement data, the Chicago Tribune would be considered a conservative newspaper because during all thirteen elections since 1948, it has endorsed a Republican candidate. From this method it is surely not one of the top liberal five in the U.S., as Insight purports. Newspapers that support a very conservative candidate for president are likely to be more conservative than newspapers that do not support conservative candidates. For example, in 1964, Barry Goldwater was the conservative candidate and eventual loser of the election against Lyndon B. Johnson. This is very important when analyzing Insight’s results because even though the Chicago Tribune endorses him in 1964, most of the newspapers across the nation endorsed Johnson. Based on this datum, the Chicago Tribune is more conservative than newspapers who endorsed Johnson. While the Chicago Tribune disproves Insight’s results, the datum on the New York Post does as well. The New York Post endorsed the Republican candidate more election years than they did the Democratic candidate. Moreover, in 1964 they endorsed Lyndon B. Johnson like the majority of newspapers that year. Insight labels the New York Post as conservative because of its "top-notch reporters and a winning lineup of columnists." This is not a valid reason to label the Post conservative. Instead of measuring how liberal or conservative the newspapers are, Insight is measuring the quality of the staff at the Post.

How can Insight, validly, categorize the Tribune as liberal and the Post as conservative? They do not validly categorize them; instead, they speculate based on their opinions and the opinion of political pundits. Although this method of presidential endorsements may not be the most valid or reliable, it shows that a different method will yield different results.

It is established that the presidential endorsement data do not correlate with Insight’s results, but will editorials correlate with the presidential endorsement data or Insight’s data? Are editorials a reliable and valid method for measuring the ideology of newspapers?

Because conservative and liberal are broad terms, defining them is important so there is no misunderstanding. Using Fred N. Kerlinger’s definition, conservatism might be rendered:

He describes liberalism as,

Based on these definitions, I chose the issue of abortion to compare and contrast the newspapers. I chose abortion because both of Kerlinger’s definitions emphasize social beliefs. Most liberals support abortion because abortion "emphasizes freedom of the individual." Unlike liberals, conservatives do not support abortion because of their "emphasis on the status quo." Of the top five newspapers Insight rates liberal, I chose the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune to attempt to see how they viewed late-term abortion. Of the top five newspapers Insight rates conservative, I chose the Daily Oklahoman and the Washington Times.

Of Insight's conservative newspapers, both the Daily Oklahoman and Washington Times wrote conservative editorials concerning late-term abortion. Of Insight’s liberal newspapers, the New York Times took a liberal view, supporting late-term abortion rights. The Boston Globe also took a liberal view, but the Chicago Tribune, wrote conservative editorials regarding the late-term abortion issue.

Rating editorials, like the presidential endorsement data, contradicts Insight’s results. It does because the results of the editorial method rate newspapers differently than Insight’s results. The presidential endorsement and editorial data are similar in that both methods categorized the same newspapers as conservative. However, the liberal papers in the editorial method are different from the newspapers of the endorsement method. This is because the majority of newspapers endorse a conservative candidate rather than a liberal candidate.

While nothing can be totally reliable and nothing can be totally valid, some methods can be more valid and reliable than other methods. Insight rated the top five liberal and the top five conservative newspapers without a method. Instead, they asked opinionated pundits their view on newspapers. To see if any methods would change Insight’s results, I rated these newspapers by each paper’s presidential endorsements. The results were different from Insight’s. Then, using over half the newspapers Insight rated, I detected the paper’s editorial view on abortion. The results were again different from the presidential endorsement data and Insight’s data.

Few methods used to measure the ideologies of newspapers will yield reliable and valid labels. Because each method produces slightly different results, the methods combined are likely to yield mixed and unreliable results. For example, one method (such as presidential endorsements) might give a reliable classification of newspapers, but combined with other methods, the newspapers cannot be labeled reliably or validly because the results are very different each time the newspapers are measured.

People should be aware that attempts made by partisans to determine the ideology of a newspaper are biased, and people seeking accurate news should be aware of these findings. The point of this article is not merely to disprove Insight’s findings, but to explain why more people, namely academics and scholars, do not try to label newspapers by their ideologies. People should be aware of this when they read articles attempting to categorize or label newspapers as liberal or conservative. They should also be aware that they are probably reading partisan prose lacking reliable and valid methods. Newspapers cannot validly and reliably be labeled by how liberal or conservative they are. The ideology of a newspaper is in the eye, and methods, of the beholder.

COMPLETE ARTICLE

Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.

Insight on the News

May 25, 1998, Monday, Final Edition

SECTION: Part NATION: BEST NEWSPAPERS; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 2486 words

HEADLINE: Rating the Top 10, Left and Right

BYLINE: Keith Russell; INSIGHT

BODY:

SUMMARY: Of the thousands of newspapers in the United States, few can say they are completely objective. Insight lists the best conservative and liberal newspapers in the country.

TEXT: Everyone has an opinion. Despite all of that mumbo-jumbo in journalism ethics courses about "objectivity," even the most sophisticated editor inevitably finds fence-straddling to be uncomfortable and sometimes impossible. Eventually most give

up on objectivity in favor of fairness - recognizing one's biases and trying to balance them with an evenhanded approach that includes the other side's views.

In that spirit, Insight has consulted media watchdogs from both ends of the political spectrum and compiled a list of the nation's top newspapers of both the right and left.

It is no secret that for some time America's media establishment has been a private club for liberals. So it comes as no surprise that the best newspapers on the left are some of the most established editorial voices in the news business. Here, in order, are

Insight's top liberal five.

1. New York Times. A loyal friend to big-government solutions and internationalist causes, this journal that aims to provide "All the News That's Fit to Print" still stands a head above the rest. The winner of 77 Pulitzer Prizes - by far the most of any U.S.

newspaper - the Times is taken seriously by most of the world's leading political players. "They still do more foreign news coverage than almost any other newspaper," says Hilton Kramer, the liberal editor of the monthly New Criterion and a former

columnist for the New York Post.

In national news, a 1998 Pulitzer winner was Linda Greenhouse for her coverage in the Times of the U.S. Supreme Court. And the newspaper's Sunday book-review supplement and arts criticism (another Pulitzer was awarded this year to Michiko

Kakutamis, a Times critic) is widely considered the best in the business.

Though conservatives love to complain about its sophisticated liberal cosmopolitanism, they read and admire it. "It's never met a liberal cause it didn't love or a conservative cause it couldn't disparage," asserts L. Brent Bozell III of the conservative Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va. "But from time to time they will have a good story - they were the ones who first broke the Whitewater story in the newspapers. And they have written some tough editorials on [President] Clinton."

"It is easily the flagship of the liberal dailies," adds Terrence Jeffrey, editor of Human Events, a Washington-based conservative weekly. "They have outstanding reporting and, of all the liberal op-ed pages, no doubt the New York Times' is the best."

In recent years, Times editors have given the impression that they are trying to alter their reputation for stuffy elitism. Beginning with a mid-1970s overhaul, the newspaper steadily has added new and more reader-friendly features (including a popular science section), and leapt into the late 20th century last year when it added color photos and color illustrations for the first time. As for its alleged monocularism, this New York paper is the home base of conservative columnists A.M Rosenthal and

William Safire.

2. Los Angeles Times. Probably the only thing keeping this newspaper from jumping ahead of its liberal counterpart on the East Coast is geography. Despite having been a winner of 22 Pulitzers, it doesn't always get the respect it deserves in New York or

Washington for its high-quality work both in national and international news.

In political circles, the paper has shone brighter than any other on the port side with its coverage of the Democratic National Committee campaign-finance scandals. "It has been superb in taking the lead on the whole Asiagate story," says Bozell. "The

L.A. Times has been the driving force behind that story, and it has been a tremendous disappointment that the networks have not followed up on those stories that were broken out of L.A."

Indeed, at times it seems the networks only pay attention to Los Angeles when another disaster strikes the snake-bitten city. But even then, the L.A. Times proves itself up to the challenge, as evidenced by its coverage of the 1992 riots following the

Rodney King police-brutality verdict and a recent botched bank holdup turned full-fledged shootout with police in the city's streets. Both stories garnered the paper Pulitzers.

And despite a decades-long history of leaning toward the left, the paper's editorial pages have on occasion shown a proclivity to stake out centrist and occasionally even conservative positions. One recent example was its decision to oppose a state

measure arbitrarily to raise the minimum wage, arguing the measure would hurt small businesses.

3. Washington Post. As Iver Peterson put it early this year in the New York Times, "It's not Ben Bradlee's Washington Post anymore." Nonetheless, the paper that broke the Watergate story and launched the careers of Bob Woodward and Carl

Bernstein still is the first newspaper liberal newsmakers inside the Washington Beltway pick up in the morning.

The paper's reputation took a beating in the early 1980s following the fiasco with its former reporter Janet Cooke, the now-infamous author of the Pulitzer-winning story about an eight-year-old drug addict named "Jimmy" that seemed too good to

be true - and was. (Last anyone heard, Cooke was employed as a department-store clerk in Kalamazoo, Mich.) But the Post now is arguably at a high point almost comparable to its Watergate days thanks to its breaking of another presidential scandal. After Post reporters Peter Baker and Susan Schmidt beat Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff to the punch on the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, other news organizations flew into a frenzy to catch up with the story. Human Events' Jeffrey, almost always critical of the Post for pushing liberal agendas, grudgingly says, "You have to give it credit." But even a blind hog roots up an acorn once in a while. Jeffrey insists that one always knows where the Washington Post will stand. "The bias in the Post is much more blatant than the New York Times or the L.A. Times, and it has been much softer on Clinton."

"Years ago, we used to call it the Washington edition of Pravda," grumps Ralph de Toledano, a legendary conservative and former columnist for Newsweek. "I spend quite a lot of time with other reporters, and even the liberal ones have less respect

for the paper because of it."

4. Boston Globe. The most prestigious liberal paper in one of the most staunchly liberal states, the Globe never has been mistaken as a paper without a point of view. "It has a totally liberal mind-set, maybe even more so than the [New York]

Times," observes Kramer.

The fact remains, however, that the Globe still is one of the most influential newspapers in the Northeast, and its 15 Pulitzers (including two for the prized meritorious public-service honor) are proof that its leftist mantra isn't the only thing this one has going for it.

"I think for a newspaper [so far away] they do serious reporting on Washington," Jeffrey says. "And given that they are right there in liberal heaven, they keep their acolytes happy."

"If you look at its subscription base, it's not going to compete with the larger East Coast papers," Bozell remarks. "But it is read by a lot of public-opinion makers."

The Globe has no qualms about making public officials squirm, a habit perhaps no more glaring than in the paper's recent investigation of allegedly excessive drinking by former Boston mayor Ray Flynn. The piece, which Flynn said was a hatchet job

on him for taking policy positions the Globe opposes, was fiercely criticized by the conservative Boston Herald, the Globe's very able cross-town rival, and it even drew the attention of CBS' 60 Minutes, which recently aired a segment on the controversy.

5. Chicago Tribune. Years ago, one never would have called the Tribune a newspaper of the left. "In the days of Col. [Robert] McCormick, [a staunch conservative who gained renown for a much-publicized crusade against President Franklin Delano

Roosevelt,] it was what you might call eccentrically conservative," notes Kramer.

Times do change. While the great Chicago paper continues to be the Midwest's most influential and respected daily, it certainly has shuffled toward the liberal end of the political spectrum. Probably the most entertaining proof of that came in the fall of

1996, when it ran a retraction stemming from a comment made in an op-ed piece in which the writer had characterized both President Clinton and his toe-sucking political strategist Dick Morris as "unfaithful to their wives and children." Hmmm! "Neither man has admitted to being or been proven to have been unfaithful," the paper's editors declared. "The Tribune regrets the error."

Such backpedaling on an opinion piece was so dumbfounding that it warranted being named by Bozell's Media Research Center as its Quote of the Year for 1996.

But if the newspapers on the left are characterized by their deep roots in the establishment, most of the nation's best conservative papers are relative upstarts by comparison - except for the first choice.

1. Wall Street Journal. Of all newspapers that lean conservative, the newspaper of record in the business world is by far the most influential. Beyond its mammoth credibility in the nation's boardrooms, the Journal has considerable clout on Capitol Hill and everywhere else its international reach touches.

But oddly enough, Insight and other observers like the Journal not so much for its straight news reporting, widely regarded as starchy and self-conscious, but for its lively commentary and editorial sections. "I am a great admirer of the Journal," says

Kramer, "but there is a widely recognized difference between the political coverage in its main news gathering and in its editorial pages. Actually, often it's in the editorial pages where you find more interesting news, particularly with regard to the Clinton

administration."

"It is a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," says Bozell. "Its news section is staffed with liberals who write editorials and call it news and its editorial department is staffed with conservatives that break news and call their work editorials!"

Conservative hard-liner Jeffrey butters his bread further to the right. "I would fault it for not being more direct and outspoken about the social issues," he says. "A few more editorials in the past year were vaguely pro-life," but otherwise cultural issues are given little play. Bozell says the Journal's quality is without question. "It's not only the quality of the writing, but the thinking that goes into their content, that is so good. They will look at stories from perspectives that no one else has."

2. Washington Times. As anyone who reads the front cover of this magazine will know, Insight is owned by the people who run this conservative alternative to the Washington Post. So to avoid any charges of conflict-of-interest, we'll let other critics speak up for the people who work one floor below us.

Bozell: "One just has to shudder at the thought of what the Washington Post would be like if the Washington Times weren't around. It has broken more stories on Bill Clinton and his scandals than quite possibly all other media outlets combined."

Jeffrey: "I have to put the Washington Times at the top of the list."

Ralph de Toledano: "It is the first paper we've had in Washington since the Times-Herald that covers politics ... in a way that's not liberal and is also factual. It does a very good job in its own point of view, and its editorials are terrific. I can read those

editorials and learn something."

Kramer: "The Washington Times always has something new in it that you won't see anywhere else."

True, that "something new" might be as curious as a front-page analysis on the notorious "distinguishing mark" of the president's lower anatomy.

And yes, the newspaper's business connection to the Unification Church still draws some raised eyebrows from a dwindling number of liberals, but the Times' editorial independence is the envy of most newsmen. Breaking stories regularly that others

won't touch - or can't - has made the paper a must-read in Washington and nationally.

3. New York Post. One hesitates to put into the company of journalism's best any publication that would use 80-point type to blare the page-one headline "Indict My Dog!" (for a story on Web Hubbell's latest rash of indictments), but the truth is that the N.Y. Post has a habit of getting away with breaking rules in the news business. "It's like the Australian Rules football version of newspapers," ribs Jim Naureckas, editor of a newsletter for Freedom and Accuracy In Reporting, or FAIR, a progressive media watchdog.

A part of media baron Rupert Murdoch's vast empire, the N.Y. Post does at times remind one of the garish tabloids in Britain and Australia. Nonetheless, the paper's prime position in the nation's No.1 media market, and its clearly defined conservative

viewpoint, make it one of the right's most recognizable platforms. And while it does make Manhattan's conservative elite blush every now and then, the paper has more than its share of top-notch reporters and a winning lineup of columnists.

"What the New York Post does is say what people are really thinking," Bozell says. "And the editorials are so salient - and punchy."

4. Manchester (N.H.) Union-Leader. Located in the state where politicians with presidential ambitions must prove their mettle, this staunchly conservative newspaper has a power beyond its relatively modest circulation. With a single editorial it might be able to make or break a presidential candidate, as it showed with its endorsement of Pat Buchanan in 1996, which helped catapult him to a win in the Granite State primary.

"It's probably the most influential conservative newspaper in the nation, because it's published in the first primary state," says Jeffrey. "They are absolutely principled across the board, i real defenders of conservative issues."

5. Daily Oklahoman. Run by conservative editor and publisher Edward Gaylord and anchored by editorial-page editor Pat McGuigan, a frequent guest on PBS' Jim Lehrer News Hour, this regional champion is a favorite of Bozell. "You have to admire what Gaylord has done. This man, in the early 1980s i bucked the entire Oklahoma Legislature that was advancing one of the largest tax increases ever in the state. But Gaylord started writing front-page editorials and beat them all. And Pat McGuigan has done just an outstanding job there," he says.

And that's the Insight top 10, left and right.

Challenged about their objectivity, the lists' calculators admit their bias and plead balance.

GRAPHIC: Photos (color), A) Buchanan's pick: The Union Leader was outspoken in the 1996 New Hampshire GOP

primary.; B&C) NO CAPTION, A) By AP/Wide World; B&C) NO CREDIT

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: June 2, 1998

© 1999, LEXIS®-NEXIS®, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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ADDRESS: http:// www.lexis.nexis.com/universe/ . A copy of this article is available from the author.