In Case You Missed This... On The NSA, The Media May Tilt Right - CJR

[WillyT]

On the NSA, the media may tilt right
An inquiry finds a pro-surveillance bias in the language
By Albert Wong and Valerie Belair-Gagnon - CJR
10/23/13

<snip>

Since June 6, the world has been roiled by an ongoing series of disclosures based on Edward Snowden’s document leaks, with coverage led by the Guardian and the Washington Post, about clandestine mass surveillance conducted, with little oversight, by the NSA and its international partners.

Public perceptions of these surveillance revelations are affected not only by the NSA’s actual actions, but also by the news coverage of the government’s spying programs. Previous studies have shown that the latter factor can have a profound effect on public opinion. Given the importance of this issue, we decided to analyze major US newspapers’ “post-Snowden” coverage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to determine if there was an overall bias in either a pro- (traditionally conservative) or anti-surveillance (traditionally liberal) direction.

The results were unexpected, and quite remarkable.

Our analysis of total press coverage of FISA and FISC between July 1 and July 31 (July was the first full calendar month after the initial disclosures in June) revealed that the widely held assumption that major media outlets uniformly tilt to the left does not match reality. In fact, if anything, the media appears to tilt to the right, at least on this issue.

We did a LexisNexis search of four of the largest US newspapers by circulation: The New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. Of the 30 traditionally pro- or anti-surveillance terms we examined (15 each, listed below) in all four newspapers, key words generally used to justify increased surveillance, such as security or terrorism, were used much more frequently than terms that tend to invoke opposition to mass surveillance, such as privacy or liberty.

USA Today led the pack...

<snip>

More: http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/news_media_pro_surveillance_bi.php?page=all

[Make7]

1. What, if anything, does the media tilt left on? ( n/t )

[Fumesucker]

2. "The results were unexpected"

Hoocoodanode?

[hootinholler]

3. Doesn't the notion the results were unexpected

Show acceptance of the RW "liberal press" meme?

[Octafish]

4. Gee. Who benefits from a strong rightward tilt of mass surveillance?

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

[grasswire]

5. D'oh!