Does an institutionalized left-liberal bias in the culture and organization of journalism generate imbalance in the news, as shown by coverage of the abortion issue?
This study examines coverage of the abortion issue in three Canadian newspapers. It begins with the premise that journalists have left-liberal dispositions, and they tend to assume the existence of a 'liberal consensus' on contentious social issues. The thesis tested is that press coverage of abortion is informed by a left-liberal perspective which favours the 'pro-choice' position over the 'pro-life' position.
A content analysis of abortion coverage was performed; specifically coverage for 1994 in three metropolitan Canadian dailies, the Globe and Mail, Winnipeg Free Press and the Victoria Times-Colonist. A random sample of news stories was selected, and abortion had to be the subject of the news item (mere mention of abortion in an article did not merit selection of the item; rather the item had to focus on any aspect of the abortion issue or be centrally relevant to pro-life and pro-choice discourse). Each news item was coded for several variables, including origin of story (staff writer or wire), total number of paragraphs, and number of paragraphs favouring the pro-choice or pro-life perspectives
A total of 68 news items were selected: 24 from the Globe and Mail, 22 from the Free Press, and 22 from the Times-Colonist. These news items contained 528 paragraphs, coded as follows: 46% pro-choice, 19% pro-life, and 35% neutral.
The Winnipeg Free Press had the highest percentage of pro-choice paragraphs at 60%, and the lowest percentage of neutral paragraphs at 19%. The Free Press also had the most news items containing no pro-life paragraphs; 12 of its news items contained no such viewpoints, while the Victoria Times-Colonist had 7 such items, and the Globe and Mail had 10 (only one Globe and Mail item didnšt contain a pro-choice view).
In terms of sources, doctors were referred to most often (41 references), followed by activists (40) and politicians (39). Of the 41 doctor references, 42% were to Dr. Henry Morgentaler. Overall, 51% of the sources were pro-choice, 35% pro-life, and 14% were neutral. The doctors quoted were 90% pro-choice. As regards gender, men constituted approximately 75% of all sources named and quoted in the three papers.
Overall, the ratio of pro-choice to pro-life paragraphs is more than 2:1 (48.7% to 19%).
Conclusions
The findings support the hypothesis - press coverage of abortion reflects a left-liberal perspective which favours the 'pro-choice' position over the 'pro-life' position. Not only does the number of pro-choice paragraphs far outweigh pro-life ones, but so do the neutral paragraphs. These findings are consistent with the premise that the journalists have 'left liberal' values on social issues, though of course it does not 'prove' it. It may also be that the news media stress the status quo, and thus eliminate radical views.
Researcher: Christoph Clodius