Media Bias? A Comparative Study of Time, Newsweek, the National Review, and the Progressive Coverage of Domestic Social Issues, 1975-2000. Tawnya J. Adkins Covert and Philo C. Wasburn. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. 182 pp.
Sociologists Philo Wasburn (Purdue University) and Tawnya Covert (Western Illinois University) have selected four long-standing domestic issues about which opinion ranges between positions commonly thought of as “conservative” and “liberal”—crime, the environment, gender, and poverty. In this study, media coverage that tends towards either one of these positions constitutes “bias.” More specifically, bias is defined as “a consistent tendency to provide more support to one of the contending parties, policies, or points of view in a sustained conflict over a social issue.” The authors examine the extent to which coverage over time is “biased” in Time and Newsweek, which they hold to represent the “mainstream media,” and in two overtly partisan publications, The National Review and The Progressive.