2009/02/19-24: A Week of Bias

I can imagine somebody coming here and thinking, "Buddy, you're right about the Tribune and all, but if you think it's so mind-numbing why not just stop reading it?"

And so I have, for about a month now.

But here's an old one, anyway. Way back in February I started making a list of all the Trib preachings in the Opinion section, having long since realized and wanted to demonstrate that the claim of being an "Independent Voice" actually meant falling consistently, partisanly, and dependently on only one side of the issues.

Of course, I usually avoid the Opinions section anyway, and before I could finish the project, I found myself too nauseated by nonsense, lies, sarcasm, and evil to continue.

Here are my findings.

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Between Thursday the 19th and Tuesday the 24th (giving up after the first two editorials on the 24th), I recorded a total of 55 local "opinions" (that is, editorials and reader comments), including 16 from the Tribune herself and 39 from the carefully screened "public", along with another 12 non-local, nationally syndicated opinions (at least, I think they were all non-local). These 67 total opinions consisted of 77 distinct main points.

I graded each of them as "negative", "neutral", or "positive" as compared with my informed notion of the community values represented by the Tribune readership, and I categorized them by thesis. I ended up stretching out the "neutral" label quite a bit to include opinions that may have been superficially opposed to local values, but not necessarily technically antithetical -- that is, opinions that good-intentioned, perhaps insufficiently informed people in the community may still possibly hold without being idiots. So the results may seem kinder than they actually were. In reality, many of the "neutral" probably fit just as well under "negative".

To the Trib's very rare credit, of the 12 national articles, only 1 of them in these 5-plus days was "negative" for its pro-gay stance, and the rest were able to squeeze under "neutral".

As for the local opinions, the statistics follow:

2/19 Thursday
Negative: 2 Neutral: 5 Positive: 3 Ratio: 20%/50%/30%
2/20 Friday
Negative: 6 Neutral: 3 Positive: 1 Ratio: 60%/30%/10%
2/21 Saturday
Negative: 4 Neutral: 3 Positive: 2 Ratio: 44%/33%/22%
2/22 Sunday
Negative: 6 Neutral: 7 Positive: 2 Ratio: 40%/47%/13%
2/23 Monday
Negative: 3 Neutral: 6 Positive: 0 Ratio: 33%/67%/0%
2/24 Tuesday
Negative: 2 Neutral: 0 Positive: 0 Ratio: 100%/0%/0% (incomplete)

Totals
Negative: 23 Neutral: 24 Positive: 8 Ratio: 42%/44%/15%

Here are the categories of the main points, with each opinion containing at least one. Again, some of the neutral points were probably actually negative (like pro-unchecked voting) while some were perhaps positive (pro-mass transit), but I thought they didn't exemplify the extremes. Some points could be either negative or neutral depending on content and tone (education, anti-Utah government). Some negative points escaped the negative list due to their rational argument or lack of offensiveness (anti-war, anti-rich). Yet others fell into an unexpected group because of the idiocy or mediocrity of their proponents (pro-evolution, pro-disability).

Negative (total points: 31)
pro-gay (11)
anti-LDS/fake LDS (4)
anti-Buttars (4)
anti-Utah government (3)
anti-conservative/anti-GOP(3)
pro-promiscuity (2)
anti-home schooling/pro-educational establishment (2)
pro-evolution (1)
pro-stimulus (1)

Neutral (total points: 36)
anti-Utah government (5)
anti-nuclear waste (4)
pro-education (4)
pro-health care (3)
anti-billboard (2)
anti-military/anti-war (2)
pro-recession/pro-personal spending (2)
pro-fair tax (1)
anti-fair tax (1)
anti-rich (1)
pro-newspaper (1)
pro-fraternities (1)
pro-disability (1)
pro-bipartisanship (1)
anti-Burris (1)
pro-writers (1)
pro-environment (1)
pro-mentally ill (1)
pro-unchecked voting (1)
pro-mass transit (1)
unclear point (1)

Positive (total points: 10)
anti-gay/anti-pro-gay (3)
pro-democracy (2)
pro-Buttars (1)
anti-Obama (1)
pro-Larry H. Miller (1)
anti-lawsuit (1)
pro-scriptures (1)

Main point ratio:
40%/47%/13%

You may have noticed in the topics a reflection of the issues of the moment. While pop issues may have boosted some specific numbers that would not usually be so pronounced, I see no reason to think they would be out-of-line with the general trends.

The themes shown in these opinions are: a very strong proclivity towards homophilia, or love of gays. A strong sense of anarchism or paranoia toward government. A strong opposition to religion. A modest concern for education and environmental problems. A slight craving for laissez faire governance.

So, basically, the numbers and themes are a reverse of what you would expect in a truly independent, bias-free publication, given the views of this population. I feel my theory amply proven, that the Trib systematically excludes or suppresses certain viewpoints and promotes its own persuasional agenda. This test could easily be repeated.

Thanks for misrepresenting both yourself and the world, and behaving like a social virus, Tribune.