WASHINGTON TIMES
10/10/2003

Media bias


By John R. Lott Jr



Is it possible to even discuss race in sports, let alone anywhere
else? This past week provideslittlehope. Whether Rush Limbaugh's
comments on Donovan McNabb were racist, there is a general agreement
that he was factually wrong, that Mr. Limbaugh did not know what he is
talking about. Yet, what is the evidence?
Mr. Limbaugh readily admits that it was just his opinion that "the
media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well." But
his critics allowed no possibility for uncertainty, calling his
comments "ignorant" or worse. As National Public Radio put it: "Rush
was able to turn a complete lack of understanding of football into a
cross burning." Even the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial
disagreeing with his statements on news coverage.
A couple of stories compared McNabb to another quarterback, such
as Tampa Bay's Brad Johnson, whom many apparently regard as just a
so-so quarterback. But no one has tried to compare the news coverage
of any two quarterbacks, let alone generally between black and white
quarterbacks in the NFL.
To measure positive news coverage, I quickly put 10 research
assistants to work on a Nexis search, which is a computerized search
of newspaper stories across the country. They looked at the coverage
received by the 36 quarterbacks who played during the first four weeks
of this season. (The articles were from the day of their first game to
the day after their last game during the period.) To try to make the
categorization of news stories objective, 23 phrases were picked to
identify positive descriptions of a quarterback and 23 phrases for
negative ones. Positive phrases included words such as "brilliant,"
"agile," "good," "great," "tough," "accurate," "leader,"
"intelligent," or "strong arm." Negative phrases included "overrated,"
"erratic," "struggling," "bad," "weak arm," or "mistakes." Obviously,
the media involves more than newspapers, but this is measurable and it
is not clear why newspapers would be so different from the rest of the
media.
We then identified news stories where these phrases appeared
within 50 words of a quarterback's name. Each story was read to check
that the phrases were indeed used to describe the quarterback and to
make sure that the word "not" did not appear before the different
phrases. Depending upon whether positive or negative words were used
to describe the quarterback, stories were classified as positive,
negative or falling into both categories.
The evidence confirms that Mr. Limbaugh is right, though the
simplest measures indicate that the difference is not huge. Looking at
just the averages, without trying to account for anything else,
reveals a 10 percent difference in coverage (with 67 percent of
stories on blacks being positive, 61 percent for whites).
We also collected data by week for each of the first four weeks of
the season on a host of other factors that help explain the rate at
which a player is praised: the quarterback's rating for each game;
whether his team won; the points scored for and against the team;
ESPN's weekly rank for the quarterback's team and the opponent; and
whether it was a Monday night game. In addition, I accounted for
average differences in media coverage both in the quarterback's city
and the opponent's city as well as differences across weeks of the
season.
Accounting for these other factors shows a much stronger pattern.
Black quarterbacks' news coverage is 27 percentage points more
positive than whites. And, that difference was quite statistically
significant — the chance of this result simply being random is the
same odds as flipping a coin five times and getting heads each time.
The quarterback ranking, scoring, winning, and higher ranked teams
playing against each other all increase the percentage of positive
stories. For example, each additional point scored by the
quarterback's team raises the share of positive news coverage by about
one percentage point. Being in the only game being played on a
particular day lowers how positive the coverage was by about 12
percentage points, as more newspapers outside the home area cover the
game the next day.
The media's interest in the number of black quarterbacks can also
be seen in other more explicit ways. Last season, out of 217 news
stories discussing the race of professional quarterbacks, 194
mentioned whether an individual quarterback was black, only 23 if they
were white. By contrast, for running backs and receivers — where the
ratio of blacks to whites is even more lopsided with blacks dominating
— discussions of a player's race are virtually nonexistent. Only six
stories mentioned that running backs were black and 10 that they were
receivers, and the numbers discussing that they were white were four
and seven, respectively.
Yet, if indeed skin color results in significantly more positive
coverage, doesn't that imply that the media, not Mr. Limbaugh, is
racist? Presumably the media feels that coverage is justified, though
it could mean that the press had too low expectations of blacks.
I hope the furor over Mr. Limbaugh's statement will help us
understand the media a little better. The evidence indicates that
there is a lot to explain. The current fact-free name-calling hardly
shows that sports have come to grip with race.

John R. Lott Jr. is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute

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