The content of their coverage: contrasting racially conservative and liberal elite rhetoric

ABSTRACT

Theoretical and empirical evidence suggest that how elites talk about race may shape mass racial attitudes. But current work limits understanding this possibility by not systematically characterizing elite rhetoric on race. To shed light on the nature of racially liberal and conservative elite rhetoric, and therefore the potential for elites to shape mass racial attitudes, I analyze transcripts from two partisan news shows: The Rachel Maddow Show and The O’Reilly Factor. Pairing a case study with text-as-data methods, I provide insight into themes constituting racially liberal and conservative elite discourse. Racial liberals like Maddow emphasize that race matters–racial bias and discrimination still shape nonwhites’ life chances. In contrast, racial conservatives like O’Reilly contend that race does not shape life chances and serves only as an attention-seeking device. Identifying these divides helps shed light on the origins and dynamics of mass racial attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• Mass media
• multi-method
• public opinion
• political psychology
• discourse
• race
• racism

Acknowledgements

I thank Allison Anoll, Daniel Gillion, Marc Hetherington, Cindy Kam, Jonathan Klingler, Efrén Pérez, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback and discussions during this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 These shows provide the longest timespan in which to compare speakers regarded as characterizing consistently liberal and conservative commentary (Grossmann and Hopkins 2016). Indeed, accounts of Maddow’s hiring describe MSNBC as deliberately adding more liberal perspectives (Carter 2008), making her show the most likely place to identify racially liberal themes over the longest time period. Further, analyses considering other shows offer complementary insights (Dixon 2017).

2 Emphasizing rhetoric is unfortunately limited, however, because I cannot account for visuals. Images link implicit rhetoric with racial groups (Mendelberg 2001) and may themselves shed light on racially liberal and conservative themes (cf. Farris and Mohamed 2018).

3 Focusing on nonwhites may still be limited because it does not consider whiteness. But accounts of whiteness’s origins suggest these concerns are not dire. As Haney López (2006) notes, whiteness developed by establishing who is not white rather than affirmatively defining who counts as white (21). Consequently, focusing on rhetoric referencing nonwhites can speak to how people understand race in its myriad guises, including whiteness.

4 These shows offer the longest time coverage from programming providing a consistent viewpoint, making them opportune subjects seen as providing conservative and liberal perspectives (Carter 2008; Grossmann and Hopkins 2016). For example, Fox’s Sean Hannity shared a primetime show with liberal Alan Colmes until February 2009 and Keith Olbermann left MSNBC January 2011.

5 Transcripts downloaded from FACTIVA and vary in length according to number of words spoken on each episode. Data contain 1830 and 2025 episodes for Maddow and O’Reilly, respectively.

6 Google trends data indicate that Ferguson occurred at the beginning of sustained public interest in police brutality in the period studied https://bit.ly/2XyV3nE

7 I exclude Barack Obama from mentions of prominent racial figures to guard against conflating discussion of race with references to the sitting president. Any results including Obama thus pair him with race defined some other way. This makes the picture I present restrictive because I do not directly capture how commentators discuss the sitting president, references my coding scheme may otherwise miss.

8 This procedure is still limited because it cannot capture conversations across pundits and discussions on the same show if statements do not incorporate words identified as discriminating racial from non-racial text. I thus offer a restrictive characterization of racial discourse.

9 The supplementary information includes additional details on the text processing and model estimation.

10 Appendix C compares levels of racial discussion on Maddow and O’Reilly. The results indicate that O’Reilly covered race more than Maddow. While not substantively large, this runs against evidence that outlets ignore issues that are not winning topics for their coalition (Levendusky 2013).

11 Appendix B includes a case study of Henry Louis Gates’s arrest offering similar insights.

12 Topic labels come from reading the 60 documents identified as most strongly loading on each topic with 30 each from Maddow and O'Reilly. The “misc.” topic includes primarily guest introductions but also a mix of short-term events like the 2009 ACORN controversy.

13 When The Factor affirmatively addresses racism it usually invokes Jim Crow-style discrimination and biological racism. But this is rare. References to “real racism” provide no definition, suggesting the speaker and audience possess common knowledge about what actually constitutes racism. Alternatively, The Factor may define “real racism” via negation by indicating what racism is not.

14 This principled-movement view runs opposite network coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement. Banks (2018) shows how Fox’s coverage incorporates frames delegitimizing a movement that could also be seen as principled. By establishing what count as principled vs. racially motivated claims, Fox may help establish which groups’ concerns merit attention and also racialize non-racial value judgments.

15 Maddow’s approach reflects partisan news’s proclivity to use individual events and stories to reveal flaws in the opposing party (Levendusky 2013). The Tea Party demonstrates that the Republican Party is out of step on race in part by condoning racist remarks.

16 Surveys completed online via YouGov’s respondent pool. Details on the statistical analyses are included in Appendix D. Comparing Maddow- and O’Reilly-only viewers offers similar insights.

17 Survey participants were asked “Which of the following news talk shows do you watch regularly on television?” and given a list of 9 cable news talkshows, 3 Fox News (O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren), 2 CNN (Anderson Cooper 360, Erin Burnett OutFront), and 4 MSNBC (Hardball with Chris Matthews, the Ed Show, The Rachel Maddow Show, and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell). Fox(MSNBC)-only viewers are those reporting watching at least one Fox(MSNBC) show and selecting no shows from other listed outlets.