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> I'd say the same thing about journalists. 90%+ of journalists are democrats.

I can't believe in all the responses nobody has challenged this statement. What is your source for this? Based on exit polls, in aggregate white men are heavily republican, and college educated white men are still republican by over 20 points. This seems like an extraordinary claim.

And for one tangible data point, in 2012, wikipedia shows 158 newspaper endorsing the democratic candidate, and 112 newspaper endorsing the republican candidate [1]. Obviously not a perfect metric, but that is ~58% of newspaper endorsing the democratic candidate.

Even in 2016, when the Republican candidate was specifically anti-journalists, only 69% of newspapers endorsed the democratic candidate [2].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...

I mis-remembered the statistic a bit. (Sorry too late to edit, but breaking down the numbers here.)

7% of journalists identify as republican, versus 28% identifying as democrat. The majority identify as independent: https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/05/survey-7-percen....

So 80% of journalists who disclose a political affiliation identify as Democrat, and 20% identify as republican.

To put that into perspective: nationally, 27% of people identify as republican, versus 29% as democrat: https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx. Among the general population self-identified republicans and democrats are roughly evenly represented, but among journalists democrats outnumber republicans 4:1. I would expect the independents to break along the same proportions when it comes to voting.

Another way to look at it is to compare journalists to various demographic groups: https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-af.... Journalists are less likely to self-identify as republicans than: urban voters, jewish voters, millenials, asian voters, and hispanic voters.

That is particularly interesting because journalists are more likely to be white and male than the general population, or democrats as a group. Therefore, their party identification is particularly unusual when compared to other white men.

On other metrics: a Texas A&M poll of finance journalists found that 58% described themselves as very or somewhat liberal, versus 4.4% saying they were very or somewhat conservative: https://www.dailywire.com/news/462-financial-journalists-wer....

Nationally, however, 37% of people say they are very or somewhat conservative, versus 24% who say they are very or somewhat liberal: https://news.gallup.com/poll/188129/conservatives-hang-ideol.... That makes the polled financial journalists 2.3x more likely to self-identify as liberal, and 1/8 as likely to self identify as conservative as the general population. That means the ratio of conservatives to liberals is 20x higher in that pool of journalists than in the general population.

While we are picking apart your statistics, I wondered about your claim that journalists are "Overwhelmingly, white and male democrats".

From what I can tell journalists at major US papers have about a 60:40 male to female ratio: https://www.statista.com/statistics/625800/newspaper-journal.... I also found this interesting source which seem to say that most newsrooms are about 80% white: https://googletrends.github.io/asne/.

My quick conclusion is that if we thus assume that male, white, and Democrat are independently distributed, we find that 60% * 80% * 30% = 15% of journalists are white males that identify as Democrats. While this is probably the most common combination of these particular characteristics, it doesn't feel particularly overwhelming.

> 7% of journalists identify as republican, versus 28% identifying as democrat. The majority identify as independent

> So 80% of journalists who disclose a political affiliation identify as Democrat, and 20% identify as republican.

That is an exceptionally misleading way of presenting/interpreting that data. 50% if journalists identify as independent. That is a political affiliation. You can't just ignore that group.

I find it encouraging that over half of journalists don't identify with the two main, polarized, often extremist political parties.

Your 2016 reference states Clinton 500, Trump 28. (plus 30 "Not Trump") Not sure how you get 69% from that.

>> What is your source for this?

On an individual level, more than 90% of journalists' personal donations went to Clinton. $382,000 to $14,000. https://www.cjr.org/covering_the_election/campaign_donations...

In the 2016 campaign I referenced Clinton endorsements vs total endorsements. "No endorsement" received over 3x as many endorsements as the republican candidate. Also don't oversample from the 2016 election. One of the candidates literally referred to journalists as "enemy of the state". Probably not shocking that many journalistic outlets would rather endorse nobody than a candidate like that. Even going back 4 years you did not see that pattern.

According to Wikipedia, in 2004 the democratic candidate got 52% of the newspaper endorsements. In 2008 the democratic candidate got 62%. These are far from perfect measures but again, if 90% of journalists were in fact democrats then my guess is the number of newspapers that endorsed democratic candidates would be much closer to 90%, and it clearly isn't.

The total donations really aren't really convincing because clearly the vast majority of journalists donate to nobody, so you really don't know exactly what the preference is for the median journalist. I'd also be interested in the stats for 2012, 2008 and previous elections before making any conclusions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...

> As of November 4, 2008, Barack Obama had received more than twice as many publication endorsements as John McCain; in terms of circulation, the ratio was more than 3 to 1, according to the detailed tables below.

By circulation, it was like > 75% Obama versus McCain. Assuming journalist employment is roughly proportional to circulation, that suggests that a similar percentage of journalists are Democrats.

> Folks in D.C.--on both sides of the aisle--tend to be predisposed to believing in the superiority of the educated upper middle class, seeing government as the solution to various problems, etc.

This is spot-on. They also tend to think that their high level of visibility into their highly focused sector of government bureaucracy (wherever it is they happen to work) has granted them broad and trenchant insight into the right answers for domestic and foreign policy. This attitude tends to come with a healthy side portion of disdain for the ability of non-DC people to comprehend any degree of political nuance.

Good point on the AOC proposal. I don't know, since I haven't heard of it, nor have I read too many articles about that specific proposal.

Everything I've read about rising home prices has to do with supply/demand and the disruptive nature of AirBNB etc.

But if you as a journalist are talking about AOC's proposal, your main job is to communicate her proposal to the masses, your secondary job is to talk about why it may or may not work.

It's similar to any Republican counter proposal, if there were one that wasn't just based on dogmas like supply-side economics or "market will fix everything". You communicate the proposal and then talk about potentially how parts of it wouldn't work.

Tribalism is shit and really ruins a lot of these interesting debates. But I don't see true tribalism in places like the NYT. My bigger complaint with institutions like the NYT is that they're made of the same elites they're reporting on, so they aren't able to be truly objective.

Organizations like the Intercept do a much better job of "fuck you everyone, I'm going to expose you" than someone like the NYT. But that's not a republican/democrat thing. That's a lack of diversity (diversity of background, not skin color) problem in their staff.

But if you as a journalist are talking about AOC's proposal, your main job is to communicate her proposal to the masses, your secondary job is to talk about why it may or may not work.

Journalists don't believe it's their job to talk about why something may or may not work, but they really want to. They have a couple of ways to do that.

One is to select "experts" to comment on a story who agrees with the journalist. For any topic of enough importance you can usually find people who will present things your way, even if others would disagree.

Another is to use a library of common phrases that create an impression in the mind of the reader without actually committing to anything concrete. For instance:

• Mr Smith was under fire last night after proposing <X>

• A new idea from Mr Smith has been creating excitement after he launched <X> last night

• According to experts, <Y>

• <Z>, according to analysts

etc etc.

It'd be more honest if journalists wrote "X said Y and I think he's a douchebag because Z" but that'd make them, in their eyes, mere bloggers, so they rely on more subtle manipulations instead.

This sounds related to the whole "Republicans pounce" [0] thing.

[0] https://www.commentarymagazine.com/politics-ideas/when-repub...

It's absolutely a journalist's job to talk about why something may or may not work. News without context or analysis isn't journalism. Journalists have a duty to inform, and a basic retelling of facts is about as informative to the public as a basic retelling of statistics to non-statisticians. Framing this analysis as "subtle manipulations" is disingenuous regardless of how flawed/biased news analysis may be, which is about as flawed/biased as any analysis can be.

> Framing this analysis as "subtle manipulations" is disingenuous regardless of how flawed/biased news analysis may be, which is about as flawed/biased as any analysis can be.

But it is subtle manipulation. How many articles have you read about failing schools or school funding challenges, and how often have they mentioned that the U.S. spends among the most in the world per student for K-12 education? As you say, presenting news without context or analysis isn't journalism. But the minute you start picking facts for context, or analyzing the facts, you're inherently incorporating your personal views.

> But the minute you start picking facts for context, or analyzing the facts, you're inherently incorporating your personal views.

That's not "subtle manipulation", that's bias. Calling it "subtle manipulation" disingenuously implies that journalists unscrupulously distort or change the news. Context & analysis is inherently biased, no surprises there, but you're approaching substance-free cynicism when you say stuff like "Journalists don't believe it's their job to talk about why something may or may not work, but they really want to."

Journalists are qualified in nothing and can't possibly have any weight on the question of whether something will or will not work. That's why they always speak through experts. Why would anyone care what a journalist thinks? Their job is to journal, not tell people what to do.

They don't tell people what to do. Even your example doesn't show journalists telling people what to do or show them sharing their personal thoughts on the matter. Journalists are qualified in reporting, which includes collecting, analyzing/contextualizing, and presenting relevant new facts, which is exactly what they are correctly doing when using your common library of phrases. Naturally, such reporting is prone to bias, and you may not agree with what is presented, but that isn't the same as "subtle manipulation", and it isn't the same as telling people what to do or think.

> I'd say the same thing about journalists. 90%+ of journalists are democrats. (Overwhelmingly, white and male democrats.)

> For example, 32% of Democrats are "extremely proud to be an American" versus 74% of Republicans

Disregarding for a moment that this is a super weird question to use as a barometer, this is not sound statistical reasoning. Journalists make up a very small, and very biased (in the statistical sense), cross section of the democratic party. Therefore, their answers to a given question won't move the overall answers very much.

It is like observing that 99%+ of iPhones are sometimes used to browse the web, and that a majority of web-browsing devices run Google Chrome. You can't infer from this that a majority of iPhones run Chrome (or, at least, not very strongly).

I suppose the question is not whether these people are a completely accurate representation of the country as a whole, but whether they will effectively serve as a dampening factor on corporate lobbyists. We shouldn't compare them against an unreachable ideal, but ask if they'll be an improvement on what we have now. I think they probably will.

Do we want them to "serve as a dampening factor on corporate lobbyists?"

https://news.gallup.com/poll/187919/big-government-named-big...

> When asked to choose among big government, big labor and big business, Americans overwhelmingly name big government as the biggest threat to the country in the future. The 69% choosing big government is down slightly from a high of 72% in 2013, the last time Gallup asked the question, but is still one of the highest percentages choosing big government in Gallup's 50-year trend.

As of 2015, 70% of Americans viewed big government as the "biggest threat" versus just 25% listing big businesses.

>As of 2015, 70% of Americans viewed big government as the "biggest threat" versus just 25% listing big businesses.

Wherever the government tries to "regulate" - unprecedented wealth transfer from ordinary people to special interests follows: the health-care(?) mafia, the higher education mafia, etc. Always sold as "think of the elderly/children".

Big Government -> Lobbyists (corruption) -> Corporatism

(In the US, Europe is a bit different, because lobbying is not as predatory)

Big business can be easily qualified. But how do you qualify big government? What is not a big government? Is there such a thing as an objectively small government i.e. not attached to a political ideology?

> Is there such a thing as an objectively small government i.e. not attached to a political ideology?

Many local governments are like this, with explicitly non-partisan elections (although partisanship may be implicit). More likely, the powers and resources of the local government are limited such that there's no "slack" for partisanship, and they are literally just trying to keep the lights on.

The problem as it's explained is that those being regulated are the ONLY ones presenting informed commentary on the issue.

Surely hearing a perspective from someone striving (at the very least) to be objective rather than ONLY hearing from someone who has clear bias on the issue (the corporation to be regulated) is more likely to be a good thing than a bad thing.

There is no evaluation without a worldview, such a thing is preposterous. However, there is something to be said for having advisors that are not literally being actively paid by the people you are trying to regulate. Ideology is one thing (it's at least honest and heartfelt), not having any advice is another thing.

Using Google's people is like using the lawyer of the guy you're suing.

I feel much the same. D.C. and even a lot of political positions are a bit divorced from common life. In my experience it is seen as a lack of knowledge of the cost of things, and the hardships of most of the US.

When making complex decisions affecting the lives of millions, or handling issues that require deep subject matter expertise, is an educated upper middle class not better at making decisions than an uneducated lower class? (or any uneducated person)?

That isn't to say the lower class has no say in their government - it is why "democracy is the worst form of government, besides all the others". But having an intellectual, technical team of "trying-not-to-be-partisans" helping elected officials make decisions is a good thing, and you make it sound like a bad thing.

> Federal government employees try not to be overtly political, but they have a world view that is not necessarily representative of the country as a whole.

There's also the simple incentives argument: Why don't people trust lobbyists? Because they're paid by people/companies/organizations/etc who have (at the very least arguably) a vested interest in a given outcome, so it's hard to trust their motives. Wouldn't the same be true of a government office of "experts"? Wouldn't they have the same incentives to advance the agenda of those who keep them employed?

You should be a little bit more careful generalizing from that Gallup poll; fewer Democrats are "extremely proud" to be American now, for pretty obvious reasons, but the gap was far smaller a few years ago.

> As someone who grew up in D.C. I disagree with this. Federal government employees try not to be overtly political, but they have a world view that is not necessarily representative of the country as a whole.

That's not what the comment was referring to in the slightest. You're disagreeing that water is wet because fire is hot. They aren't completely different things.

Within the actual, global spectrum of political philosophies, the difference between American Democrats and Republicans is remarkably small, especially in comparison to many European parliaments. Just look at the consensus about and subsequent lack of accountability for the Iraq War as an example.

What do you think is an actual, meaningful consequence of something like “90% of journalists being Democrats.” In all the domains you cite, I see a general consensus around a right-wing perspective about America‘s place in the world.

Not only are they biased, most of the bias crosses party lines so that many opinions are never represented there? That would be worse rather than better, wouldn't it?

I think the trope that Americans are categorically right-wing compared to Europe is false. Just in 2017, the party that came in second in the Dutch elections proposed to ban the Quran and shut down all mosques. Le Pen, whose party is the offshoot of an actual Nazi party, won a third of the French vote. In the US, the idea of making English the national language is not something even Republicans push these days. In France, the idea of French as the national language is nearly universally supported. New Zealand and Ireland recently got rid of birthright citizenship. Attitudes that are part of the "mainstream right" in much of Europe would get you labeled a white supremacist in the U.S.

On the economic front, U.S. Democrats are to the left of the European (and Canadian and Australian) center in many respects. Macron is a "socialist" that is trying to privatize SNCF. Sweden is extremely market oriented, has school vouchers, etc. The EU keeps pressing forward on privatization efforts in various sectors like rail and utilities. Trump was late to the game compared to France, Germany, Sweden, etc., in terms of cutting corporate taxes.

> Attitudes that are part of the "mainstream right" in much of Europe would get you labeled a white supremacist in the U.S.

That’s because Europe has a different historical and political context than the US though? Many of those policies would be correctly described as white supremacist if advocated for within the US context because the US is historically a white supremacist country and has organized much of its politics along those lines. In Europe, they would probably be understood as “fascistic” because, as you’ve correctly identified, many of their advocates descend from this ideology and its history on the continent.

> On the economic front, U.S. Democrats are to the left of the European

Historically, Democrats have supported charter schools, privatization, and kept in place corporate tax cuts passed by Republicans, so I’m not sure this bears scrutiny. While there is an emergent left flank of the Democratic party, it is deeply at odds with the party elite, their institutions, apparatuses, and is stymied by them at most turns.

> That’s because Europe has a different historical and political context than the US though? Many of those policies would be correctly described as white supremacist if advocated for within the US context because the US is historically a white supremacist country and has organized much of its politics along those lines.

That’s a weird bit of bootstrapping. France colonized Muslim countries in North Africa, and then when people came to France from those countries the French insisted they learn French, banned religious symbols like hijab, etc. French language and cultural purity absolutely is a sort of at least cultural supremacy.

Likewise the success of right wing parties in Europe. They’re putatively nationalistic, but the strong anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments make clear they rest heavily on cultural and ethnic supremacy.

> Historically, Democrats have supported charter schools, privatization, and kept in place corporate tax cuts passed by Republicans, so I’m not sure this bears scrutiny. While there is an emergent left flank of the Democratic party, it is deeply at odds with the party elite, their institutions, apparatuses, and is stymied by them at most turns.

Democrats have a strong “party of FDR” trend, which is an anti-market, pro-regulation viewpoint. I’d characterize Clinton and Obama as exceptions, with the “Green New Deal” being a return to the norm. Meanwhile, Canada, Australia, and the EU have pushed ahead with deregulation and privatization under both liberal and conservative governments.

Canada, for example, is basically an example of Clinton/Gingrich’s government trimming and “welfare to work” being applied for 30 years: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTNKL...

Trudeau, a liberal, continues to promise corporate tax cuts and deregulation. Public transit in many european cities is opened up to competitive bidding. Stockholm’s subway is privately operated. I’m not aware of any privately operated subways in the US. France has extensive privatized water utilities. Europe continues to embrace markets and deregulation at a level Democrats have not done since Clinton.

The person you're replying to was saying that range of political views between Democrats and Republicans is smaller than the range of views in Europe. As you've noted, there are some Nazi-adjacent parties winning elections in Europe. There are also some communist parties that have seats in European assemblies. That seems to support the idea that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is relatively small.

Also, I don't think that even the "we want to shut down mosques" right-wing of Europe wants to eg. get rid of socialized healthcare.

Also, the same policy can occupy a different place on the right-left spectrum in different countries. For example, as an American that's lived in France for a short time, I oppose English as the official language in the US, but I support French as an official language in France (although I might argue that other languages, like Occitan, should be given equal status as well).

Why? Well, I don't think English is in any danger. People are learning English all over the world, and I've never in my entire time in the US had someone try to speak any language other the English to me. On the other hand, French, while still a very important language, is clearly on the decline compared to where it was a couple hundred years ago. Lots of French musicians these days write songs mostly in English. I'd be sad if the French language lost its central position in French society, and I think it actually is important for the government to try to stop that from happening.

No offense but Le Pen party is absolutely not an offshoot of a nazi party. The idea that you could casually label a third of France as nazy is strongly offensive.

Le Pen actually tried to join the resistance as a teenager. It is a strongly nationalist and protectionist party which used to be/is xenophobic but it has nothing to do with the Nazi. Trump idea are more radical in a lot of way. Let's not forget he suggested actually building a wall at the border. Also Macron is rightfully seen as center right in France and certainly not as a socialist.

French has been the official language of France since 1539. Having French as the official language is hardly a rightwing position. The question of having an official language is only seen as rightwing in the USA because it's done to spit the large part of the population speaking Spanish. This is purely cultural. It's a bit like supporting gun regulation which is seen as left wing in the USA while not supporting it is seen as being a lunatic in the rest of the world.

Le Pen's father, the founder of the French National Front party, was a Holocaust denier who was forced to pay settlements over his statements. There's not "no" nexus between Le Pen and Nazism.

Le Pen father is an antisemite, a racist and a generally despicable person who thought and was condamned for saying that the Holocaust is a mere "detail of history", not a denier.

That doesn't in any way make his party a offshoot of the Nazi party especially in its modern form. You might be a mere American and therefore throwing the word Nazi casually like a low grade insult. That doesn't justify implying that a third of France is voting for the Nazi party.

https://www.ft.com/content/967daaae-2412-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0...

> The National Front party leader warned over the Easter weekend that French “civilisation” was under threat as she pledged to suspend all legal immigration and protect the French way of life, toning down her plan to take France out of the euro.

> “Give us France back, damn it!” the far-right candidate demanded at a rally in Paris on Monday night as her supporters chanted: “This is our home!”

> In comments clearly aimed at France’s Muslim population, she said: “In France, we drink wine whenever we want. In France we do not force women to wear the veil because they are impure . . . In France, we get to decide who deserves to become French.”

Who are the people whose home France is?)