This dissertation examines newspapers in an attempt to uncover anti-Catholic prejudice, especially in the South. This dissertation sought to discover whether newspaper coverage of Catholic news is biased in the Southern United States as opposed to the North. Research into bias in the media is not new and has been around for years.
In fact, more than 70 percent of Americans believe there is a lot or a fair amount of bias in the media. Bias towards religions can take many forms in life, including religious bias in the media. Media coverage of Islam is just one example of religious bias in the media and its effects.
The Catholic League has done extensive research suggesting an anti-Catholic bias in the media (Donohue, 1998; Donohue, 2010; Donohue 2016a). In a research study (Perl & Bendyna percentage of participants (all Catholic) said there was anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States.
Methodology
Originally, the researcher intended to focus on articles written about the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. This was chosen as a possible research area as it was a timely and controversial event for the Catholic Church. The researcher chose not to study articles that focused on the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
These specific news events were chosen to capture the content of the research in an organized manner. The entire story was taken into account to decide whether it was a . According to Allen (2015), media bias can take eight different forms: committee, omission, story selection, placement, expert selection, spin, labeling of activists, organizations and ideas, and policy recommendation.
Each of the three aspects of the unit of analysis was measured on a scale of 1 to 7. If any photographs accompanied the article, they were investigated to discover whether they were used to promote the reporter's agenda or enhance the reader's understanding of the article. If the article had fewer critical words than supportive words, it was coded between 1 and 4.
Examples of critical and supporting words are defined in a table on the coding sheet at the end of the study. The coding was partially done by a second reader to clarify that the researcher does not allow his own bias to influence the outcome of the study. The second reader was chosen because he had no prior knowledge of the thesis and was not Catholic.
Intercoder reliability (ICR) was determined by training a second coder and being given approximately 10% of the study articles to code.
Results
For 'Presentation of the headline', the northern newspapers examined had a mean of 4.00 and a standard deviation of 0.00, while the southern newspapers had a mean of 3.95 and a standard deviation of 0.22. By topic, articles about Humanae Vitae had an average of 4.24, while articles about Pope Francis' visit to America had an average of 3.70. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had the most supportive headlines with an average of 3.57, and The Post and Courier had the most supportive headlines of all newspapers with an average of 3.50.
The Post and Courier was the only newspaper not to have an average of 4.00 per. The Post and Courier again had the lowest average of all newspapers with an average of 3.00. For "Tone of Story," the Post-Gazette had the lowest average for northern newspapers at 3.57 and The Post and Courier had the lowest average of all newspapers at 2.50.
For Nature of Headline, The New York Times was the most critical northern newspaper with an average of 4.29. The Express-News was the most critical newspaper for this category with an average of 5.00 The Boston Globe had the most critical average for northern newspapers in the photo category with a neutral average of 4.00 The Orlando Sentinel was the most critical of all newspapers reviewed for photos with an average of 4.50. The New York Times had the most critical wording of the northern papers with a mean of 4.26, and the Charleston Gazette had the most critical wording of any paper examined with a mean of 5.00.
The New York Times also had the most critical tone of the Northern newspapers studied, with an average score of 4.48 for the "Story Tone" category. The Charleston Gazette was again the most critical of all newspapers for this category with an average of 5.00. With the Post-Gazette, Northern newspapers averaged 3.99, while Northern newspapers without it averaged 4.11.
Excluding the most supportive and critical newspapers, the overall mean for all other newspapers was 4.02, indicating that the most critical and supportive newspapers did not bias the results much.
Discussion
In fact, the Pew Research Center found that Catholics are viewed more “warmly” than many other religions in the United States (Wormald, 2014). Another explanation for the lack of anti-Catholic bias in the recent articles could be that as of 2002, only 31 percent of Catholics believe in an anti-Catholic bias in the United States. Another important note is the presentation of letters in newspapers written by priests, bishops and cardinals, as well as the printing of the Pope's encyclical as a whole.
Encyclical Confirming the Prohibition of Contraception." The researcher noted that the headlines used here were unbiased as they simply explained the content of the pieces. Instead of using its own resources, southern newspapers seem to rely on articles from major northern newspapers or the Associated Press and similar organizations for Catholic news.This alone could point to an anti-Catholic bias in Southern papers that Northern papers do not have because they do not value Catholic news as important.
However, this may simply be a consequence of the fact that southern states do not have a large number of Catholic readers, because 24 of the 30 largest Catholic dioceses are in the North ("USA", 2005). The researcher noted that northern newspapers also relied on the Associated Press and similar organizations, but not to the same extent as southern newspapers. Northern newspapers outside of household names, such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, seem to rely on the AP and similar organizations to report on Catholic news, as do southern papers.
Reliance on news agencies such as the Associated Press may be a product of the corporatization of news. Most research suggests that “the world's media is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer companies” (“TBS,” ¶ 1). As newsrooms lose funding and continue to cut departments and staff, newspapers must rely on other people to do their reporting when the news is not in their immediate area or when they do not have the resources to cover the story.
This could explain the reluctance of southern newspapers to write about Catholic news because they did not want to offend the few Catholics in their distribution area.
Limitations and Future Research
Since there is a significant amount of studies that suggest an anti-Catholic bias in the media, more research needs to be done to identify the specifics of that bias. The researcher suggests that further studies be done on the southern media to increase the data set. Topics such as different encyclicals, the Church's position on gay marriage and the Church's child abuse scandal can be considered.
To increase the data set, newspapers further west than Texas may need to be considered. Given that the Post and Courier appeared to be more supportive than the other southern newspapers studied, it would be interesting to study further what could be the cause of this or if this was simply an anomaly. Another area of research is to identify whether potential anti-Catholic bias has changed over the years.
Articles written about the various papal encyclicals would be a possible subject of study to identify if the bias has changed. For example, a study could be done on the articles written in Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI compared to Pope Francis.
Conclusion
Goodstein notes that The New York Times writes many articles about other sexual abuse cases, but those involving the Catholic Church are often more newsworthy because of the size of the Catholic population worldwide and the church's history with the issue. He or she may consider the number of supportive or critical words used in the headline to help determine the ranking. The explanation section is given again to give the coder a chance to defend his choice in the ranking he or she gave.
Next, the coder must write the number of supporting and critical words used in the article. Pope on homosexuals: 'Who am I to judge?' Retrieved October 11, 2016, from https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/pope-homosexuals-who-am-i-judge. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com insider/sex-abuse- and-the-catholic-church-why-is-it-still-a-story.html?_r=0.
Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org the-pope-meets-the-press-media-coverage-of-the-clergy-abuse-scandal/. About Islam: how the media and experts determine how we see the rest of the world. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from http://tbsjournal.arabmediasociety.com/Archives/Spring01/Symposium.html The Pope Meets the Press: Media Coverage of the Clergy Abuse Scandal.
The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perception of media bias in reporting the Beirut massacre. Retrieved May 3, 2016, from http://www.newsweek.com/amid-us-gay-marriage-debate-pope-affirms-traditional-marriage-stance-326799.
