Update: Using Chris Hanretty’s Alternative Method, There Was No Overall Skew in the British Media

Chris Hanretty suggested using figures compiled by Loughborough’s Centre for Research into Communication and Culture as weights; according to this method, there was no overall skew in the British media

In a response to my previous post, Chris Hanretty suggested using figures compiled by Loughborough’s Centre for Research into Communication and Culture as weights, instead of endorsements and figures from the Civitas report. Hence I repeated the analysis following his suggestion.

Specifically, each newspaper brand was given a weight equal to the volume of IN to OUT items (in Figure 4.1) divided by the maximum positive value (defined as ‘125’ for the Daily Express). For example, the Daily Mail was given a weight of ‘0.84’, while the Times was given a weight of ‘–0.08’. The Evening Standard was given a weight equal to the average for the IN papers (‘–0.42’).

All major TV channels were given a weight equal to the volume of IN to OUT items (in Figure 4.3) divided by the value for OUT papers (i.e., ‘370’). This weight was calculated to be ‘–0.07’.

These weights were again multiplied by the usage values from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2016. The resulting figures were summed, and then divided by the sum of the usage values. According to this alternative method, the overall skew of the British media was precisely 0.00 (rounded to the second decimal place), which is perhaps rather encouraging.

As before, I would be happy to share the spreadsheet showing my calculations to anyone interested. A caveat is that Huffington Post and Buzzfeed were assumed to be impartial, which may not be very realistic.