Study shows the media has a clear bias in favor of dogs - The Washington Post

12/23/14, 8:42 PM

Tuesday, December 23 2014

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Study shows the media has a clear

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By Philip Bump November 19 $

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Canines catch a wave

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The annual Surf City Surf Dog contest in Huntington Beach,

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Study shows the media has a clear bias in favor of dogs - The Washington Post

12/23/14, 8:42 PM

The annual Surf City Surf Dog contest in Huntington Beach,

Calif., lets four-legged friends show o their skills.

"Thus, we conclude that dogs are an important factor in

news decisions."
So ends the abstract of a paper that, at long last,
quantifies the effect of dogs on the propagation of news
stories. Dogs, it is determined, are important.
Be honest: You clicked the link to this story because it
mentions dogs. Dogs are terrific, speaking both
objectively and with the full editorial weight of
the Washington Post at my back. That excellence lead to
affection; that affection to curiosity. The curiosity that
drove your click, as it turns out, is not unique to you. It is
shared by editorial teams at newspapers.
To determine the value of canines to the popularity of
news stories, Matthew Atkinson of the University of
California, Los Angeles, and Maria Dean and Joseph
Uscinski of the University of Miami, identified 18 dogrelated and 334 non-dog-related stories that appeared in
the national section of the New York Times since 2000.

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The team then checked ten other newspapers (both local

and national) to see which stories got picked up the next
day.

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Study shows the media has a clear bias in favor of dogs - The Washington Post

In short: A front page story in the New York Times was

picked up by other papers at 3.1 times the rate of a story
from the last page of the national news section. A story
that involved a dog that appeared on the last page of the
section appeared in other newspapers at 2.6 times the rate

12/23/14, 8:42 PM

music of 2014
Tampa Bay Times
Suspect charged in Tarpon
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slaying (w/video)

of a non-dog story with the same placement. In other

words: "having a canine subject in a national news event
produced coverage of the story that was 80% as large as

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the effect of the difference between being NYT front-page

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and back-page worthy."

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It's important to note that the dog stories at issue are not

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"36 times cute dogs got baths" or things of that ilk. (The
Times rarely runs stories on those types of topics.) The 18
dog stories that the researchers identified included dogs

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as essential components to actual news. "Postal Work

Unfairly Maligned, Study Says," was one; "First Dog
Makes His Debut," another.
That second example is offered in a rather defensive
explanation of why the research has value. "How many
[Americas] learned about what President Obama was

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doing in April 2009 as a result of the arrival of Bo, his

Portuguese water dog?," the researchers ask. The answer
is unknowable, but it is probably greater than one.
The researchers did not conduct any similar studies
involving the use of cats. This may be because cats don't
lend themselves as readily to the sorts of puns that
(lamentably) are peppered throughout the research
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Study shows the media has a clear bias in favor of dogs - The Washington Post

12/23/14, 8:42 PM

document. It may be because there are not as many news

stories in which cats play a similarly prominent role. Or it
may simply be due to the well-known fact that cats are
worse animals than dogs. It's a mystery for the ages.

Philip Bump writes about politics for The Fix. He is

based in New York City.

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