I Hate Paypal

Many thanks to Timothy Groseclose for confirming that I understand the basic methodology of the paper underlying his book. Here’s my follow-up question, if I may: Am I right that the paper assumes that politicians cite think tanks for the same basic reasons that journalists cite think tanks? Put another way, am I right that the paper assumes that you can compare journalist-citations and politician-citations because they measure the same thing?

If I’m right, that assumption seems problematic to me. Here’s why. Journalists see their goal as informing their audiences. They cite think tanks to inform their audiences about what is happening. They want to get the reasonable range of views on a topic, so they cite think tanks that reflect what they see as the reasonable range of views.

Politicians cite think tanks for a different reason. Politicians make speeches and issue press releases to persuade rather than to inform. As a rule, politicians will cite think tanks if and only if they can find a think tank that said something that supports the politician’s view. To maximize the persuasiveness of the argument, the politician will cite the think tank that is the most respectable source that said something echoing their view. And of course think tanks occasionally exist to fill that role: If a powerful person or group needs someone respectable-sounding to say X, they will fund a person who sits in an office as the Executive Director of The Center for American Goodness to reliably say X to whoever will listen.

If I’m right about these differences, then comparing journalist-citations and politician-citations seems a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Of course, I would imagine the two correlate somewhat. It’s easy to see why. If a journalist has very liberal views, they will probably see the range of reasonable opinion as tilting to the left; and if a politician is very liberal, they will probably only find liberal think tanks to support their views. So a correlation makes sense. But as I understand it, the paper is not assuming that the two correlate. Rather, the paper assumes that the two measure exactly the same thing, and then seeks to show that that the media is biased because journalist-citations don’t exactly match the citation practices of a centrist politician. That seems like a weak assumption given the very different reasons journalists and politicians cite think tanks.

Of course, none of this means that the media isn’t biased. But unless I’m missing something — which is certainly possible! — the different reasons journalists and politicians cite think tanks leaves me unconvinced that comparing the citation practices generates “scientific proof” of media bias.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/volokh/mainfeed/~3/eZ1jh3d44q0/

As many of you know, I spend my summers (and as much time as possible in other seasons) up at our place in southern Vermont (Marlboro, to be precise). And as everyone knows by now, we got creamed by the storm on Sunday. It was an astonishing and awe-inspiring experience to go through — I’ve posted a video that I took during the height of the storm showing the condition of the (one) road that leads from our house, and one of the “little stream” that runs just behind our house, that will give you some idea of what it was like.

As a friend of mine put it, it makes you think a lot about physics. It’s just water, earth, and gravity … a combination of an astonishing amount of rain, steeply sloped hillsides, and ground that was more-or-less completely saturated even before the storm hit. To give you an idea of how much water we’re talking about, take another look at that video of the stream behind our house. This little brook — much too small to even have a name — would, ordinarily, in late August, have a trickle of water in it, at most. The watershed that feeds it covers an area of around 5 square miles — one of thousands of such little watersheds feeding into little streams in southern Vermont (all of which feed larger streams, which feed larger streams, etc.). Five square miles is about 22 billion square inches. Eight inches of rain (which is about what we got) falling on that one little watershed makes for around 175 billion cubic inches (around 100 million cubic feet) of water.

All of that water has to make its way behind our house. If the banks of our little stream are, say, 10 feet apart, and if all of the rain that fell on that watershed had to make it through that space at once – say, in a single column of water, 10 feet in diameter — the column would be around 60 miles high.

It didn’t have to make it through all at once, of course, so it wasn’t 60 miles high … but that gives you the idea. Watching it flow by, tearing up everything in its path, is a sight to see.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/volokh/mainfeed/~3/CP2LHTf7V8Q/