John Lott, the author of Bias Against Guns, has taken a hard look at Rush Limbaugh's claim that the media is biased in favor of African-American quarterbacks at National Review:
The evidence suggests that Rush is right, though the simplest measures indicate that the difference is not huge. Looking at just the averages, without trying to account for anything else, reveals a ten-percent difference in coverage (with 67 percent of stories on blacks being positive, 61 percent for whites).We also collected data by week for each of the first four weeks of the season on a host of other factors that help explain the rate at which a player is praised: the quarterback's rating for each game; whether his team won; the points scored for and against the team; ESPN's weekly rank for the quarterback's team and the opponent; and whether it was a Monday night game. In addition, I accounted for average differences in media coverage both in the quarterback's city and the opponent's city as well as differences across weeks of the season.
Accounting for these other factors shows a much stronger pattern. Black quarterbacks' news coverage is 27 percentage points more positive than whites. And that difference was quite statistically significant
Rush Redux, II
A quick update to my previous post. Courtesy of Off Wing Opinion, I learned that John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns actually did some research to determine whether Limbaugh’s comments had merit. From…
Um, this is the same John Lott who was disgraced a few months back for creating an online doppelganger to hype up his book with glowing reviews; his previous gun control research has also come under fire (no pun intended).
I’d take anything Lott says with a big grain of salt. Especially take a close look at any research he claims to put together. I wouldn’t wait an awfully long time for those numbers to show up on his website. His reputation precedes him.
You probably can’t find the data from this “study” because Lott made it all up, as he has with his previous work.
dave
I don’t follow the gun debate because i find it tedious, but it is hard to surf blogs without stumbling over it. From what I have seen, however, Mr. Lott has some extraordinarily serious creditability issues.
It’s there now.
As I recall from the gun debate the primary complaints against Lott were #1, the data did not show what he claimed it did, and #2 that the data was just plain made up. From there, it got uglier.
Please, treat Mr. Lott’s work with caution.