School Desegregation Policy

Media Portrayal of Race Riots and the Transformation of the Liberal Label

Partisan explanationsMedia PortrayalPersonal Identification

Media coverage of race riots has burned conservative and liberal explanations of racial violence and inequality into our political consciousness. Previous research posits the 1960s as the pivotal decade when liberalism and its associated symbols--such as softness on crime and empathy with the black political cause--became increasingly unpopular. This study extends this hypothesis beyond the 1960s using five case studies from 1967 to 2015. Three primary questions include:

How do conservatives and liberals attempt to explain inequality and violence between races?How are these arguments translated by the media for public consumption?How does media coverage of race riots influence ideological identifications?

Coggins 2013Ideological Identification[

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That last question regarding ideological formation leads to the theoretical framework of this study. Coggins revised model of ideological identification explains the process by which individuals identify with liberalism or conservatism. Far from a set of orderly preferences and judgments, ideological identification is a process of dispositions, environmental forces, symbols and evaluations. This study takes environmental forces, specifically the portrayal of liberalism and conservatism in NYT and WSJ after race riots as its primary focus.

Cues from headlines and newspaper articles are fundamental in forming the complex schema that inform our conceptions liberal and conservative ideologies.

The Case Studies: race riots and the liberal label When are we exposed?

1967: Newark and Detroit Riots1976: Boston Busing Protests 1980: Miami Riots in Liberty City1992: LA Riots

2014, 2015: Ferguson and Baltimore Riots

These five case studies were selected as watershed moments for ideological discourse surrounding race riots. While these crisis events are certainly not the only way that individuals form opinions on race and liberalism, this figure shows how each case study falls before or after a precipitous drop in percentage of the public who identify themselves as liberal.

The case studies include the 1967 Long Hot Summer riots in Newark and Detroit and the Boston busing crisis in 1976, where white parents and students protested against court-ordered school integration. The final three cases are riots and protests that occurred in reaction to the acquittal of white police beatings and killings of black men: the 1980 riots in Miami in reaction to the police killing of Arthur McDuffie, the 1992 Los Angeles riots spurred by the beating of motorist Rodney King, and the most recent unrest in Ferguson and Baltimore after the killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray.

The Datasets: national newspaper coverage

The datasets used in each case study were compiled using the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database, chosen as it contains the New York Times and Wall Street Journal publications since the 1960s. Articles were collected within three years of the case study in question. Because the emphasis of this study is depiction of the liberal label, queries such as Newark Riots AND Liberal and Newark Riots NOT Liberal collected a control and test group for each case study. These datasets make up the environmental forces that influence ideological identification in the media portrayal of race riots.

Moral Foundations Theory in NYT and WSJ coverage of race riots

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Along with environmental forces, individuals dispositions makes up a fundamental step in ideological formation. Moral foundations theory posits five categories of moral consideration: In 2009 Graham, Haidt, and Nosek found that self-identified liberals empathized with the harm and fairness foundations, while conservatives are more likely to consider ingroup, authority and purity frameworks.

This figure shows which moral foundations were appealed to throughout the dataset of NYT and WSJ articles on the five case studies.

Methods: context and quantityLIBERAL CLASSIFICATIONS IN WSJ AND NYT COVERAGE OF 1976 BOSTON BUSING PROTESTS

NYT AND WSJ COVERAGE OF 1976 BOSTING BUSING WITH AND WITHOUT LIBERAL MENTION

For this purpose of this short presentation, I will focus on a second methodological approach, contextual analysis of liberal mentions in newspaper articles. Coding each use of liberal yielded a more detailed analysis of NYT and WSJ treatment of the liberal label. The result was a spectrum of classifications that largely varied depending on the case study, yet many frames reappeared throughout the decades.

Long Hot Summer 1967- Civil Rights Advocacy - Structural Causes to Inequality

NYT AND WSJ COVERAGE OF 1967 NEWARK AND DETROIT WITH AND WITHOUT LIBERAL MENTION

The Long Hot Summer case study reveal two prominent themes: liberals were associated with their advocacy for civil rights, and a reliance on structural causes to inequality. The following NYT excerpt, coded in the structural causes category helps depict the ideological divide: Negro leaders and white liberals took the view that although they would cooperate with the commission, no investigation was really necessary since it was apparent that unemployment, bad housing and inferior schools were the cause. Conservatives in and out of Congress argued that the riots were not expressions of social discontent but merely outbursts of hoodlumism that could be controlled by faster police work and improved riot control techniques.

Before the Hot Summer riots, liberals solutions to the structural causes of inequality and rioting came in the form of many Great Society legislation, such as the slew of civil rights legislation in the mid 60s and proposed funding for poverty aid in black ghettoes in large cities. However, conservatives, with their consideration for authority, purity, and in-group, were appalled by these liberal policies that lavished money on those bandits

Liberty City, Miami Riots 1980- Laissez Faire Liberal- Racism as Structural Causeliberal classifications in NYT coverage of 1980 Miami riots

While liberals support for civil rights and the black political cause is well established in the 1967 case study, a divide emerges in depictions of liberalism in coverage of the 1980 Miami riots. Commentary, from black editorialists especially, accuses a new sect of liberals abandoning their advocacy of civil rights for economic interest: John Brown Childs in his editorial Liberal vs. Liberal coins the term laissez faire liberals: those who support the expansion of civil rights and government intervention only when these actions do not threaten their own economic well-being and social comfort. Editorialists link this schism with the conservative calls for less government and slashing of federal spending prominent during the Reagan campaign. Childs writes: For laissez faire liberals the movement for less government includes civil rights.

How are these arguments translated by media coverage for consumption by the public?Civil Rights Advocates

Liberal Structuralists and Conservative Behaviorists

Laissez Faire Liberalism: Critique of commitment to civil rights

Snapshots of two case studies from 1967 and 1980 speak to broader themes that help answer one of the three original questions: How are conservative and liberal reactions to race riots translated by media coverage? Liberals allegiance to civil rights is common in the contextual coding of all case studies. Further, Conover and Feldmans theorythat liberals and conservatives moral judgments are not two sides of the same coin but different currenciesis confirmed by the continued depiction of liberals as positing structuralist explanations of rioting. In one editorial following the 1992 LA Riots, black scholar Cornel West solidifies the ideological disconnect: liberal structuralists, he says, call for full employment, health, education, and childcare programs, and broad affirmative action practicesmore government money, better bureaucrats, and an active citizenry (West). Conservatives, on the other hand, emphasize behavioral factors to condemn the actions the rioters, and to explain greater patterns of inequality between the races.

Finally, the concept of laissez faire liberalism, the critique that questions liberals commitment to civil rights from within the liberal camp, demonstrates the perceived shortcomings of liberals in representing the civil rights causes they are so closely associated with.

The greater implication of these findings is these narratives sway public opinion of liberalism and race, and are fundamental to our ideological formation.