Posted by Jim at January 28th, 2004

Is US News & World Report a magazine with a basically conservative perspective?

I’m not complaining, just curious. Owing to the fact that my dad teaches political science, he subscribes to Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report and a number of other magazines.

Newsweek seems to tilt left, Time to the right, and I’m wondering where US News fits in. I happened to be at my parents’ house for supper on Sunday and read a couple articles that seemed interesting. One was a respectful (but not entirely favorable) profile of John Ashcroft. The other was a piece desribing the electoral drift of the country since 2000.

The piece argued that since 2000, the states in the south (and some outside the south) had grown more Republican, making it very hard for a Democrat to win the presidency. It also included techniques the Republicans were using to encourage this tendency.

I asked my Dad what he thought of it and he commented that the article did not include some other states drift toward the left (Maine, for example) that has also been documented.

This left me wondering what the deal was. Was the reporter ignorant? Does the reporter lean left and project his fears into his article? Or does the reporter lean right and project his hopes onto the facts?

I can’t tell you which is true, but, bearing in mind that article about Ashcroft seemed more favorable than unfavorable, I’m going to guess that US News tilts right.

Alternately, it could be that both articles are just true to the best of the writers’ knowlege and I’m putting too much analysis into this.