Headline Roundup • June 13th, 2024
Study Suggests NYT's Bestseller List is Biased Against Conservatives
Summary from the AllSides News Team
A study from The Economist (Lean Left bias) suggests the New York Times bestseller list has an anti-conservative bias.
Key Details: According to the study, the New York Times bestseller list is 7% less likely to include books by conservative authors, even if their sales are equivalent to those of left-leaning writers.
Key Quote: “The New York Times has a view of an acceptable kind of conservative,” conservative commentator Michael Knowles told the Economist. The New York Times said that the “political views of authors or their publishers have absolutely no bearing on our rankings and are not a factor in how books are ranked on the lists.”
For Context: The prestige that comes from being included on the New York Times bestseller list often leads to more sales, better deals in future publishing contracts, and higher speaking fees.
How the Media Covered it: The New York Post (Lean Right bias) and The Economist noted that the Times has never revealed how it ranks bestselling publications.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Jeenah Moon/Reuters
Right-wing authors’ claims of anti-conservative bias in the New York Times best seller list may not be entirely unfounded, according to a report. A study by The Economist found that books from conservative publishers were on average 7 percent less likely to be included on the list than titles with similar levels of sales from other publishers—though the disparity doesn’t generally affect the top conservative best sellers. The report also concluded that conservative books which do become New York Times best sellers on average rank 2.3 places lower on the non-fiction list than those with commensurate...
illustration: carl godfrey/getty images
“The New York Times is pure propaganda,” tweeted Elon Musk, a tech mogul, in March. Mr Musk was responding not to the newspaper’s coverage of his companies or of Donald Trump, but rather to the newspaper’s latest bestseller list. “Troubled”, a book by Rob Henderson, a social critic, about the hypocrisy of America’s elite, had been excluded from the hardcover non-fiction list despite selling 3,765 copies in its first week. According to data from Circana Bookscan, a firm that claims to track 85% of print book sales in America, “Troubled” outperformed the books...
The New York Times bestseller list is less likely to include works published by conservative authors even if their books posted sales figures that matched those of left-leaning writers, according to a study.
An analysis conducted by the Economist magazine found that books published by conservative printing houses are 7% less likely to make it onto the Gray Lady’s weekly bestseller list even if those books sell at the same rate as works put out by other publishers.
While leading conservative authors such as Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck are frequently listed...
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