Scientific studies
Via Dave Weeden I see this potty article by Anthony Daniels, in which he accuses the Guardian of racism for printing too many photos of blacks. I think it is partly a piss-take, for regardless of whether that is a good test, his facts are based on one edition, the September 19th one, in which he claims (sadly yesterday was the day the Guardian stopped its free trial of the online paper, so I can't check):There was only one photograph of an Indian, and that was in a commercial advertisement, over the content of which The Guardian, presumably, had little or no control. By contrast, there were 26 photographs of blacks. Surely this was a discrepancy that could not have arisen by chance, and is proof positive of a systematic bias amounting to racism. After all, there are more people of South Asian descent in Britain than of African and West Indian descent, and yet Indians were the subjects of fewer than 4 per cent of all the photographs of ethnic minorities to appear in the newspaper
Now, I have no idea whether Daniels counted all the sections, and Monday is typically a large newspaper with a large sports section, and whether he included only British citizens, which his text implies, but a similar study today of the main paper and British citizens yields:
27 whites to 0 non-whites
Adding the sport section makes it:
44 whites to 1 non-white (Jermain Defoe)
Daniels conclusion, remember from no more research than I did, was:
By contrast, blacks are regarded in the pages of The Guardian much as conservationists regard endangered species, in need of special protection. They therefore represent a goldmine for the coalition
posted by Matthew @ 9/27/2005 09:09:00 AM
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