For example, in the choice of editorial cartoons at the Seattle Times and the Seattle PI.  Some time ago, I began thinking that I never saw a pro-Bush, pro-Republican, or pro-conservative editorial* cartoon in either paper.  This morning I decided to find out whether that tentative conclusion was correct and went to the Kirkland library, where they keep both newspapers, going back about 4 weeks for the daily newspapers, and about 6 weeks for the Sunday newspapers.

All together I found 92 editorial cartoons in the stacks of the two newspapers.  (Not including the Doonesbury cartoon strip, which the Seattle Times runs on the op-ed page.)  Just one cartoon made a conservative point, a Canadian cartoon showing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il wondering how he would know if UN sanctions were imposed.  Just one cartoon, a Devericks cartoon in the Seattle Times, attacked a national** Democrat without also attacking a Republican; it showed Senator Maria Cantwell being reluctant to debate — as she was.  A few of the other cartoons were not on political subjects, and a few more attacked both parties, or both Senator Kerry and President Bush.  Half of the cartoons were attacks, almost always heavy-handed, on President Bush, the Republicans, or both.  Two cartoons on one side; 46 cartoons on the other side.  I would not call 46-2 balanced.

Whoever chose the cartoons at the Times and the PI in that time period made no effort at all to tell both sides of the story, no effort to let their readers see cartoons from both the left and the right.  I don't think that either newspaper did this as a matter of deliberate policy, but I do think this imbalance shows a deep-seated bias at both newspapers.

Not only were the cartoons biased, on the whole; they were often misinformed, based on false assumptions.  Worst of all, the cartoons attacking Bush and the Republicans were rarely funny — and I generally love political cartoons, even those I disagree with.  (There were a couple of amusing Oliphant cartoons, but they were the cartoons that did not make a partisan point.  And he also did two of the very worst cartoons.)

Some might wonder whether the pattern of bias that I found was the result of choices by the editors at the two Seattle papers.  You might get this same pattern if nearly all editorial cartoonists were partisan Democrats, and the editors just picked cartoons randomly.  In fact, many editorial cartoonists are conservative.  The best editorial cartoonist in the United States (and perhaps in the world) is Michael Ramirez, who now works for the Investor's Business Daily, and is very definitely conservative.  (For a sample, see his November 9th cartoon, which you can find here.)   And there are other good conservative cartoonists; today's featured cartoon at Townhall, by Mike Shelton, is nasty — and very funny.  And it is easy to find many more examples.  So the editors at the two Seattle papers could run conservative cartoons — if they wanted to.

And for purely commercial reasons, they should want to.  They could sell more newspapers if they showed, by their choice of editorial cartoons, that they understood that they still have readers on the right and in the center.  And they could definitely sell more newspapers if they ran funnier cartoons, and these days most of the funny cartoons are drawn by conservatives.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

(*Both the Times and the PI run comic strips with generally conservative points of view, respectively, Prickly City and Mallard.  But neither strip appears on the editorial pages.

**The Times and the PI each ran a cartoon attacking the Democratic mayor of Seattle, but since Seattle is a one-party town, neither made a partisan point.

I found two odd patterns in the cartoons.  Both newspapers ran a bunch of cartoons attacking negative ads, which is both amusing and ignorant.  It's amusing because the best cartoons are mostly negative, and often unfair, just like those ads.  It's ignorant because negative ads are generally more useful to the voters than positive ads, something I discussed here.

And then there was this oddity.  From time to time, Eric Devericks of the Seattle Times would do a balanced cartoon, or one with no partisan message.  When he did, the Times almost always put a hyperpartisan cartoon on the op-ed page.  That may be just a coincidence.