Well, it depends . . .

From Smirking media bias against GOP couldn’t be clearer by Howie Carr.

Have you ever noticed how differently Republicans are treated in the media than Democrats?

Every newsroom in the country used to have what was called the “AP Stylebook” to use in writing news stories.

Now you need two AP stylebooks, one for Democrats, about whom seldom is heard a discouraging word, and a second for the GOP, with a hundred different pejoratives.

Two parties, two vocabularies. One positive, one negative — very bad, evil in fact.

Consider the testimony by Michael Cohen last week in front of various Congressional committees.

For example, since he worked for Donald Trump, Cohen was described about a million times as a “fixer.” Democrats, on the other hand, have lawyers.

To prevent the release of embarrassing information, Democrats’ lawyers negotiate NDA’s — nondisclosure agreements. Republican fixers’ NDAs are “hush money,” or “bribes.”

Hillary Clinton paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrat operatives who then bought or made up false Russian dirt on Trump — that was opposition research. Republicans, on the other hand, “collude!”

Republicans lie, Democrats misspeak.

Democrats plan, Republicans scheme.

Republicans hire lobbyists, Democrats use advocates. Republicans employ operatives or hired guns, Democrats prefer community activists.

If a Democrat changes his or her position on an issue, they have evolved … grown. Republicans “flip-flop.”

Whenever an unfamiliar politician is ensnared in some scandal, you naturally wonder which party he or she is a member of. If the “embattled” pol is a Republican, affiliation is usually noted in the headline, or at the very latest in the first paragraph.

If, however, you reach the third paragraph of the story without his party being identified, you can be absolutely certain you are reading about a Democrat miscreant.

Likewise, accusers are handled differently depending on who exactly they’re accusing. Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was almost derailed by the not particularly credible “Dr.” Christine Blasey Ford. One of the women who’s accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia of sexual assault likewise has a Ph.D., but how often does the alt-left media refer to “Dr. Vanessa Tyson.” Fairfax, you see, is a Democrat.

Was Jussie Smollett’s fake hate crime ever referred to as “alleged?” Of course not. But all the real, documented, videotaped attacks on conservatives — invariably they are alleged, or “according to police reports.”

A Republican tax cut is a “corporate giveaway” for the rich, a boon to “one percenters” that the government “can’t afford.”

A Democrat-proposed tax increase, though, is an “investment in the future.” It’s for the children.

When there’s bad news about Republicans, Democrats “react.” But Republicans “pounce” or “seize.” Often, in fact, the only way any Democrat woes get mentioned at all in the media is when Republicans seize and pounce, not to mention “weaponize” Democrat scandals.

I sympathize with the argument and suspect that it is true. But how about some evidence. We know that party registration and party donations to substantiate that the press is overwhelmingly aligned with Democrats. But does it color their reporting in the way implied by Carr?

It is a reasonable supposition but we need evidence. I'll leave the real research to the academics but there is one small nugget which is quickly testable.

Does the press include Ford's academic title more often than Tyson's?

Here are the Google Search results cited for each permutation:

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford - 2,880,000
Christine Blasey Ford - 4,060,000

Dr. Vanessa Tyson - 8,920,000
Vanessa Tyson - 15,700,000

Honorific citation ratio Ford - 71%
Honorific citation ratio Tyson - 57%

Carr seems to have a point. People do seem to be deferring to Ford's academic qualifications to a greater degree than Tyson's. They are equally squishy academic fields (psychology and political science) but they are both at an identically prestigious university - Stanford.

But actually, Carr's accusation is narrower. This rides on the distinction between how someone is treated in the press versus by the press, and indeed what constitutes the press.

Google allows you to search the internet at large (the above numbers) or you can restrict it the News category. Presuming that the reflects a narrower field that is substantially the mainstream media, you get these results.

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford - 61,000
Christine Blasey Ford - 155,000

Dr. Vanessa Tyson - 28,200
Vanessa Tyson - 51,300

Honorific citation ratio Ford - 39%
Honorific citation ratio Tyson - 55%

This suggests that the press itself defers more to Tyson's academic title than to Ford's. The reverse of before.

The problem with this approach of course is that the Google Search algorithms are black-box. If you do the searches a few minutes apart, you get somewhat different results; results which are in fact the opposite of one another.

I wouldn't set great store on these numbers. I suspect that it is a flawed measurement mechanism. But interesting in the absence of anything more concrete.