How The Press leans
A reader who is a postgraduate student in Christchurch offered to read The Press for four weeks, and analyse what proportion of news articles, opinion columns, letters and cartoons were left, right and neutral. The summary of his findings are:
| Left | Neutral | Right | |
| News | 8% | 91% | 1% |
| Opinion | 29% | 64% | 7% |
| Letters | 41% | 55% | 4% |
| Cartoons | 77% | 23% | 0% |
Neutral includes stories etc that just aren’t political at all.
So the ratio of left leaning to right leaning is the following:
- News: 8:1
- Opinion: 4:1
- Letters: 10:1
- Cartoons: ∞
Now one might say as it is a centre-right government, you expect more critical stories and columns as they are the Government. But does anyone think these numbers would be reversed if it was a centre-left government?
The full spreadsheet is available below.