Some periodicals will have a specific political or cultural bias. This
may be reflected in their choice of issues to report on, their tendency
to express certain political or cultural opinions and advocate certain
types of solutions to social problems, or both. If your research
project requires you to examine a given topic from one or more
political perspectives, the following list of titles might be useful.
Please note, however, that the categories listed below are quite broad
and not all periodicals in a given category will necessarily be in
close agreement on all issues. For example Freeman focuses on issues of economic conservatism and libertarianism, whereas The National Review and Christianity Today focus more on cultural conservatism. Commentary primarily covers Jewish interests, but with a moderately conservative perspective.
Many popular magazines will attempt to include a variety of
perspectives within every issue, and hence cannot be identified on the
whole with any specific political agenda, although individual articles
may reflect the bias of the authors. Examples include Time, U.S. News and World Report, and Rolling Stone.
However, each of these periodicals may reflect other biases, not
identifiable on a simple conservative-liberal scale, which determine
what type of news and opinions they are likely to contain and how the
writers tend to treat their subjects.
For more information about the biases and emphases of individual magazines and journals, consult Bill Katz' Magazines for Libraries (Irwin Library Ref Z 6941 .K2).
