WPost on Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal

The Washington Post has a new story on the Daily Signal, a news website founded in 2014 and published by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.  Here is more:

Last summer, shortly after the first Republican presidential debate, the editors of the Daily Signal made a decision. Although its digital-only staff of 25 reporters and editors works less than two miles from the White House, they wouldn’t write about the presidential campaign — not at all.

An odd call, perhaps, but then again, the Daily Signal is not your run-of-the-mill news operation.

First off, it is funded by, and housed within, the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank whose president is former Republican senator (and tea party leader) Jim DeMint.

[Editor in Chief Robert] Bluey’s office boasts a large soft-focus poster of Ronald Reagan, and the newsroom lacks the clutter and clatter — and fast-food wrappers — of most places where journalists toil. Clean, quiet and well-appointed, it feels more like a law office or, well, a foundation — except for an impressive new video studio due to debut this summer.

Is it indeed a news operation, or a way for Heritage to do strategic communication in a new and effective way? The editorial insiders insist that it is very much the former.

Former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson is a regular contributor. And when Facebook executives met with conservative news organizations to soothe fears about charges of anti-conservative bias, Bluey was among them. A few weeks later, Bluey was first to report a story about Facebook’s plans for anti-bias training.

So far, though, the two-year-old site has no credentials to cover Congress, which are granted by the Standing Committee of Correspondents. Bluey thinks the prerequisites for getting them may be pretty challenging for the Signal, at least right now. What’s required includes diverse funding sources and no affiliation with (or location within) an advocacy organization.

The article goes on to note that the Signal is trying to diversify its funding by asking readers to subscribe, noting that with an annual budget of $1.3 million, the site gets about 2 million unique visitors a month.

The Editor in Chief, Robert Bluey, noted that sometimes people at the Heritage Foundation, including President Jim DeMint, offer ideas for Daily Signal.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on the Daily Signal.

Navigating Think Tanks in the News

Think Tank Watch has recently read the book Navigating the News by Michael Baranowski, and we have highlighted the interesting points raised about think tanks.

• "Many people assume that if a person has a Ph.D. after their name or is affiliated with a prestigious university or institute [such as a think tank], this person must be an expert.  But that's not necessarily so.  People with advanced degrees in political science almost always specialize in one very small part of their field and won't necessarily know anything more than an educated layperson when it come to the vast spectrum of politics that lies outside their area of expertise."

• "Data from federal and state government sources is almost always reliable...Data collected by researchers from academic institutions is also pretty solid because much of their work is subject to peer review.  When it comes to public opinion data, major media outlets, as well as top tier polling organizations like Gallup, Roper, and the Pew Research Center, do a very respectable job of data gathering.  View any other sources - including political parties, think tanks (which usually have an ideological agenda), and candidates - with caution."

• "Another useful fact-checking shortcut is to learn a few basic things about the organization that created the information.  Much of the evidence behind political arguments comes from government agencies or major national polling organizations, which are typically trustworthy.  But you're also likely to find a lot of evidence and arguments coming from political think tanks, which are private organizations that research and analyze politics, typically in order to advance a certain agenda."

• "Sometimes, the media will indicate whether a think tank is ideologically biased, but that's not always the case, even in the same newspaper.  For example, in an article on April 9, 2012, the New York Times refers to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) as 'a left-leaning research organization,' but in an article the Times published only a few months later, EPI is identified as 'a research group in Washington that studies the labor market.'  Both of these descriptions are accurate, but only the first tells you that the group might be consistently presenting the interpreting evidence that favors liberal interests."

Think Tank Watch should point out that the author, Michael Baranowski, is an associate professor of political science at Northern Kentucky University (NKU).