“Remarkably Lopsided”: NYT Bestseller Bias Laid Bare
14th June 2024
After a March tweet by Elon Musk decrying the New York Times bestseller list as “pure propaganda” after the outlet was forced to admit in court that it’s not a ranked list, The Economist decided to see if there was any merit to longstanding claims of bias against conservative authors.
They found, of course, that there is.
The Economist compiled Bookscan data over a 12-year period and built a statistical model to predict the likelihood of books appearing in the NYT’s weekly “hardcover non-fiction” and “advice, how-to, and miscellaneous” rankings. The model considered books from publishers that identify as politically right of center.