Skyline College Library

Political Perspectives of Magazines and Journals

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.

Liberal/Progressive/"Left wing"	Conservative/"Right wing"
American Prospect Atlantic Monthly Commonweal Dissent Harper's Monthly Review Mother Jones Ms. Nation New Leader New Statesman New Yorker Progressive Public Citizen Science & Society Tikkun Utne Reader Z Magazine More Liberal/Progressive Titles (from Yahoo) More Liberal Titles (from Political USA)	American Enterprise American Spectator Christianity Today Commentary Forbes Fortune FrontPage Magazine Human Events Insight on the News National Review National Journal New American Policy Review Public Interest Weekly Standard The World and I More Conservative Titles (from Yahoo) More Conservative Titles (from Political USA)

Many popular magazines will attempt to include a variety of perspectives within every issue, and therefor cannot be identified on the whole with any specific political agenda. 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 the reference book, Magazines for Libraries, available at the library reference desk.

Another way to try to find out more information about any periodical is to find the website for the periodical (search Google to find the website) and look for links such as "About Us" or "Who We Are".

Some political magazines and journals are associated with "think tanks" (also referred to as policy institutes or research centers)-- organizations that develop research and/or analysis of policy issues, usually from particular political perspectives. An excellent set of links to lists and descriptions of think tanks is accessible from the University of Michigan Library at: http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/psthink.html

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last revised: 7-19-06 by Eric Brenner, Skyline College, San Bruno, CA