The left-wing group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) does regular studies of press citations of major think tanks in the U.S. In its most-recent release, FAIR reports an overall decline of think-tank citations, nearly 20 percent in newspaper coverage for example. There’s no obvious explanation for the trend. While FAIR has a bizarre take on media bias and ideological definition (the Center for American Progress is classified as Center-Left rather than Progressive, for example) and excludes many media outlets from its analysis, I still think the findings are interesting. Media coverage is certainly one key variable that think tanks use for evaluating their effectiveness. Here’s the top 10 think tanks in big-media citations:
Brookings Institution (2,380)
Council on Foreign Relations (1,191)
American Enterprise Institute (1,171)
Heritage Foundation (1,168)
Center for Strategic and International Studies (1,068)
RAND Corporation (740)
Kaiser Family Foundation (706)
Center for American Progress (673)
Cato Institute (640)
Urban Institute (558)
Using standard nomenclature, four are right of center, four are left of center, and two are not really classifiable (CFR and RAND), though they do have a theme song.