UCLA study concludes left wing bias in media is legit

[JackWhite]

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The media is not liberal or conservative, it is corporate. They are all owned by huge conglomerates. GE, a major defense contractor owns NBC.


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Give me the evidence that these corporations dictate to reporters what they report. Dan Rather said that he reported what he thought was important and that corporate leaders never dictated what he said. Was he lying? I have heard many reporters say the same thing. In fact, WP media critic Howard Kurtz once dismissed this concept as "ridiculous." (the concept that corporate executive dictate what is reported)

[andyfox]

Form the study: "The most centrist outlet proved to be the 'NewsHour With Jim Lehrer'."

I've always felt that show "gets it" and, more often than most, gets it right. I agree with your assessment of most major news outlets.

[BluffTHIS!]

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Form the study: "The most centrist outlet proved to be the 'NewsHour With Jim Lehrer'."

I've always felt that show "gets it" and, more often than most, gets it right. I agree with your assessment of most major news outlets.

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I agree andy, that PBS's News Hour is relatively centrist in their reportage and analysis, though not necessarily in what they choose as topics to report on in depth, although that is just a gut feeling.

And outside of Fox, I do feel most media outlets lean left. The question is why would they? And I think that might have something to do with both the vast majority of university journalism departments themselves being run by left leaning proffessors (no big surprise), and the type of students those programs attract.

Also, I believe Cyrus is very wrong about the legitmacy of the criterion used, namely what type of sources are used. As a conservative catholic, there is one sure tipoff to me of a biased report that intimates that a substantial number of catholics disagree with the church's teaching on abortion. And that is if they quote the lying *@#! that runs Catholics For A Free Choice. This is because that organization is not a membership organization at all, but just a mouthpiece funded by liberal endowments to oppose the catholic church on abortion. So that organization really speaks for no catholics, although there are of course many who do disagree with the church's teaching on that matter.

So when various media outlets over the years have used that as a source, I know that they are left biased to the point of not caring about legitimate sources. The same thing can be said regarding consitutional legal questions whe a media outlet always uses Lawrence Tribe for its analysis.

[Riverman]

The thing that really upsets me is that amid the right's 20 year campaign to hammer away at what it sees as media bias they have scared news organizations into providing "balanced" coverage in cases where there is really no need to "balance" anything. An example:

Valerie Plame case: Bush originally says "Anyone involved in outing an undercover agent will not be a part of my administration." So then it becomes pretty damn clear that Rove was involved, and he changes his statement to "Anyone who committed a crime will not be a part of my administration." There is no liberal element to pointing out that he "flip-flopped," and the facts are not up for dispute. Still, major news will put some republican operative, spewing talking points, on to "balance" the coverage.

Another thing that really bothered me is election coverage. At this point it is pretty clear that both the 2000 and 2004 elections had irregularities if not outright cheating in favor of the republican party in Florida and Ohio respectively. Where is the coverage? The MSM went along with the its over lets move on line, even though there is significant evidence of outright corruption (at least in Ohio). Where was the "balanced" discussion on the legitimacy/wisdom of the Supreme Court stepping in to decide Bush v. Gore, particularly when justices who were on record as being strong supporters of "states rights" usurped the authority to decide the election result in Florida?

[DVaut1]

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Also, I believe Cyrus is very wrong about the legitmacy of the criterion used, namely what type of sources are used. As a conservative catholic, there is one sure tipoff to me of a biased report that intimates that a substantial number of catholics disagree with the church's teaching on abortion. And that is if they quote the lying sl*t that runs Catholics For A Free Choice. This is because that organization is not a membership organization at all, but just a mouthpiece funded by liberal endowments to oppose the catholic church on abortion. So that organization really speaks for no catholics, although there are of course many who do disagree with the church's teaching on that matter.

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I think this is a strong reason as to why I'm NOT in strong favor of using 'think-tank citations' as the matrix by which media sources ought to be rated -- often times journalists won't (through carelessness, ignorance, laziness, etc.) bother doing a thorough investigation regarding who and what they cite...and will often cite any organization interested in providing a quote; does journalist X bother investigating the membership rolls/donation records/lobbying history of Advocacy Group Y, or Think Tank Z? I'd guess that sometimes they do (and some of the best political reporters are of course aware of such things anyway, without a formal vetting) -- but I'd suspect a substantial number don't.

And, as you pointed out - the methodology cited in the study wasn't clear (perhaps I missed it) as to how advocacy groups/think tanks were differentiated, if at all; for instance, I think we can all agree that calling the NAACP a think tank is a stretch -- it's an advocacy group that has a clear agenda; and yet it seems the UCLA study classified the NAACP as a think tank.

Claiming the NAACP is an advocacy group ought to be pretty uncontroversial, as anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the organization knows that it has a point of view -- so when a media outlet cites the NAACP, there is, I believe, the implication that such a cited quote is given by someone who works for an advocacy group, not an unbiased party.

Again, I don't necessarily think "think tank citation" is a useless factor that's not worthy of study -- it should just be one factor, IMO, in a mosaic of factors.

Moreover, none of these problems even begin to scratch the surface of the ADA legislator rankings, which I believe were the control in the study -- the ADA rankings are not the best tool for establishing the median position for the average American voter, for a variety of reasons, IMO.

Again, it's not a completely valueless study, but I certainly wouldn't call it exemplary work, either.

Bias in the media or Bias in the studiers?:

"One of the authors of the study, Groseclose, was a Hoover Institution 2000-2001 national fellow; Milyo, according to his CV, received a $40,500 grant from AEI; and, according to The Philanthropy Roundtable, Groseclose and Milyo were named by Heritage as Salvatori fellows in 1997."

[sam h]

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After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

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I think there are a lot of problems with this method.

I don't doubt that journalists, especially print journalists and broadcast news journalists, tend to have left-leaning politics in general. But there is a lot more to the political orientation of a news outlet than who you cite. What you cover is probably the biggest issue.

[Cyrus]

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They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

[/ QUOTE ] This is IMHO a deeply flawed criterion.

Suppose I write an article that's starting from a decidedly "leftist" point of view and is extremely critical of the Bush government. Suppose further that the point of the article is to refute, through logic and facts, the arguments of the Bush administration about Iraq. In my article I will use only citations from conservative, pro-Bush sources, the very ones that propagate those arguments, and I will also use "hard" data & facts from neutral sources, such as History.com or the CIAfactbook.com, to refute them.

Well, according to the UCLA criterion, my article would have been classified as ultra-conservative!

Which is why they found Matt Drudge to be ...a lefty! [ QUOTE ]
Our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites. Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote.

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Lastly, the UCLA study found the news pages of The Wall Street Journal to be "a little to the left of the average American Democrat", on the basis of think tanks and news sources that the WSJ is citing. But could it be simply that the Wall Street Journal is using what it considers as being the more reputable and reliable sources - for its news reportage?

[tomdemaine]

The concept of a liberal bias is difficult to quantify no matter what metrics you use as your decisions will always be influenced by your own opinions. Noone can ever claim to be wholly unbiased your biases are part of what makes you you. That said I believe that while the majority of media outlets are corporatist and corporate owned, the actual journalists on the ground are mostly center-leftists and that a center-left mindset may lend itself to a journalistic (or acadmeic but that is another debate) life. Where this falls down is that, while left thinking journalists are probably the majority the right thinking ones have much more the courage of their convictions and shout loud enough fot two. I doubt "the right" would trade all the new york times' in the world for one fox news or Rush Limbaugh for getting the point across.

[Benman]

All the teeth-gnashing over the so called liberal media bias drives me up the wall. Where is it written that a reporter, or newspaper, must occupy exactly the median center of American politics in order to be credible? Every single person and instituion in this country is somewhat to the left or right. SO FREAKIN' WHAT? Who cares? I'm liberal. The Wall Street Journal is a conservative paper. Guess what? I think it's a fine paper. The New York Times is a liberal paper. Yes I admit that. It's also a good paper too. You people who get all whipped into a frenzy over the liberal press drive me absolutely bonkers. Have you lost all common sense? Get over it. Are you telling me that if the NYT has a front page story about the latest goings on in say Rwanda, and that's a topic you care about, are you saying that you won't read or trust the article just because you figure it was written by some east coast lefty? Do you really feel that way? Do you realize how brainwashed you've become by low-content talk show bloviates? Sorry, this really gets me worked up.