Aside from the well known stat that 90% of the national press corps voted for Clinton back in 1992, and the evidence one gleans just from observing, some people still do not believe there is a Liberal bias in the news media.
Follow this link to view a report put together from the records available from the Federal Elections Commission – this guy pulled out all the contributions from media folks and listed them. While this may surprise some, the results show a large leftward tilt of reporters putting their money where their mouths are, as it were. Check it out:
The post does an excellent job in detailing the many contributions made to Democrats and Democrat-supporting groups by members of the media.
Here is an article written by Orson Scott Card (he wrote “Ender’s Game” on the great book thread). Not sure, but I think he is a democrat who is not happy with the direction his party has taken.
How liberal bias manifests:
"So let’s put it to the test. Is there a real leftist bias in the mainstream news?
One recent morning–the Sunday before Memorial Day–I picked up the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times and started looking through national news coverage. You know, the stuff that is filtered through the lens of liberal bias long before it even reaches local papers, which rarely revise what they get off the wire services.
In a story on Donald Rumsfeld’s remarks to the graduating class at West Point, here is the lead paragraph: “Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, making no mention of the prisoner abuse scandal that has led to calls for his ouster, told a cheering crowd of graduating cadets Saturday that they will help win the global fight against terror.”
Let’s see, how could there be any bias in that? Every word is true, right?
Except for this: The first thing mentioned, the lens through which we are forced to view the rest of the story, is something that did not happen and that only an idiot would expect might happen: Mr. Rumsfeld mentioning the prisoner-abuse scandal at a commencement address at West Point.
The lead, in other words, is not the graduation that is supposedly being reported, but rather Mr. Rumsfeld’s failure to resign in the face of events that happened weeks ago. How is Mr. Rumsfeld’s not resigning news? It’s mentioned in this story only because the reporter does not want to let go of it.
This is bulldog journalism: Once you get hold of a story, you never loosen your grip until your victim dies–at least politically. "
I don’t agree that the media have a specifically liberal bias. It’s a rebellion against the status quo, not against a static ideal – so if the liberals were to take over Washington tomorrow, you’d suddenly find the media to carry a large conservative bias. The media weren’t exactly kind to Clinton, either.
I know I described this awhile back, but a professor from Berkeley did a study recently that also demonstrated liberal media bias very well. A summary was reprinted in Business Week a few weeks ago if anyone gets that mag.
[quote]CDarklock wrote:
I don’t agree that the media have a specifically liberal bias. It’s a rebellion against the status quo, not against a static ideal – so if the liberals were to take over Washington tomorrow, you’d suddenly find the media to carry a large conservative bias. The media weren’t exactly kind to Clinton, either. [/quote]
You’re right in that they weren’t necessarily nice to Clinton, but at the same time Starr got more negative coverage than did Clinton during the investigation – something unheard of during previous Independent Prosecutor investigations of Presidents.
Also, Liberals are just as much, if not moreso “the establishment” than are conservatives. Especially in the realm of ideas, liberal ideas about Social Security, welfare, education, etc. are the status quo, and it is “conservatives” who are pushing for change. If there was an anti-establishment bias, one would think the media would give more friendly coverage to reform efforts such as school vouchers.
I will agree with you that the media is going to harsh on whoever is the President – but that doesn’t mean there’s not a bias in the way information is presented, the way ideas are criticized, or even in the way one party is favored over the other. And I think the post I linked above gives some pretty good indication that a lot of reporters have an ideological dog in the fight.
By itself, this would not necessarily indicate a bias, but given the pre-existing observations of bias and the other studies floating around, and the complete picture is of a liberal-leaning media – at least the major media outlets in broadcast and print journalism.
[quote]biltritewave wrote:
I know I described this awhile back, but a professor from Berkeley did a study recently that also demonstrated liberal media bias very well. A summary was reprinted in Business Week a few weeks ago if anyone gets that mag.[/quote]
I don’t know about that one, but here’s one that a Prof from Stanford did with a prof from U. of Chicago:
Since everyone is always siting some percentage without giving some sort of reference… I decided to see if I could actually find a survey on media bias. I’ll be honest I didn’t look had but I did find this:
survey.html
Skip to the bottom for numbers if you don’t wanna read it all.
This study is compares the media to congress which is not as valid as comparing it to public opinion since:
When judging the media as having a bias left or right, we mean relative to the public not to congress (unless of course your a congressman). The reason for this is that “right” and “left” are relative to the country in which you are applying these terms…
The date on this report is september 2003. At this date the republicans had control of congress (although not overwhelmingly).
This study is compares the media to congress which is not as valid as comparing it to public opinion since:
When judging the media as having a bias left or right, we mean relative to the public not to congress (unless of course your a congressman). The reason for this is that “right” and “left” are relative to the country in which you are applying these terms…
The date on this report is september 2003. At this date the republicans had control of congress (although not overwhelmingly).
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
If there was an anti-establishment bias, one would think the media would give more friendly coverage to reform efforts such as school vouchers.[/quote]
The media aren’t about friendly coverage at all. First and foremost, media are about being consumed – and they will do whatever inspires people to consume more media. Any bias in the media says more about us than it does about them.
I agree that the media are biased, but I don’t think the democrats are particularly favored. I just think they’ve been out of office most of the time, so they’ve been the underdog. And the media love an underdog. I also don’t think there’s any way for the media NOT to be biased, or indeed for anything not to be biased.
But when you really think about it, does a liberal bias make any sense at all? Most media are owned and operated by the same rich corporate interests that liberal politicians apparently detest. It simply doesn’t make sense for these controlling bodies to champion their own opponents.
I also get really suspicious when people tell me their conspiracy theories, because conspiracies are Hard – exponentially so, as they grow. The idea of a conspiracy throughout the media is so close to a global conspiracy theory, it’s effectively impossible to believe.
I don’t think the pre-existing observations are anything more than anecdotal. Most of the studies I’ve seen are flawed; they start with a series of conditions that effectively guarantee the observation of a liberal bias.
Even Card’s observation effectively guarantees that bias exists: while the candidate couldn’t have been expected to say anything at that time, he might have been expected to say something around that time. One man’s bias is another man’s context, and while a reporter is expected to avoid the one, he is likewise expected to provide the other. A failure to mention the omission would have been perceived as bias in the other direction.
I think one of the most important questions is whether the population at large has a general bias, since the hypothetical “normal” distribution is almost never found in reality. If the population already has a liberal bias, then any bias found in the media would need to be significantly different from the general population’s to be noteworthy.
That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one. The media hounded Clinton pretty much from day one.
Up until recently, the media has kissed Dubya’s ass.
Some liberal media…
[/quote]
Oh yeah, the same media that turned a blind eye to Clinton while he was bombing innocent civilians in Belgrade. Still haven’t found those mass graves yet, eh Lumpy? All that was accomplished was the radical sub-human Muslims gaining a foothold in the Balkans and killing Christians. Where was Moore and his stupid conspiracy theories then?
With the exception of talk-radio what media outlet has kissed Bush’s posterior? No one from the alphabet networks have and Wolfe Blitzer at CNN sure as hell hasn’t.
I’ve never seen an individual spin things as you do Lumpy. You would tell me to my face that the sun is not hot if it validated your lily-livered ideological beliefs.
It is sad because you are well informed, but you let ideology cloud your judgement.
The media aren’t about friendly coverage at all. First and foremost, media are about being consumed – and they will do whatever inspires people to consume more media. Any bias in the media says more about us than it does about them. [/quote]
Oh, I agree that the media needs to generate viewership/readership. And with a 24-hour newscycle, they need to create stories when there’s nothing particularly interesting going on. But the slant only affects viewership/readership if there is a viable altnerative – which, actually, is why Fox rose in the ratings so much when it came out.
Still, though, as you want to frame this as economics, I’ll posit this thought: it’s more of a supply side than a demand side issue, in that far more people of liberal bent go in to journalism.
The Dems have been out of power for awhile, but I don’t think it’s as much of an underdog story as it is an ideological predisposition for the issues at hand. If we can agree that it seems reporters give to Democrats and liberal causes and vote for Democrats in fairly large majorities, it’s not much of a stretch to think that this outlook would seep in to the way that information is presented.
Take abortion as a simple example. Look up stories on this topic in the major media via a google search, and see how often you can detect whether pro-abortion positions are portrayed in positive or at least neutral language, versus anti-abortion positions. Given this is a cultural conservative/liberal dividing issue, it should serve as a good proxy.
Yes. The stories flow from the bottom up - written by reporters and then edited. Unless the “rich corporate interests” are actively editing pieces or attempting to exercise editorial control – and if they were, you can bet the newspeople would be screaming bloody murder.
Whoa nellie. When did I say anything about a conspiracy? Conspiracy theories are stupid.
I think this is a product of a self-selection bias on the part of those who enter the journalism profession. Simply put, I think conservatives are more likley to enter the business world than to enter journalism careers – or at least that was true for a long enough period of time post Watergate and during the 80s to be reflected now. Given that sample, I think the bias is just an aggregate of individual reporters’ and editors’ ideological preferences, much like a stock price is the aggregate of market opinion on the right price for a company. No one is conspiring or working together in back rooms – it’s simply aggregate preference – which is why the sheer number of Democratic-leaning members of the media (as compared to the number of Republican-leaning members of the media) is a key idea.
Well, the two pieces I’ve cited here aren’t flawed in that way. You can look up that factoid on the voting pattern of national media in the Clinton/Bush election [I think it was that one – could have been Clinton/Dole, but I’m going on memory] – I don’t want to go find it now, but it was 90% for Clinton, with the other 10% shared between Bush and the other candidates.
The info in the post above is gleaned from FEC data on political contributions from media figures and organizations.
The two items mentioned above show predilection for bias in reporting. It’s more difficult to have a study that demonstrates bias, mostly because it’s very difficult to agree on a definition – which, I think, it what you’re saying.
However, just keep your eyes open to the little cues when you read or watch. Things such as:
Using active voice and pejorative adjectives to attribute negative stories to Republicans, but passive voice and no direct linkage to stories about Democrats - especially in headlines.
Relative usage of the terms: right-wing and left-wing; or even better: extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing. Guess which is used more often (by an order of magnitude)?
Identifying sources of background data as conservative organizations but failing to similarly identify data from liberal organizations, which are often simply described as “non-partisan” (which is equally true of the conservative orgs).
Relative placement in a story to accusations of wrongdoing versus counterbalancing explanatory material – again, depending on who is accusing and who is defending.
All of those, and many more, indicate bias and affect perception, even though the bias is relatively soft.
The best reflection of the bias of the population that I know of is party registration. Actually, there are now more registered Republicans than Democrats, although it is still relatively close, with a large number of independents.
However, I think that’s the wrong sample. The real sample you’d want, give your opinion above, is the mean bias of the average media consumer (you may even wish to break it down via the type of media). I don’t really know how one would come up with that, other than commissioning a statistical sampling.
Bottom line: I would argue there is a bias, and that it is a product of the political beliefs of a majority of reporters/editors. I don’t mind a bias in editorials – that’s what they’re for after all – but I really wish the media would do a better job of maintaining an even tone and presentation in its news pieces.
BB: My friend, a liberal, came up with this critique of the article. Let me know what you think.
First of all, he is scoring against numbers compiled by an agenda-driven
organization to represent their assessment of legislators. The organization
endorses a presidential candidate, and not half-heartedly, at that.
Secondly, I have very serious doubts about the ability to give a member of
Congress a numerical score on how liberal or conservative he or she is, and
have greater doubts about pinning that score to the number of times they
cite a specific think tank in a given time period. Further, as his own
discussion indicates, the topic at hand may lend itself to biasing the
samples both in Congress and in the media, and it isn’t clear to me that
they can correct against this, especially because they are trying to score
something that I’m DAMN sure you can’t score with a number anyway. Finally,
it seems to me, based on his discussion, that he doesn’t have a sufficient
grasp of all the issues he is trying to quantify to then go about
quantifying them. It makes it little better that all of the other people
credited did not catch his errors. For instance, he compounds RU-486 with
Plan B contraception. The big movers on RU-486: Mr. BROWNBACK (for himself,
Mr. ENSIGN, Mr. ENZI, Mr. HAGEL, Mr. INHOFE, Mr. NICKLES, Mr. SANTORUM, and
Mr. SESSIONS). The big movers on Plan B: Mrs. MALONEY (for herself, Mr.
GRIJALVA, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. JACKSON of Illinois, Mrs. CAPPS, Ms.
MILLENDER-MCDONALD, Mr. LANTOS, Mr. CROWLEY, Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas, Ms.
WOOLSEY, Mr. NADLER, Mr. FILNER, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts,
Ms. LEE, Ms. DELAURO, and Mr. SHAYS). If the guy is confusing the two
issues by putting them together, how is he going to have any coherent way of
figuring out who leans where and why they’re citing what?
The bottom line is this. The goal is to figure out how liberal or
conservative some media outlet is. This is done by comparing it to the
liberal or conservative behavior of a think tank, as quantified by who
chooses to cite the think tank. The person citing it is in turn judged as
to his own behavior by a score which itself is open to question. Seems like
an awful lot of subjective shit to come up with some number that is then
used to provide “objective” analysis.
Because the numbers are generated by who cites what in the record. If you
lump the two things together as one issue, you will generate a mish-mosh of
who voted “liberal” and who voted “conservative” for the ADA scores. Making
the mistake once can raise questions about it being done again.
Furthermore, if I were more conspiratorially-minded about this (I’m not, I
just think it’s a fool’s errand, like I said), I would suggest that the
author has a conservative bias based on his intentionally compounding of
abortion and emergency contraception.
ADA numbers are not an objective
measure of anything. They are generated by a left-leaning interest group
for other left-leaners to examine. Furthermore, if you look at the
Congresses whose ADA numbers they use, they skew the sample to the right.
The conclusion? The media is to the Left of a sampling of Congresses, only
one with a Democratic majority, including the Gingrich House (except Fox
News, which is to the Right of that benchmark - and that’s unbiased). So if
the Democrats retake Congress and hold it for the next…11 years or
so…the media will suddenly have a conservative bias. I see.
Well, I guess they could also just talk more often, resulting in more
citations of the same think tanks. Which would, in turn, make Congress more
liberal…because people said “Brookings” more. Or the Democrats could
really throw a wrench in the gears and start chanting “Heritage Heritage
Heritage” as a mantra. As I said before, what they are trying to prove with
this report is silly. They are comparing how often someone uses a name with
how liberal or conservative that person is, and then comparing how often a
media outlet uses the same name, to compare the outlet to a person or group
of people, and then to say that they have “an objective measure of the slant
of news.”
It is hard to assail his conclusions given the fact
he is comparing the “liberalness” of Congress (as a proxy for the country -
another level of obscurity for the data) with that of the media, but it’s
only difficult because, as I said originally, quantifying this is arbitrary
as hell and based on many assumptions and pieces of data from interest
groups to then state, as the paper does, “Our results show a very
significant liberal bias.”
[quote]Dustin said
With the exception of talk-radio what media outlet has kissed Bush’s posterior? [/quote]
Guess you weren’t paying attention during the 2000 election, where the media gave Bush a free pass, while raking Gore over the coals.
I guess you didn’t notice that during the run-up to invading Iraq, the press basically parrotted whatever the White House talking points were, rather than (for example) really examining the White House’s claims that there was a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, or that Iraq was actually an imminent threat with WMDs.
I agree. That’s why the story about Rumsfeld’s address to West Point led with a reference to Abu Ghraib, or why reviews of the Bill Clinton biography always focus on the Lewinsky scandal, for example. They go for the cheap thrill.
A great website that deflates the claims that the news media has a liberal bias (goes after the major papers and networks for spinning to the Right, as well as obvious targets at Fox News and Rush Limbaugh): http://mediamatters.org/
The media out there Lumpy is very liberal. (Excellent articles there BB!!) Let me add a few and there are so so many out there…
On Sunday’s Face the Nation, moderator Bob Schieffer wanted to ask RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie about unfounded rumors that Dick Cheney would be dumped as Vice President. But when Gillespie tried to tell CBS viewers that a key Cheney detractor – and former Face the Nation guest – Joe Wilson, had been “entirely discredited in a bi-partisan fashion,” Schieffer switched to asking DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe to say why he thought Cheney was a liability
Can you tell, Thelma,…if the crowds really look like America? Are they ethnically diverse ? African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans ? or is it largely white??
? CNN?s Wolf Blitzer asking reporter Thelma Gutierrez about the crowds at Reagan?s presidential library during live coverage shortly after 12pm EDT on June 8.
I don?t think history has any reason to be kind to him.?
? CBS?s Morley Safer recalling the late Ronald Reagan on CNN?s Larry King Live, June 14, 2004.
?I predict historians are going to be totally baffled by how the American people fell in love with this man and followed him the way we did.?
? CBS?s Lesley Stahl on NBC?s Later with Bob Costas, January 11, 1989
The Democrats? dream team of John Kerry and John Edwards hits the campaign trail today…?
? CBS?s Hannah Storm on the July 8 Early Show.
?It was a perfect portrait ? smiles all around, hugs and hand-holding. A warm family photo of the Kerry/Edwards clans that seemed capable of melting the camera lenses.?
? CBS?s Thalia Assuras on the July 8 Early Show.
What were you like as a kid??
?Was there ever any doubt about you going to college even though neither of your parents did??
?Tell me about your wife. Where did you meet her??
?Why did you want to be a lawyer??
?I gather you were a hell of a lawyer.?
?I gather you?ve never been short of confidence.?
? All of the questions Peter Jennings was shown asking John Edwards in an interview played on the July 7 World News Tonight.
Clinton aide targeted for stealing documents…Front Page story U.S.A. Today…Looking at it in the NYT at this moment Page 17. In a small block…
Journalists Say They Are Liberal: Surveys from 1978 to 2004 show that journalists are far more likely to say they are liberal than conservative, and are far more liberal than the public at large.
Journalists Reject Conservative Positions: None of the surveys have found that news organizations are populated by independent thinkers who mix liberal and conservative positions. Most journalists offer reflexively liberal answers to practically every question a pollster can imagine.
The Public Recognizes the Bias: Since 1985, the percentage of Americans who perceive a liberal bias has doubled from 22 percent to 45 percent, nearly half the adult population. Even a plurality of Democrats now say the press is liberal.
Desperately seeking Matt, Charlie, Harry, Steve and Bill? MSNBC?s Keith Olbermann rolled out quite a conspiracy theory on Wednesday night about the terrorist threat announcement, suggesting that ?if you are of a suspicious mind, you will already have noticed the timing of today’s announcement in the context of developments in Iraq and the President’s declining poll numbers.? That, he conceded, ?is all speculative? but, he insisted, ?one timing question may be a lot more substantial.? Olbermann proceeded to make much of how after the morning shows on Tuesday afternoon turned down Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge?s request to appear on them on Wednesday morning, ?the leak about the credible threat hit the wires early Tuesday evening, and the Secretary wound up on the morning shows this morning."
AND it goes on and on and on!!!
This is all spelled out on: Updated daily:
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
I think this is a product of a self-selection bias on the part of those who enter the journalism profession. Simply put, I think conservatives are more likley to enter the business world than to enter journalism careers[/quote]
Now, on this, I can agree: most media will employ, for the most part, young and idealistic liberal personnel in the trenches. The conservatives are in the office, typing and fact-checking at the lower ranks, managing and editing at the upper. (Running a newspaper behind the scenes is, in fact, a business. It’s a phenomenally boring business, too, which attracts almost exclusively conservatives and the mind-numbingly idealistic.)
I just think the population and the conservative influence plays a much larger part in that self-selection. Marketing is, in a sense, a form of self-selection… you pick your market, and you pursue it. I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out that certain kinds of people watch the news and they want to hear certain kinds of things. I’m of the personal opinion that when a liberal bias was first introduced to mass media, public interest skyrocketed, so everybody started chasing after it. (Notice how the popularity of the Atkins diet has led to eight million low-carb products? Same thing, just longer-lived.)
From Mickey Kaus’ weblog on Slate.com on Saturday, July 17:
Guess It Really Was A Nagourney Problem: Richard Stevenson appears instead of Adam “Caterpillar” Nagourney in the NYT writing credits for the latest Times/CBS Poll. Have Nagourney’s superiors realized how awful his last effort was? … Whatever the reason for his absence, it’s not the same without him. There’s no cocooning pro-Democratic spin! Just a sensible account of a poll with some good news and not-so-good news for the Dems. Even the headline (“No Poll Boost From Edwards”) is unspun–at least not in a pro-Dem direction. This can’t go on. …It didn’t. The Web headline has now been changed to “Public Likes Edwards, But Race is Still Close.” The hed in the print edition is the even more morale-boosting “Public Warms to Edwards; Race Still Close.” Shift change at the copy desk? Or orders from Moscow? You make the call. … 2:13 A.M.