Redstate

I feel like most of us here have been well aware of this fact for a long time.  Despite shrill cries from Democrats that there is now a Republican "media machine", it's pretty obvious to me that the majority of media still leans left.  Thankfully we have shows like Special Report, which I watch all the time thanks to Brit Hume's clear and fair presentation of the days political events.

my day isn't complete.  cries

http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.pdf

or if you don't like pdf...

http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm

And I really hope there are more researchers in Media Studies throughout the country who will take the initiative to study this subject in more depth.  It's gradually gaining recognition as an accptable question, now that it has become so obvious that it's impossible to deny.  

It's no more a secret that most of the MSM tilts left than it's a secret that most of the professors at our law schools do.  But until now it's been impossible for people who know the obvious to say it authoritatively, because "studies hadn't shown it" to paraphrase George Will.  

But it's never been a secret:  it's been a boast.  I've been in spats on the New York Times message boards and had people who were otherwise out of juice have to fall back on the Inescapable Truth that Conservatives are jealous because liberals and leftists control most of the academy and the media.  It's rare, and you have to back them into a corner to get them to spit it out, but they know it's true.  In fact, they rely on it being true.

And I've waited for the other shoe to drop here, but it hasn't fallen yet:  These results seem to me to be exactly the kind of findings that beg even more penetrating questions, such as an examination of the the political views of the journalism professors who teach these students.  Somewhere in America there has to be a post-doc researcher who could take this question on without being accused of being "bought off" by the "vast right-wing conspiracy."  Maybe Yale or Harvard or one of the other Ivies could even convince themselves to part with the meager funding necessary to help out a poor post-doc interested in following up this idea and writing a book.  Now that would be fair and balanced.

We'll see.

The "vast right-wing conspiracy" theory only works as long as Americans don't realize that the left is the one that really has a conspiracy at work.  And in many cases, it's state money that's giving professors free reign to indoctrinate students.  Imagine that.

Captain Obvious.

Today, I was installing an additional machine onto my network here at home, and archived on the hard drive were some email conversations from more than a year ago.  At the time, I was still having occasional email conversations with the former Dean of DePaul University College of Law in Chicago.  We were having a conversation about Tatiana Menaker and her treatment at San Francisco State University, and of course the conversation strayed into politics in general.  I suggested that she should moderate her stance on some Republicans and especially consider more of what Joe Lieberman was saying at the time.  Here was her last message in that particular conversation, from March 2, 2004:

"Thanks for the message and the article, but I would rather be flayed alive, drawn and quartered, and the pieces eaten by fire ants than vote for a Republican.  At least moderate Democrats DO exist.  Republicans are hard-line right-wing, intolerant and convinced they have "the word" from Above.  Especially W."

Very succinct and to the point -- that was her style with me.  She was the Dean of the law school and I would say that her views on this matter were shared, more or less emphatically, by an overwhelming majority of the faculty there in the time I worked for her at the University.  I say this in no way to defame Teree Foster as a person -- she was a friend --  but it is an accurate indication of the level of animosity that even the suggestion of voting for a Republican would evoke.  And for most of the time I worked there, I was one of the people who joined in the chorus.

The UCLA study based their research on which particular websites, people, policy groups and think tanks were referenced in the reports of the media outlet being reviewed. Then taking the number (0 being most conservative and 100 being most liberal) assigned to members of Congress by the ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) given to them based on how they voted on issues, that number was assigned to the outlet. This is why the Drudge report came out conservative because of the references it makes and not the content of his actual reporting.

What I find interesting is how some of the media outlets reviewed actually scored more liberal then many of the Democrats in Cogress(the Congress by the way as a whole recieved a number of 50.1).

From

UCLA News

An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of  74.

However, one point I would like to make is to draw a distinction between bias and outlook. A bias insofar as I see it, represents a process of judgment and analysis based on arbitrary or irrational grounds. An outlook represents a way in which to interpret facts (whether they be Real or Known) based on suppositions which can and in fact do have a rational basis. For example at redstate.org clearly the members, reporting and analysis represent a consevative viewpoint on the world. Is this to stay that redstate has a conservative bias , or is it merely conservative in its outlook? I would say the latter, I would hope that no one here would claim that their conservativism is based on purely emotive or irrational grounds. The conservatives that post on redstate have sound and justified reasons for their beliefs should be an operating paradigm, if redstate's mission is to be realized.

One final question, does the left leading nature of the media represent some inherent political conviction, or is it endemic to the structure of  media itself? The media (if I can use the term so inclusively) is a money-making institution. Its existence, good, bad or indifferent is not in general publically supported (NPR and other such organizations aside) and as such must sell products. For many people in general (Americans are no worse and in many cases better) contentiousness, disagreeablility, and muckraking sell significantly better, than calm balanced presentation. It is in the interest of the media to create its own drama, and therefore by overrepresenting views that fall outside the mainstream (and the farther the better, to a degree) the more copies are sold. But this all comes at a cost, because the average individual cannot or chooses not to investigate into the story behind the story, certain radical viewpoints become propogated through the general population as "well-known facts." Instead of having a public discourse based on education and information, we have become a nation of consumers. Hence the need for such placeds as redstate.org, to offer alternative modes of consumption and analysis becomes essential. Finally, because we as a country, in contradistinction to the liberal myth , have always been a pragmatically minded, typcally ideologically ambivalent nation (unless certain atrocities can no longer be tolerated i.e. WWII, 9/11 and recent emergent behavior aside)that the media has always had to play the liberal foil to the conservative Nixonesque silent majority. However, this is not to invalidate the left leaning outlook as a bias but only to suggest an alternative to understanding to the reasons behind the apparently (if the UCLA study holds water) consistent liberal presentation .

Thanks for reading.

Their primary objective is to show the possibility of an objective method for measuring bias. They make no claim that this is the best method but they do analyze and reconcile their results with other studies involving media bias, common claims and intuitions on the subject. As a consequence, they find additional validation for their method and results.

 Table 3. Results from Maximum Likelihood Estimation



                                           Period of       ADA    Std

                                           Observation    Score   Err

ABC Good Morning America                  6/27/97-6/26/03  56.1   3.2

ABC World News Tonight                     1/1/94-6/26/03  61.0   1.7

CBS Early Show                            11/1/99-6/26/03  66.6   4.0

CBS Evening News                           1/1/90-6/26/03  73.7   1.6

CNN NewsNight with Aaron Brown             11/9/01-2/5/04  56.0   4.1

Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume    6/1/98-6/26/03  39.7   1.9

LA Times                                 6/28/02-12/29/02  70.0   2.2

NBC Nightly News                           1/1/97-6/26/03  61.6   1.8

NBC Today Show                            6/27/97-6/26/03  64.0   2.5

New York Times                              7/1/01-5/1/02  73.7   1.6

Newshour with Jim Lehrer                 11/29/99-6/26/03  55.8   2.3

Newsweek                                  6/27/95-6/26/03  66.3   1.8

NPR Morning Edition                        1/1/92-6/26/03  66.3   1.0

Time Magazine                              8/6/01-6/26/03  65.4   4.8

U.S. News and World Report                6/27/95-6/26/03  65.8   1.8

USA Today                                   1/1/02-9/1/02  63.4   2.7

Wall Street Journal                         1/1/02-5/1/02  85.1   3.9

Washington Post                             1/1/02-5/1/02  66.6   2.5

Washington Times                            1/1/02-5/1/02  35.4   2.7

average                                                    62.6

 Note: The table gives our estimates of adjusted ADA scores for media outlets, converted to the 1999 House scale.  As a comparison, 50.06 is our estimate of the average American voter.  This is based on taking average scores of House members and senators after adding phantom (extreme liberal) D.C. House members and senators and weighting Senate scores by the population of the state.  The average score of Republicans serving in Congress between 1995 and 1999 was 16.1.  The average score of Democrats was 84.3.  All data for the news outlets came from news stories only.  That is, we omitted op-eds, letters to the editor, and book reviews.

I believe that the study uses bias more like you use outlook. From the report

Before  proceeding, it is useful to clarify our definition of bias.  Most important, the definition has nothing to do with the honesty or accuracy of the news outlet.  Instead, our notion is more like a taste or preference.  For instance, we estimate that the centrist U.S. voter during the late 1990s had a left-right ideology approximately equal to that of Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) or Sam Nunn (D-Ga.).  Meanwhile, we estimate that the average New York Times article is ideologically very similar to the average speech by Joe Lieberman (D-Ct.).  Next, since vote scores show Lieberman to be more liberal than Specter or Nunn, our method concludes that the New York Times has a liberal bias.  However, in no way does this imply that the New York Times is inaccurate or dishonest--just as the vote scores do not imply that Joe Lieberman is any less honest than Sam Nunn or Arlen Specter.

Instead, for every sin of commission, such as those by Glass or Blair, we believe that there are hundreds, and maybe thousands, of sins of omission--cases where a journalist chose facts or stories that only one side of the political spectrum is likely to mention.  For instance, in a story printed on March 1, 2002, the New York Times reported that (i) the IRS increased its audit rate on the "working poor" (a phrase that the article defines as any taxpayer who claimed an earned income tax credit); while (ii) the agency decreased its audit rate on taxpayers who earn more than $100,000; and (iii) more than half of all IRS audits involve the working poor.   The article also notes that (iv) "The roughly 5 percent of taxpayers who make more than $100,000 ... have the greatest opportunities to shortchange the government because they receive most of the nonwage income."  

Most would agree that the article contains only true and accurate statements; however, most would also agree that the statements are more likely to be made by a liberal than a conservative.  Indeed, the centrist and right-leaning news outlets by our measure (the Washington Times, Fox News' Special Report, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, ABC's Good Morning America, and CNN's Newsnight with Aaron Brown) failed to mention any of these facts.   Meanwhile, three of the outlets on the left side of our spectrum (CBS Evening News, USA Today, and the [news pages of the] Wall Street Journal) did mention at least one of the facts.

They explain that the Drudge report comes out liberal because its website is dominated by links to other news articles and other news outlets are mostly liberal. Matt's personal reports comprise a negligible proportion of the Drudge Report.

They explain that while demand side economics predicts that media outlets would be equally distributed on both sides of the center, supply side economics (where news staff is the supply) may account for the observed disparity. The news staff may tend to find validation in bringing about change, and freedom to execrcise that influence may be a value which competes with wages. They also suggest that once a shift to one side (in this case the left) has become a status quo and even though people may recognize the slant, they will still be subject to the influence and be pulled along.

On the demand side they also site evidence that liberals buy more print media than do conservatives. This may tend to blunt the motivation to shift to the right.

Johne,

I totally agree that the UCLA study uses bias like I use outlook. But I was sensing that other posters were conflating the two meanings of the word bias in order to propogate the pejorative notion of the liberal media attempting to undermine the administration's philosophy and its conservative allies.  

This of course not to say that the media doesn't have some hidden agenda to do just that. I am just suggesting that the UCLA study doesn't validate the "What we've known all along!" perceptions about the media in the eyes of some conservatives.

Actually there is a pretty good argument against the idea that there is a conspiracy and I believe such a claim just sets up a convienent defense for those who don't want to admit that the bias, uhm left-leaning outlook is real. Without further evidence, it seems best to assume that it in the news (not commentator) staff they are well intended human beings who cannot possibly escape from their political sympathies and world view. Seems we exchange a 5 on that.

I also would like to demand a change, mostly in the Public News media, but perhaps also in the broadcast TV news media. And I don't think it is right to ask anything more than that they provide an "outlook" from the center (voter), or else an average of news programming which hits center by mean and median.

Therefore the solution I am pushing is Truth in Journalism Through Diversity. Affirmative Action Required. But I think it doesn't get much support because it doesn't flame the partisan juices.

I've pounded on NPR for several years. I hope this UCLA report will raise questions there and perhaps will fall on friendly (even if cowed) ears at CPB.