Claims that conservatives dominate the news or that the mainstream media is far-left are not supported by this study. In sum, the result is something most people accept: the news is reported from a moderately liberal perspective. And, like you pointed out, editorial content, in particular editorial comments by anchors during a broadcast, is an important factor in media bias. There also does not seem to be any discrimination in what types of stories are reported because that may well affect the think tanks consulted. Implicit is the assumption that elected Democrats and Republicans are accurate barometers of liberalism and conservatism as a whole, which is perhaps the weakest link in the study. The conclusion is simply that most media sources cite the same think tanks as a moderately left of center Congressman in news stories. The result is limited in scope and far from proving a liberal media bias. The political orientation of a think tank is determined from how often it is cited by Congressman and Senators with known political biases. All it sets out to do is examine the rate at which media outlets cite various think tanks in pure news stories and rate political orientation of the outlets based on the think tanks used. This study, like any good academic study, is limited and focused.
Most welcome :-) I thought it was significant in that it uses mathematical evidence rather than the traditional anecdotal.
Straight from Seattle ultra ultra liberal land to you. "UN says US Stealing Iraq money" "Bush losing support, now even with Kerry on the war issue" Blah blah blah blah. They are currently in orgasmic throes over the Toon's book. MSNBC.COM is the most biased, liberal POS on the web masquerading as a mainstream news site. Drudge had it up on his page, of course, and The Annotated Media had it too, but no one else seemed to picked it up (shocking!). I'm sure someone else has already put this up, but I wanted to get it out there again. The Freepers always have something to say: What is excellent about this study is it is pretty objective - conservatives cite certain think tanks much more than liberals and vice versa For example, Ted Kennedy has about a 90 lifetime rating and Orrin Hatch, about 5) (The ADA, an ultra-liberal organization, takes 20 votes a year in both the House and Senate and gives a legislator 5 points if they vote the the (sic) way the ADA wants. Using the ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) ratings for each member of Congress a theoretical ADA rating is computed for each outlet. The study compares how often-in news articles or reports-each outlet cites certain think tanks vs. The Weekly Standard has a good piece by Harvard professor Robert Barro who explains an innovative study done by Tim Groseclose (UCLA/Stanford) and Jeff Milyo (Chicago) called "A Measure of Media Bias". Most recently, the report was profiled at The Key Monk:īeyond a reasonable doubt - the liberal media bias The story has been reported in Capitol Hill Blue, Instapundit,īusiness Week, National Review, and Andrew Sullivan. Among 20 major outlets, Fox News and the Washington Times emerge as conservative, but the other 18 range from slightly to substantially left of center. Their main finding is that the liberal inclination of the mainstream media is clear. television and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet. These researchers use a clever statistical technique to construct an objective measure of conservative or liberal bias in the news coverage of major U.S. The best analysis I know along these lines is the ongoing study "A Measure of Media Bias," by professors Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeffrey Milyo of the University of Missouri. The question is, Who is right? Is there a left- or right-wing bias, or have the media actually managed to be objective? A serious assessment requires quantification of the output put forth by the media. "A Measure of Media Bias", a report first released in September, 2003, is re-circulating among our friends on the right, starting with fawning coverage in The Weekly Standard: Per Kevin Drum, throw one more caveat on the fire: the number of times a network fails to properly identify a typical man on the street as the National Taxpayers Union shill he really is.