Posted on 12/04/2004 3:29:07 PM PST by quidnunc
The ongoing uproar over Dan Rather and CBS News has intensified concern about whether the mainstream media have a liberal bias. Some analyses, such as those by the Pew Research Center, document the strong tendency of journalists to describe themselves as liberal. This propensity--also prevalent, alas, among professors--is interesting but does not prove bias in coverage. Reporters might maintain objectivity despite their personal viewpoints, or the conservative leanings of most company owners might offset the liberal inclinations of the journalists.
In this spirit, in February 2003, the former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines said at a meeting of journalists: "Our greatest accomplishment as a profession is the development since World War II of a news-reporting craft that is truly nonpartisan." Paul Krugman went further in his New York Times column of November 8, 2002, when he asserted that the media actually had a conservative slant: "Some of the major broadcast media are simply biased in favor of the Republicans, while the rest tend to blur differences between the parties."
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. 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.
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(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
I've been using this research for months whenever liberal friends go on about how perception of media bias is all subjective. No one has ever offered a good critique that puts the study's conclusions in doubt.
Allyou need to know is how the MSM DID NOT cover the numerous Clinton--Gore--Kerry scandals and how they blew out of proportion anything related to the GOP
So, Barro has now come out as conservative pundit? He's the right answer to Krugman. They're both respectable economists. Barro, I think, with his Ricardian Equivalence and a textbook that's used in all graduate school in economics, is more famous now, and has more chance of getting a Nobel.
They will counter, as Clinton himself did do recently, that ABC news and others covered the Monica scandal "relentlessly." Of course, they represented it as being about sex, and not about perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, etc, but, they did cover it.
Donald Luskin's been doing a good job with his Krugman Truth Squad.
Liberals are never smart enough to shut their mouth when it is going to offend someone.
Conservatives, however, are smart enough. Thus, you rarely see a conservative spouting off in a crowd of people whereas Liberals always are. Hence, the cocktail circuit is full of Liberals while conservative just play along. It is how politically-correct biases continue to spread.
Conservatives are the "silent majority".
At election time, the silent majority gets to speak.
But the unfortunate side-effect, is that campuses seem to be overwhelmingly full of Liberal professors and in the media, "group think" forces the media to appear Liberal when in fact lots of consevatives are just playing along in the background. Political-correctness takes over and people's real feelings do not get to the surface.
Do we have to speak up? Or is it just better to remain respected (in your workplace, on campus, in the producers lounge) and not come off as a hothead like all Liberals seem to come off as.
I think conservative Freepers understand what I'm saying.
Hmm... although I'm allergic to liberals, I must somehow have overlooked this one. It DOES come as a surprise.
I'm saddened... deeply saddened. I guess I won't be able to use this one much longer with Tom Daschle being relegated to the ash heap of history.
What a surprise.
I have something of a problem with this study.
They "...start with the ratings of members' voting records issued by Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a self-described liberal organization...The ADA score has a 0-100 scale, with 0 meaning that a legislator voted with the ADA 0 percent of the time and 100 signifying 100 percent agreement."
It seems to me, then, that any score greater than zero shows a liberal bias.
They go on to say, "On this scale, the average ADA score for 1995-99 in the House and Senate was 50.1...If members of Congress reflect the views of their constituents, we can view "50" as close to the position of the average voter."
I don't think that bears any relationship to the real world. If you take 50 people who score 100 and fifty people who score zero, the mean is going to be 50, but that doesn't mean there's even a single individual whose views are anywhere near 50.
Besides, if "the average voter," that chimera, scores 50, that means he agrees with the left half the time, which is a gross liberal bias.
"Bill Frist had 10"
Is that a good thing? Why did he agree with the raving moonbats from Planet Commie Nutbar ten percent of the time?
Next, they adjust a member's score according to his tendency to cite conservative or commie nutbar think tanks. That's good, and a step in the right direction, but they are applying that adjustment to a measure that is already skewed to the left.
It seems to me that a proper methodology would extend both ways from zero, so that a person like Frist would be assigned not a 10, but an R90, and Ted Kennedy would receive an L89. The difference between Frist and Kennedy, then, would be not 79, but 179, and the measure of liberal bias might be the difference between the average of R scores and the average of L scores.
The study correctly notes that the human garbage who befoul most of our media have a media bias, but I think it grossly understates the degree of that bias.
Complete agreement from me.
I highly - very highly - recommend Ann Coulter's new book, "How to Talk to a Liberal (if you must)"
She has very perceptive recommendations. Read it, even if only the first chapter or two.
FYI
Excellent cite of some of the stories that have been ignored by the Old Media ad the FRAUDcasters. I would add to it such things as Hussein's torture chambers and the Loral/Chicom/'Toon giveaway of our national satellite secrets as well as the 'Toon's ignoring Pakistan/India and their quest to get nukes as well as shovelling hay over the Berger Soxgate and the 9/11 commissions true findings. So many stories could have brought down the 'Toon, or vindicated other Republican policies, but the Old Mediots continue to be able to obfuscate their own culpability in the major shortcomings that America has had to deal with.
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