John:
Skews is a website that sounds like a soul mate for Intrade:
“Skewz is driven by the wisdom of the crowds. “
http://www.skewz.com/help/main?section=how_does_it_work
Skewz is driven by the wisdom of the crowds. You can read latest news, submit a new article, skew and comment on existing articles.
You can also create your own Personal Political Profile, check out our Media Comparison Chart, and add Friends from the community.
Get started now! Add the Skewz bookmarklet to your toolbar so you can skew anything you read on the web!
15/02/2009 04:47:28 Subject: Re:The Intrade World Crisis Index
ko
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Joined: 03/11/2007 19:01:54
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Okay, john. Here’s a start. Let’s say you use a Skews element + Media bias ratings.com element + Pollingpoint element + opportunistic element + whatever other elements we can find — that would make up the media bias index.
The opportunistic elements would be things like scholarly journals that are published on media bias. The best elements would be followups to commissioned polls that ask directly about media bias, but those cost money.
With the prior example where MBR generated an 18 point liberal bias, you could look at Skews ratings for these TV sites:
msnbc.msn.com, abcnews.go.com, cnn.com, cbsnews.com, pbs.org
Today they’d generate
2 points leftward on Civil Liberties, 4 points leftward on Domestic Policy, zero points on economic policy, 3 points leftward on Elections 2008, 5 points leftward on Energy/Technology, 4 points leftward on foreign policy, 2 points rightward on health, 3 points leftward on Other. That’s 2 + 4 + 3 + 5 + 4 - 2 + 3 which generates 19 points leftward liberal bias. That agrees pretty handily with my previous calculation on MBR and you could average the two.
The pollingpoint results are not in yet. Since I don’t know how they’d present the data, it is difficult to say how it would fit. Let’s say it’s a percentage on these 2 questions. I’ll just put in some numbers.
Do you think that most reporters tend to favor one of the major political parties or not?
Yes, they favor the Democrats 55%
Yes, they favor the Republicans 40%
No, they are fair 5%
Do you think that most reporters’ personal views are liberal, moderate, or conservative?
Liberal 40%
Moderate 20%
Conservative 30%
Not sure 5%
You could take a weighted difference on these 2 questions. 55% -40% = 15% and 40% - 30 % = 10 %. The average is 12.5%.
So here’s what the media bias index would look like today.
MBR: 18
Skews: 19
Polling Point: 12.5 (pretending to use my data)
If the contract were to expire today, it would have zero opportunistic elements, so the value would be (18 + 19 + 12.5)/3 (assuming you weight all 3 the same) = 16.5 points leftward.
You could do this today. For free. You could have these quarterly, monthly, weekly, whatever suits you. You could add value by commissioning polls, soliciting scholarly journals, etc. It would be a good place to start.
Released: March 14, 2007 Zogby Poll: Voters Believe Media Bias is Very Real Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet/Zogby Poll shows American voters are skeptical political motivation may be behind blogs run by mainstream news organizations The vast majority of American voters believe media bias is alive and well – 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides, a recent IPDI/Zogby Interactive poll shows. The Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet is based at George Washington University in Washington D.C. Nearly two-thirds of those online respondents who detected bias in the media (64%) said the media leans left, while slightly more than a quarter of respondents (28%) said they see a conservative bias on their TV sets and in their column inches. The survey, which focuses on perceptions of the “old” and “new” media, will be released today at the PoliticsOnline Conference 2007 at GWU. It is also featured in the March issue of Zogby’s Real America newsletter, now available on www.zogby.com. Fritz Wenzel, Zogby’s Director of Communications, will also discuss with conference–goers the results of the first interactive survey to include video clips from presidential candidates. The video poll is the latest step in Zogby’s cutting–edge leadership in online polling, and revealed important respondent sentiment toward the candidates after viewing clips online of recent speeches and interviews. Zogby International’s Jonathan Zogby, Director of Domestic Business Development, has also published an article in the conference magazine about the emergence of Internet polling as an important survey research tool, particularly in light of the increasing difficulty of telephone polling. The IPDI PoliticsOnline conference is one of the most important annual national conferences focusing on how the Internet has affected American politics. While 97% of Republicans surveyed said the media are liberal, two-thirds of political independents feel the same, but fewer than one in four independents (23%) said they saw a conservative bias. Democrats, while much more likely to perceive a conservative bias than other groups, were not nearly as sure the media was against them as were the Republicans. While Republicans were unified in their perception of a left-wing media, just two-thirds of Democrats were certain the media skewed right – and 17% said the bias favored the left. The Zogby Interactive survey of 1,757 likely voters nationwide was conducted Feb. 20-26, 2007, and has a margin of error of +/- 2.4 percentage points. As the influence of blogs has risen, mainstream news organizations have attempted to get in on the action by creating their own blogs to counter those run by private citizens and those not in the news business. But American voters remain skeptical of major news outlets diving in to the blog pool – 26% speculated that the reason news organizations are placing blogs on their Web sites is that “blogs give news organizations a chance to promote a political agenda they could not promote in their regular broadcasts, cablecasts, or publications.” This month’s Zogby’s Real America newsletter also explores Americans’ divided views on how to fix the U.S. health care system – how the nation’s health care compares to other counties, whether Americans should seek a radical change and what type of health care system would benefit the most Americans. For detailed methodological statement on this survey, please visit: www.zogby.com