Do the major media outlets in the U.S. have a liberal bias? Few questions evoke stronger opinions, and we cannot think of a more important question to which objective statistical techniques can lend their service. So far, the debate has largely been one of anecdotes ("How can CBS News be balanced when it calls Steve Forbes tax plan wacky?") and untested theories ("If the news industry is a competitive market, then how can media outlets be systematically biased?").The newspaper industry is a system of very limited competition for the simple reason that its members are associated.They are members of the Associated Press, in fact - and that produces the system in which all claim that all are objective.
And that leads directly to their inability to see that their own incentive to hype their own importance - which motivates story selection and emphasis in very standardized, formulaic ways (Man Bites Dog, not Dog Bites Man; If it bleeds it leads, and so forth) - is a powerful leftist bias shared by all commercial, mass-market journalism.
BTTT
Interesting. The data is from the 1990’s so some things have changed. For example, the NY Times, the LA Times, and ABC have all moved much further left.