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.
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.
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.
FYI