Left-Wing Media Bias Is For Real
At The Wall Street Journal. Sure, the opinion page is right-wing. But, the news pages are not only liberal, but "even more liberal than The New York Times." So found the authors of a media bias study out of UCLA:
The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.
"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."
"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.
The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.
Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.
Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.
Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.
"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.
The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.
This isn't news. If you follow the news at all, you quickly realize that they have to sell Kleenex and other goods to get ratings. Thus, sad stories are dragged out, and in the search to include ways to avoid some sorry plight, assorted items are added, like social assistance, etc., which are naturally "leftist".
"Gun control" is a fine test for media bias; when someone is hurt, it's anyone's fault but the person pulling the trigger. It's been covered so often, but so incompletely that you might imagine you know something about the National Rifle Association, crime, the law or even guns, but usually, a few questions reveal that most people do not, never bothering to look up the many assertions and outright lies presented on the air.
Radwaste at December 19, 2005 2:29 AM
I sure don't see it. If you watch CNN or MSNBC or any of the other major "news" outlets, and you compare the numbers of Republicans/Right-wing think tank guests to the numbers of Democrats/Liberals/Left-wing think tank guests, the right outnumbers the left by about 3-1. Controversial issues (such as evolution vs. creationism) are often covered in such a he said/she said way that lends validity to extreme positions.
I do agree that the the primary concern is selling products, and so coporate heads may squash stories that might piss of their advertisers.
deja pseu at December 19, 2005 6:50 AM
On TV, I see a propensity to bend over backwards to bring in the right, and in papers, on the Opinion Pages, I think it's much easier to get hired now as a right-winger than a left-winger. Then again, I'm not collecting the statistics.
Amy Alkon at December 19, 2005 7:18 AM
Sorry, Amy, but the premise for this study is complete horseshit. Balance or bias in a news story is not measured by who is quoted, and how often. Balance is a matter of representing all opinions on an issue fairly and -- ideally -- helping readers evaluate those opinions against the known facts. So you have to look at individual stories on their own merits, not shove them all into a sausage-machine to see what comes out looker redder or bluer.
Just because a news piece quotes someone or something, that doesn't add up to an endorsement. On the contrary, quotes can often be used to undermine someone's position by showing up how ridiculous it is. If I chose to write a piece about the neo-Nazi right, this moron from UCLA would conclude that I am "biased" towards neo-Nazis. If I chose to write a piece about the Democrats, and why they keep losing elections, I would naturally quote more Democrats than Republicans, which again in this moron's view would make me biased towards my subject.
Given that the premise of the inquiry is completely fucked, the results are meaningless. He says it himself: no media person would have ever done this study. And there's a reason for that. It seems this guy thinks the media is -- or should be -- a branch of Congress, simply mirroring the views of the soundbite-driven lunatics on Capitol Hill. But a media that does that is no media at all -- it's simply a stenography service, which is sadly all too close to the reality of what we currently have.
Andrew Gumbel at December 19, 2005 11:52 AM
Hey - media bias isn't just about what the talking heads say.
When Dianne Feinstein is shown pointing an AKS at reporters - and they can't tell the difference between the auto version and the semi-auto - the article is about how dangerous the "machine gun" is, while the idiot waving it gets a pass. Lethal Weapon 1 shows a "cop-killer" bullet, and immediately it gets respect for showing a "real risk" to police; too bad for the truth that it never existed except on film. CBS News covers only part of the story in Kosovo, where Croats are disarmed, apparently for their own good; nobody covers what happens when the Serbs come back after the Americans leave. NPR wails about the human suffering of North Africans, and blames Italy for not taking them all in; in Brazil, they idealize the "victim" of a scam in which he sold a kidney, was robbed of his money in the airport when he got back, was arrested for trafficking in human organs. It's Brazil's fault that he had no money, and so he listened to a stranger in a bar and believed this wonderful opportunity existed.
The "Million Moms March" defrauds the State of California, and that doesn't rate a peep. The NRA goes on with its meeting in Denver - as is required by law regarding its charter - and they get accused of somehow aiding and abetting the Columbine killers; news networks milk that for all it's worth.
But this happens everywhere. Today, Rush is repeating, "What good is personal liberty if you're dead!?" without it occurring to him that individual rights are all we have here: they are at the root of everything we do; we already had a means for finding out everything we needed to about action everywhere in the world.
Some outlets are more conspicuous because they are unusual sources. The public is likely to believe "60 Minutes" - more professional liars, check their coverage on the Clinton nuclear plant some years back - because of the characters being network newspeople, trusted because they, well, because!
These are "the crazy years". Heinlein said so. Nobody wants to use their brains other than to stop the wind whistling through their ears.
Radwaste at December 19, 2005 12:55 PM
"...the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter."
That is a _huge_ assumption, in my opinion. Political success often has more to do with marketing than actually giving the public what they want.
All the best,
Charles
GodlessRose at December 20, 2005 3:33 PM
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