It's official, the Press is Liberal.

[luchog]

According to a study done at UCLA, there is a definite, though moderate, liberal bias in the press.

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

Excerpt:

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.

"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

I'm not sure I entirely buy their methodology; but I don't know enough about it to say for sure where the flaws are.

 

[Charlie Monoxide]

My eyes kinda glaze over with I hear about the liberal or right-wing media. I guess the big newspapers and network newscasts and shows were relevent at one time. That time was before the 500 channel universe and internet.

Except for PBS/Discovery/Science/Comedy Central, I like to watch the local newscats (hmm typo, but I'll let it stand) as well the the occasional network (either NBC or CBS usually). When these news shows deliver "major" news stories that are just advertisements for their other programming (ie interview with the winner of Survivor Tuktayaktuk), it's all just fluff between commercials.

Charlie (actually commercials between commercials) Monoxide

 

[Luke T.]

I would never have guessed that the WSJ was the number one most liberal newspaper.

 

[Cain]

Is this the same study that made the Internet rounds when it was a work in progress. The one that classified the ACLU as a conservative?

 

[mumblethrax]

That's funny, because I've always considered political science to have a right-wing bias. I will prove it with a similar methodology to the one used in the study: both authors were fellows at the Hoover Institute.

But seriously, it's junk.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

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.

The WSJ liberal? Have they ever looked at one? I read it every day, and it's a great paper, but "liberal" is the last thing it is.

 

[Random]

The WSJ liberal? Have they ever looked at one? I read it every day, and it's a great paper, but "liberal" is the last thing it is.

I belive they are talking about the actual contents of the news stories contained in the newspaper, not including the editorials. The WSJ editorial staff lives in an alternate dimension from the rest of the paper, and has been known to publish opinions and editorials with "facts" that directly conflict with "facts" from the exact same issue of the paper.

 

[rustypouch]

The line that got me was "Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter."

So that means the rest were left of the average US voter?

If so, I would hardly consider that 'liberal.' I think 'less conservative' would be a better description.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

(Sigh)

What with a study's inherent limitations, perhaps a multi-hundred page tome containing persuasive evidence and cites might be more "official." For that, I recommend "What Liberal Media?" -- by Eric Alterman.

 

[Questioninggeller]

That UCLA-led study we alerted you to earlier this week purporting to find liberal bias in the media is taking quite a bit of heat for its methodology – in our comments section and in the blogosphere. And Romenesko has a round-up, including a statement from Dow Jones, parent of The Wall Street Journal, taking strong exception to the study:

“The research technique used in this study hardly inspires confidence. In fact, it is logically suspect and simply baffling in some of its details.

First, its measure of media bias consists entirely of counting the number of mentions of, or quotes from, various think tanks that the researchers determine to be ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative.’ By this logic, a mention of Al Qaeda in a story suggests the newspaper endorses its views, which is obviously not the case. And if a think tank is explicitly labeled ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ within a story to provide context to readers, that example doesn’t count at all. The researchers simply threw out such mentions.

Second, the universe of think tanks and policy groups in the study hardly covers the universe of institutions with which Wall Street Journal reporters come into contact. What are we to make of the validity of a list of important policy groups that doesn’t include, say, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the AFL-CIO or the Concord Coalition, but that does include People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? Moreover, the ranking the study gives to some of the groups on the list is simply bizarre. How seriously are we to take a system that ranks the American Civil Liberties Union slightly to the right of center, and that ranks the RAND Corp. as more liberal than Amnesty International? Indeed, the more frequently a media outlet quotes the ACLU in this study, the more conservative its alleged bias.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2005/12/21/publiceye/entry1151591.shtml

and

Former fellows at conservative think tanks issued flawed UCLA-led study on media's "liberal bias"

In recent days, news outlets including CNN cited a study of several major media outlets, "A Measure of Media Bias" (pdf) by political scientist Timothy J. Groseclose of UCLA and economist Jeffrey D. Milyo of the University of Missouri-Columbia, purporting to demonstrate that America's news content has "a strong liberal bias." But the UCLA-led study employed a measure of "bias" so problematic that its findings are next to useless. In addition, the authors -- apparently new to media content analysis -- seem unaware of the substantial scholarly work that exists on the topic, yet they do cite a number of right-wing sources to provide support for their claims.

Given the study's conclusions (that the media is replete with liberal bias) and the study's failure to acknowledge its authors' conservative pedigree, it is not surprising that a number of conservative news outlets picked up the story, as did a few mainstream outlets. Conservative MSNBC host Tucker Carlson interviewed Milyo about the study on the December 19 edition of MSNBC's The Situation with Tucker Carlson. The study was also cited by anchor Jack Cafferty during the December 20 edition of CNN's The Situation Room; on the December 19 editions of Fox News' Fox & Friends and Special Report with Brit Hume; in a December 19 article in The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tennessee; and in a December 20 Investor's Business Daily editorial by Edward R. Stephanopoulos. CBS News' Public Eye weblog also featured a post about the study.

None of the outlets that reported on the study mentioned that the authors have previously received funding from the three premier conservative think tanks in the United States: the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), The Heritage Foundation, and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Groseclose was a Hoover Institution 2000-2001 national fellow; Milyo, according to his CV (pdf), received a $40,500 grant from AEI; and, according to The Philanthropy Roundtable, Groseclose and Milyo were named by Heritage as Salvatori fellows in 1997. In 1996, Groseclose and Milyo co-authored a piece for the right-wing magazine The American Spectator, titled "Lost Shepherd," criticizing the then-recently defeated member of Congress Karen Shepherd (D-UT) and defending her successor, Enid Greene (R-UT); when the piece was published, Greene was in the midst of a campaign contribution scandal and later agreed to pay a civil penalty after the Federal Election Commission found (pdf) that she violated campaign finance laws.

Study riddled with flaws

In "A Measure of Media Bias" (pdf), Groseclose and Milyo attempted to "measure media bias by estimating ideological scores for several major media outlets" based on the frequency with which various think tanks and advocacy organizations were cited approvingly by the media and by members of Congress over a 10-year period. In order to assess media "bias," Groseclose and Milyo assembled the ideological scores given to members of Congress by the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action; examined the floor speeches of selected members to catalog which think tanks and policy organizations were cited by those members; used those citations as the basis for an ideological score assigned to each think tank (organizations cited by liberal members were scored as more liberal, whereas organizations cited by conservative members were scored as more conservative); then performed a content analysis of newspapers and TV programs to catalog which think tanks and policy organizations were quoted. If a news organization quoted a think tank mentioned by conservative members of Congress, then it was said to have a conservative "bias." As Groseclose and Milyo put it...

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512220003

 

[Darat]

Is this the same study that made the Internet rounds when it was a work in progress. The one that classified the ACLU as a conservative?

Slight aside and out of curiosity how isn't The ACLU a conservative organisation?

 

[CFLarsen]

I would never have guessed that the WSJ was the number one most liberal newspaper.

That puzzled me too. The newspaper that is named after the camelot of capitalism?

If that's liberal, then the US would be far more right-wing than I thought it was.

 

[Lurker]

I would never have guessed that the WSJ was the number one most liberal newspaper.

That alone makes me question the merits of their study.

And to think Special Report with Brit Hume is centrist? LOL! His Grapevine segment that he includes in Special report is nothing more than attacking liberals every day. When he makes fun of conservatives like he does liberals then I will believe Special Report is centrist. I have yet to see it happen.

Lurker

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I belive they are talking about the actual contents of the news stories contained in the newspaper, not including the editorials.

The actual contents are neither "liberal" nor "conservative". They are the news.

 

[rikzilla]

When I first came to DC back in Feb of 1992 all was right in my liberal mind. I had ended my short-lived Republican voting spree with Ronald Reagan's second term and my Arkansas "homie" President Bill Clinton had just been inaugurated. That summer there was a huge event on the National Mall. A giant gay event lasting the whole weekend and televised on the national news networks. When I decided to go I was quite happy to see gay and lesbian people freely participating in an open society. My liberal heart was light and erm.."gay" (but not in that way---"not that there's anything wrong with that")

But there were things I saw that day that literally opened my eyes to reality. There were the 300-odd San Francisco "leather-men" openly engaged in a circle jerk next to the Washington Monument. There were the drag-queens dressed as nuns carrying signs that said "Ruining it all for everyone" (The gay pride theme of the rally was: "hey we're normal just like you") There were the brutish bare-chested shave-headed overweight lesbians who looked remarkably like General Burkhalter from the old "Hogan's Heros" series. I kept imagining the voice of Burkhalter: (Kleenk!! Come here and look at my huge teeets; Kleenk!) Then there were the regular mainstream partiers who were hanging off hotewl balconies at nearby hotels inviting men to come up. One called to me and said he needed a "husband"...I respectfully declined...

What I did do was rush home and turn on the news. I wanted to see the news coverage. I figured the nation would be outraged and that the gay rights movement had just set itself back to Stonewall through it's own depravity. But what I saw on CNN was a succession of well dressed dignitaries on the official stage; close cropped photos of well behaved and dressed marchers; and not a single image of the sad old queens limping on broken heels around the Smithsonian. (there were alot of those...and sad, worn out old drag queens on broken heels are not made for the unflattering hard light of a dusty summers day in DC.)

In short...that was my first lesson in media liberal bias. It wasn't the last. Once you start spending every working day in DC and know what to look for...well it's disillusioning...and was one of the things which eventually led to my skepticism.

-z

 

[Mephisto]

Why all the quibbling?

I just knew the press was liberal, look at the great job they're doing in catching this administration in all their lies! Thank goodness they question everything with a close eye otherwise we could get involved in a lengthy war based on a contrived threat.

 

[DavidJames]

In short...that was my first lesson in media liberal bias. It wasn't the last. Once you start spending every working day in DC and know what to look for...well it's disillusioning...and was one of the things which eventually led to my skepticism.

-z

To bad you weren't skeptical already as it may have caused you to look at the coverage skeptically and try and figure out why they showed the portions of the parade they did. You may have invoked Occam's Razor instead of leaping to a media bias conclusion.

 

[Random]

I remember the 2000 election. I remember TV talking heads dismissing the question of whether or not Bush was smart enough to be president with the fact that he would be surrounded by “advisors” (why not vote for the advisors then?). I remember allegations of Bush drug use, his paying for an abortion, failure to properly serve in the National Guard, and clearly illegal stock transactions that were simply ignored by the mainstream media.

I remember the media spending over a year of pounding away at Gore for claiming to have invented the internet when he never actually claimed it. I remember them laughing at him for claiming to have discovered the Love Canal scandal, when he never said he did. I remember them laughing at him for alleging he was the inspiration for being the Ryan O’Neil character in “Love Story”, when that was actually true.

I remember how the media said that once the Supreme Court ruled in Bush vs. Gore, we should all accept the court’s ruling, without once telling us the ruling made no legal sense. I remember the media not showing the presidential inaugural procession getting pelted by rotten fruit.

If you can look at coverage of the 2000 election, and still claim the media is “Liberal” I have no idea what to tell you.

 

[Mephisto]

If you can look at coverage of the 2000 election, and still claim the media is “Liberal” I have no idea what to tell you.

You're expecting too much from a crowd who can look at a photo of Cindy Sheehan lying on her son's grave and see her having sex with the corpse.

They see what they want and anything else is subject for ridicule and belittlement.

 

[rikzilla]

To bad you weren't skeptical already as it may have caused you to look at the coverage skeptically and try and figure out why they showed the portions of the parade they did. You may have invoked Occam's Razor instead of leaping to a media bias conclusion.

It's hardly a leap. The event I spoke of happened in the summer of 1992. I have had a lot of time to re-examine the issue in light of subsequent events. All the old network talking heads; Koppel, Rather, Jennings, Brokaw...all quite liberal. From the first moments at the parade that summer of '92 to the memo-gate scandal; I've seen the clear evidence of media-left bias. So please explain to me how Occam offers a more parsimonious explanation...please.

-z