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While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. 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.
"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.
Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.
An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.
Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC's "World News Tonight," NBC's "Nightly News," USA Today, NBC's "Today Show," Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR's "Morning Edition," CBS' "Early Show" and The Washington Post.
Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.
Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.
"One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites," said Groseclose. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."
Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.
"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's. If anything, government‑funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8)."
The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.
"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.
The results break new ground.
"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."
quote:Originally posted by RiescoDiQui: Everyone knows that on the whole media bias is real. Everyone except for those to whom the media tilts.
So True ! I Guess the reason why Hollywood is Doing Lousy these past few years is because they are making movies the same way they are writing articles in papers.I guess they Can't understand what is fiction or Non Fiction .
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Hollywood is NOT doing lousy, it's amazing how many people twist the statistics to make their point seem valid....
the BOXOFFICE is doing lousy because people have bought home theatre systems, and don't want to go sit in a dirty seat with their feet sticking to the floor and hearing somebody who has already seen the movie tell everybody what's going to happen next...in between taking dope orders in their cell-phone....
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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"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.
What he didn't point out is that the same results show up with University faculty or any other group of intellectually sophisticated individuals that is not "organized" to seek and expouse a strong conservative agenda.
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quote:Originally posted by glassman: Hollywood is NOT doing lousy, it's amazing how many people twist the statistics to make their point seem valid....
the BOXOFFICE is doing lousy because people have bought home theatre systems, and don't want to go sit in a dirty seat with their feet sticking to the floor and hearing somebody who has already seen the movie tell everybody what's going to happen next...in between taking dope orders in their cell-phone....
LOLOL perfectly stated.
-------------------- Spend Word For Word With Me And I Shall Make Your Wit Bankrupt.
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During the winter of 2001 and throughout 2002, Judith Miller produced a series of stunning stories about Saddam Hussein’s ambition and capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, she used Chalabi as her source. Most of the stories have turned out to be stunningly inaccurate.
BUT:
that still helped make the case for war. Later? it became even more obvious that she was on very close terms with the Bush White House as the Fitzgerald investigaion unfolded.....VERY close terms...
On top of that? the Times held the secret spy program story by Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. for over a year....
they claim it was because of National Security issues,
BUT:
the story was apparently ready to go BEFORE the presidential election, i wonder how Bush woulda fared if the story had been released say, Oct 25th '04??
there is bias in the media, no doubt, but to say the whole media is this or that is just crazy....
unless of course you are talking about Fox news, they are in a class by themselves...LOL
their frothing at the mouth is what makes the whole rest of the media look liberal....
and anybody who thinks rushie is a journalist probably thinks Fox News is too liberal too....
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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Glass this only proves the point that EVERYONE thought saddam had wmd... They were saying the same thing when idiot clinton was in office... CLINTON said it himself... Are you going to argue that Clinton is a conservative? Anyone who ever thought saddam had wmd is now to be classified as conservative.
-------------------- Spend Word For Word With Me And I Shall Make Your Wit Bankrupt.
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DQR, her source was Chalabi. his goal was to take over Iraq himself... he's still getting closer to acheiving that goal too.. even tho he's been playing games with the Iranians... even Fox News printed this suspicion: Did Iran Use Chalabi to Lure U.S. into Iraq? Sunday, June 13, 2004 By Ted Galen Carpenter
The Bush administration's disenchantment with its onetime favorite Iraqi client, Ahmad Chalabi (search), has centered on the explosive allegation that he and his associates may have forwarded highly classified U.S. information to the Islamist government in Iran. he's met with them numerous times too...
you guys keep saying EVERYBODY thought such and such, but if you read the OFFICIAL reports, you'll find that there was plenty of KNOWN reasons NOT to trust any of the "sources", (ESP. CHALABI) and in fact the sources were ALL considered to be unreliable by the agencies that passed the reports forward to the white house, the suspicions were cast aside to make the case for war, and i might add they were cast aside with VIGOUR... there were some high level US officials saying Iraq was less than 6 months from having a nuke...
did you see that Dr Germ and Ms Anthrax were just released this week? sheesh,
so in analysis? everybody did not think sadam had WMD.... the intel presented to the world was incomplete... i have no idea who made the decisions to "edit" the intel, so i reserve judgement on who made the serious error..... Judith Miller has been fired or left in disgrace, whichever you want to call it... and she's only a journalist... i say that's the least of what she deserved and she's not the only one that deserves it...
by the way? Chalabi is a socialist not a capitalist... Chalabi has campaigned on a platform of rebuilding a "liberated" Iraq, and on October offered a proposal in his daily newspaper Al-Mutamar to share oil revenues among all Iraqis so that "each Iraqi feels that oil wealth belongs to him and not the government."
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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Ohh. Please Lets not get started with reporters. I could tell you Lots about Dan Rather and his bias reporting.
Judith Miller got people to talk and she reported about it. Rather and his cronies Made Up there story.
BTW: Wasn't there a repoter who completely made up ALL His stories and he supposly worked for a well established company. Now What was the name of that Movie?
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Nothing made up about the story of dubya being a deserter....he was....there were lies by republican hacks, but the story and the documents were real....and the testimony by the secretary that typed the documents and confirmed their authenticity was too....Of course, you biased republican "observers" don't bother with facts
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quote:Originally posted by bdgee: Nothing made up about the story of dubya being a deserter....he was....there were lies by republican hacks, but the story and the documents were real....and the testimony by the secretary that typed the documents and confirmed their authenticity was too....Of course, you biased republican "observers" don't bother with facts
He never deserted. He took a leave of absent for a while. His commanding Officer even acknoledged that FAact.
posted
This ain't the military. Bush deserted! He refused to report for duty. That's it. It's called desertion. I'm unconcerned with or interested in defining things by military jargon.
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I used to work for a guy who was a welder in the Navy during those battles. He was the guy in the bottom of the ship welding it back together when the battle was raging. He used to tell us we "needed the japs to be dive bombing us so we'd learn how to hustle." Good stuff...Brave stuff.
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quote:Originally posted by bdgee: Nothing made up about the story of dubya being a deserter....he was....there were lies by republican hacks, but the story and the documents were real....and the testimony by the secretary that typed the documents and confirmed their authenticity was too....Of course, you biased republican "observers" don't bother with facts
He never deserted. He took a leave of absent for a while. His commanding Officer even acknoledged that FAact.
There we Go. Spinning the truth
His commanding officer stated both in writing at the time and since and in News reports on national TV reecently that he had no knowledge that Bush EVER was present in the place he was assigned. That Moreover, There were those who did have knowledge and staed bluntly that Bush never appeared.
That's the truth. What you want to be the truth is what Hannity claimed he "thought" was the case.
That "leave" you speak of seems to be missing in the official log of the unit that Bush was supposed to be in, i.e., it never happened.
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