The Liberal Media Awakens to its Liberal Bias
It is, of course, already well established that our mainstream media has a severe liberal bias. This is probably evident to everyone in light of the prominent reporters and journalists whose careers have gone down in flames because they finally overdid it. For example, Dan Rather of CBS News was forced to take an early retirement after he pushed a transparently false story about Bush's National Guard service. Similarly, Eason Jordan of CNN was forced out after making false allegations about our soldiers targeting journalists in Iraq. And let's not forget BBC chairman Gavyn Davies:
"The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on WMD is itself the real lie," Blair said in the House of Commons.
"And I simply ask that those that made it and those who have repeated it over all these months now withdraw it, fully, openly and clearly."
Shortly after Hutton's report was released, BBC chairman Gavyn Davies announced his resignation.
BBC chief executive Greg Dyke apologized on behalf of the public broadcaster, acknowledging that "certain key allegations" in its story were wrong.
At least in Britain, some prominent (and liberally biased) media figures were forced to resign after falsely accusing their leader of lying about Iraq. It would have been nice to see a bit more of that here at home when Bush was similarly vindicated by the Senate Intelligence Committee report.
Additional compelling evidence of a left wing tilt in the media comes from poll results of media elites by the Pew Research Organization in 2005:
"Do you think the U.S. made the right decision or the wrong decision in using military force against Iraq?"
Public:
"right decision" 48%
"wrong decision" 45%
News media:
"right decision" 28%
"wrong decision" 71%
In this survey, it wasn't just media elites that were out of synch with the public. "Opinion leaders" from academia, religious organizations and think tanks were, too (but military leaders responded in the proportions similar to that of the general public).
Although high-profile resignations of media elites and poll results like those cited above clearly point to a liberal media bias, a careful analysis conducted by political scientists at UCLA proved the point in a more objective fashion. Their report, called "A Measure of Media Bias," is available here. Their method was extremely clever and was about as objective as any method could ever be:
In this paper we estimate ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) scores for major media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, Fox News’ Special Report, and all three network television news shows. Our estimates allow us to answer such questions as “Is the average article in the New York Times more liberal than the average speech by Tom Daschle?” or “Is the average story on Fox News more conservative than the average speech by Bill Frist?” To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks and other policy groups. We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. By comparing the citation patterns we construct an ADA score. As a simplified example, imagine that there were only two think tanks, one liberal and one conservative. Suppose that the New York Times cited the liberal think tank twice as often as the conservative one. Our method asks: What is the typical ADA score of members of Congress who exhibit the same frequency (2:1) in their speeches? This is the score that we would assign to the New York Times. Our results show a strong liberal bias...All of our findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.
Their report includes the following graph, which shows where the major news organizations fall relative to the average American (with the average American falling at about 50 on the scale):
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As you can see, only Fox News and the Washington Times are more conservative than the average American. All other news outlets tilt in the liberal direction to varying degrees. You might be shocked to see the Wall Street Journal coming in as the most liberal news outlet because everyone knows that it is a conservative newspaper. Actually, though, it is the journal's editorial pages that are very conservative (and that's why you think of it as a conservative publication). Its newsroom is left wing, even more so than the New York Times (and that's saying something).
Again, except for the Wall Street Journal, none of this comes as any surprise whatsoever, but it's nice to see the liberal bias objectively measured. What is surprising is that the liberal media now appears to be waking up to its own liberal bias. First, there was this report a few days ago:
June 17, 2007
BBC report damns its ‘culture of bias’
Richard Brooks and Dipesh Gadher
THE BBC is institutionally biased, an official report will conclude this week. The year-long investigation, commissioned by the BBC, has found the corporation particularly partial in its treatment of single-issue politics such as climate change, poverty, race and religion.
It concludes that the bias has extended across drama, comedy and entertainment, with the corporation pandering to politically motivated celebrities and trendy causes.
...
The document, jointly commissioned by BBC managers and the board of governors, now replaced by the BBC Trust, includes details of a staff impartiality seminar at which senior figures criticised the corporation for being antiAmerican and pandering to Islam.
Criticisms highlighted from the seminar include: A senior BBC reporter attacking the corporation for giving “no moral weight” to America. Executives admitting they would broadcast images of a Bible being thrown away – but not the Koran for fear of offending Muslims. The BBC deliberately championing multiculturalism and ethnic minorities, while betraying an anticountryside bias.
The BBC is liberal and anti-American? Get out! Who'da thunk it? And then there was this story of the political donations of reporters:
MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
Let me plot these numbers up for you so you can get a visual image of this:
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