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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (52638)	10/31/2006 10:30:55 PM
From: Bill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

There is a philosophical continuum which progresses from liberal to conservative, with moderates obviously in the middle. The fact that certain media outlets are favored by moderates is not a significant finding. What is relevant is the overweight of conservatives, rather than liberals, who are the audience of the most widely available media outlets. Based on the data provided in the chart, the average audience member for those outlets leans conservative. This is not a debatable point.

To: Cogito who wrote (52638)	11/1/2006 4:47:48 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

"Not Conservative" + "Not Liberal" doesn't necessarily equal moderate. It maybe be no affiliation or no identified affiliation, or "moderate", or "libertarian", or socialist, or "green" or whatever. The chart does say moderate, but I wonder if they only included people who self identified as moderate. I'm guessing they took anyone who considered themselves to be neither a liberal or a conservative, and put the label of "moderate" on them. Rush Limbaugh's total for the three groups adds up to 100%. O'Reilly's add up to 99% (which is probably 100% when you consider rounding errors). Don't knows were given a separate category, and maybe that includes "unaffiliated", but other political ideas where not. Apparently libertarians, socialists, ect. where shoehorned in to either "liberal or conservative". Also a larger raw number isn't very important to either your or Bill's claim. In the chart line for "General Public" "moderate outnumbers either "conservative" or "liberal". If that's the case than moderates would be expected to outnumber either group on a number of the specific programs. Bill has a point with Message 22962658 If an audience has more moderates than any other group, but has more conservatives than liberals the audience does lean to the conservative side. OTOH an argument could be made against his point by questioning whether being part of the audience for the listed news and opinion sources makes you more informed. Perhaps liberals listen to or read sources not listed on the chart to a greater or lesser extent than conservatives. (although some of the lines on the chart are quite general, and the chart should cover most people). Furthermore conservatives are listed as being a larger part of the general public in the chart than liberals, so you would assume they would be a larger part of a number of the listed audiences. I'm not sure why self identified liberals are (or at least where) so outnumbered by self identified conservatives. Perhaps more relatively liberal people are likely to call themselves moderates. Maybe this is a sign that conservatives have had some success at demonizing the term liberal.