From Linda Seebach, Rocky Mountain News columnist (and frequent blog bash attendee): “Researchers surprised by liberal bias of media”
“People trying to persuade others to adopt their views are very likely to cite think-tank experts who agree with them. And the liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action (their description of themselves) regularly grades politicians from 0 to 100 based on their votes on selected issues, with the most liberal members of Congress earning 100.”
Two researchers have combined these two disparate ideas to come up with a measure of media bias that doesn’t depend on journalists’ own perceptions of where they fit on the political spectrum, or on subjective judgments about the philosophical orientation of think tanks. Tim Groseclose, of UCLA and Stanford, and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago used data comparing which think tanks various politicians liked to quote and which think tanks various media outlets liked to quote in their news stories to estimate two ADA scores for each media outlet in the study, one based on the number of times a think tank was cited, and the other on the length of the citation.
The media outlets were The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the three network news shows, Fox News’ Special Report and The Drudge Report (the [Yale study is online here]).
“Our results show a very significant liberal bias,” they write. “One of our measures found that The Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News’ Special Report is the most centrist.” And all three papers, plus NBC and CBS, “were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives.” Fair and balanced, anyone? To use a simplified example, they say, suppose there were only two think tanks, and The New York Times cited the liberal one twice as often as the conservative one. Then the newspaper’s ADA score would be the same as that of a member of Congress who did the same.
The estimated ADA score for Fox, based on citations, was 35.6. That puts it in the company of Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and a few points below the House median, 39.0. The two highest were The New York Times, at 67.6, and CBS Evening News, at 70.0. The average Republican in Congress has an ADA score of 11.2, and the average Democrat 74.1.
The authors say they expected to find that the mainstream media leaned to the left, but they were “astounded by the degree.” So when people say, for example, that The New York Times may be tilted left, but people can compensate for that by watching Fox News, they don’t take into account that the Times is much further from the center than Fox. “To gain a balanced perspective, one would need to spend twice as much time watching Special Report as he or she spends reading The New York Times.”
Read the rest here. And chuckle knowingly, as I did.
****
h/t Glenn
I’m going to wait to read it on page 1 of the NYT. Then the Washington Post. I’m sure they’ll have in-depth analysis. Then I’ll listen to the journalists on all the Sunday programs, who’ll want to go over it in detail. Bias in the media is an important issue and I’m sure it’ll be thoroughly covered… by the media who are… biased. Uh, never mind.
I’m watching to see this on Stanford’s alumni association page (http://www.stanfordalumni.org), which has featured things like “weekend gives alumni to reflect on race and gender issues”.
At last, something to make me proud to be a Stanford alumnus (Tim Groseclose is even a tenure-track faculty member at the school from which I earned my degree!)
That should have been “weekend gives alumni opportunity to reflect on race on gender issues.” The weekend occurred a month or two ago, and, as far as I could tell, white heterosexual male alumni were not invited.
People read the NYT because they like it. They could by right wing NY post. They don’t. It’s about what people want to read, not whether the journalists are left or not. Look at CNN. It used to be Ted Turner left, now it’s getting more and more to the right, because of FOX news. The readers decide. Just like a conservative country voted liberal Bill Clinton (here is his online diary) president.
Gee, Jane. Thanks for the lesson. Oh, and keep in mind that, statistically speaking, half of the population has less than than the median I.Q.
My suspicion is that, this fact, and those you cited above, are consequence, and not coincidence.
DUH. Liberals say ‘what bias?’ because the ideology of the liberal intelligentsia that’s so pervasive in the media is transparent to them. What they hate about Fox News isn’t that it’s biased—they never complained about the bias at the Times, or NPR, or MSNBC, or the networks—but viewers are rejecting their worldview.
Does it bother anyone else that they used Congress to make the scale. There are 228 GOPs in the House compared to a meager 210 Dems. The Senate also has 51 GOPs to the Dem’s 48. Voting histories show that several of the Dems are quite conservative in their own right, but ignoring that altogether, you still have a scale which is weighted on the conservative side. Meaning that center of the scale is actually conservative and that a true centrist would be considered “liberal” on said scale. I’m not saying that media sources aren’t biased (all media sources are biased one way or the other and anyone who says otherwise is a liar or a moron), but the study in question has alot to learn about researching methods (or perhaps it was intentional as I’m guessing they got the results they were trying to get).
I don’t know the composition of the seven votes in Congress not accounted for – vacant seats, socialists, whatever. If we treat them as open seats, then 52% of the House is Republican. Senator Jeffords is a Democrat in all but name, making the Senate 51% Republican. Not much different from 50% there. Furthermore, if the purpose of the study is to compare the media’s attitude with that of America as a whole, it’s probably appropriate to use the composition of Congress, even if one party has a substantial majority in both Houses. Nothing says that the American mainstream is 50% Democrat, 50% Republican. I’d bet that Professors Groseclose and Milyo have addressed this. They’re pretty smart guys.
It doesn’t bother me that the study used Congress to calibrate the scale. They didn’t have anything else to use that had ADA ratings. Nonetheless, Congress doesn’t “make” the scale, it just calibrates it – the scale isn’t reset with 0 or 50 or 100 by Congress’ average. Its a useful datum.