Yeah, I know. Nobody ever really doubted it, anyway (well, except maybe for Eric Alterman; but honestly, when’s the last time you ever heard anybody say, “gee, I wonder where Eric Alterman comes down on this?”). From UCLA:
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.
What’s most interesting about this study is that it proceeds from the baseline centrist position and tracks the media by comparing its citations of objectively identifiable ideological interest groups with those made by lawmakers, then assigns the media outlet a score similar to the ADA score used to identify the ideological bent of that lawmaker.
As close to objective as you’re likely to get, it seems to me.
(h/t Bill Ardolino)
This study is biased because it came from a university. I win.
What! You’re taking the word of a report out of that rightwing cesspool, UCLA?
What next? Some stupid study supporting that “skunks stink” urban legend?
The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left.
Drudge seems personally conservative. Although his site is less and less a must visit for me, I would say his is more opportunistic, or sensationalistic, than having a political bent.
Thanks for the post, Jeff.
Will you have thoughts on the speach tonight?
Bilge water.
Tom M —
Missed the speech because I was at a party, and the kids made us put on “Dora the Explorer.”
Seems Ian has video. I’ll check it out and see if anything strikes me.
Meantime, Glenn has a nice roundup of opinion.
I liked the phrase “surprising findings” in the article. If you are shocked every time the Jack-in-the-box pops out, then sure, these results are probably more freaky than the fact that some people think Carrot-top is funny.
Thank you, Jeff.
I’m glad The Prsident is finally (!) doing this.
(from your link to Glenn, above)
Sometimes doing the politically advantageous thing and doing the right thing converge.
Nice, that.
It was a good speech, although I’m still angry that he wasn’t making these speeches two years ago when we were carrying the water for opposing the lies of war opponents.
LOOK, JUST BECAUSE IT’S HAPPENED EVERY TIME UP TO NOW DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL NECESSARILY HAPPEN AGAIN.
So in order for a thinktank to be rightist, it has to be cited by a rightist senator?
Well, we tried quoting the Sierra Club, but they never give us any usable soundbites…
I’m not surprised. What I am surprised about is the fact that a professor, who is most likely a liberal as most professors are, would be so honest about what he found.
One pet peeve of mind is the way the media covers creation science. We are consistently portrayed as unscientific fringe elements “outside of the mainstream”. The truth is that both creation science is every bit as rigorous as evolutionary theory. Both lead to theories. Both theories have flaws, as all theories do. But you’d never know that to read MSM accounts of the debate.
Hmm. Sounds like a perfectly fair and accurate description.
No, that is not the truth. It is what is referred to in politce circles as “baloney”.
This is true. Unlike Intelligent Design, Creation “Science” can produce a theory. Unfortunately, that theory is obvious nonsense to anyone with even a junior-high knowledge of biology or geology.
I wouldn’t be so quick to make fun of Carrot Top if I were you.*
* [ possibly not work-safe… or meal-safe ]
“Well, we tried quoting the Sierra Club, but they never give us any usable soundbites…”
Do right wingers quote supposedly right wing institutes as much as left wingers quote supposedly left wing ones? Because if not, then a media that quotes them equally will be skewed.
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.
Major flaw immediately obvious – either a story quotes two sources, “right” and “left”, in a controversy piece or it only quotes one “side” in an information piece. Now, if information pieces mainly derive from information released from one “side”, then this methodology is going to assume the media is biased towards that “side”.
Strangely enough, I suspect many information pieces come from original material released by so-called “leftist” sources, such as environmental groups, groups opposing government policies and the like, whereas “rightist” sources are more reactive and tend to be quoted in conjunction with “leftist” sources.
There actually was a similar study a year or two back that cross-referenced the frequency of citations to think tanks by news outlets with mentions of those same think tanks by members of Congress. The results were virtually identical, if I recall correctly.
I was hard to track this down, but the internet archive still had a story about it here.
One of the charms of our “unbiased” media is their willingness to present leftist think tanks and organizations without description, while sticking to a rigorour policiy of pigeonholing conservative think tanks and groups. Thus, Sierra Club, and, say, the Christic Institute (for nostalgia’s sake) are simply presented by name or with a neutral descriptive such as “advocacy group,” while bodies such as the Cato Institute or the Club for Growth are inevitably described as “conservative”, “rightwing” or “fundamentalist.”
Likewise, whenever a politician is caught screwing the pooch, Republican politicians will always be identified by party and villainy, as in “Republican majority leader Tom Delay was associated today with the scandal surrounding indicted influence peddler Abramoff,” while Democrats are virtually never mentioned by party in a negative context, as in, “Senator Reid today addressed questions about donations he allegedly received from lobbyist Abramoff.”
Sometimes this has a comic effect; for example, the group Judicial Watch was identified in the media as “rightwing activists” when they were hounding Clinton, but magically became a “gadfly group” when they went after George Bush.
Dave S.  Dude, ya gotta work on your links…
I can’t help it. That’s what an Internet Archive link looks like.
It is a bit… unwieldy, granted. But the stuff after you click it sort of reinforces the study mentioned in Goldstein’s post.
Oh, looks like my mess has been cleaned up. Sorry, I’ll use the tag from now on.
Strangely enough, I would consider that a left-wing bias.
I just realized that the old study that I linked a few posts up was conducted by the same guy, Tim Groseclose at UCLA.
Strangely enough, I would consider that a left-wing bias.
In the sense that people who get labelled “leftist” are engaged in putting out new facts and starting new stories, rather than releasing spin pieces about old ones?
“Thus, Sierra Club, and, say, the Christic Institute (for nostalgia’s sake) are simply presented by name or with a neutral descriptive such as “advocacy group,†while bodies such as the Cato Institute or the Club for Growth are inevitably described as “conservativeâ€Â, “rightwing†or “fundamentalist.—
Careful though, because bodies such as heritage will self-describe as conservative. So its not that unfair for the media to describe them as such either.
In the sense that people who get labelled “leftist†are engaged in putting out new facts and starting new stories, rather than releasing spin pieces about old ones?
No. In the sense that people who are leftist are labeled to be putting out new facts and starting new stories, while people who are rightist are labeled as releasing spin pieces about old ones.
Call me non-progressive, but the NAACP hasn’t had a new idea in decades.
In the sense that people who get labelled “leftist†are engaged in putting out new facts and starting new stories, rather than releasing spin pieces about old ones?
Geez, another new level in self-parody.
PIATOR, you don’t fail to amuse.
Google news “leftwing” = 226 hits
Google news “rightwing” = 489 hits
It’s fairly simple, Darleen, even for a wingnut. Progressive politics are all about changing society, conservative politics about preserving the status quo – by definition. A cause which is progressive will therefore be seeking media attention, highlighting things which are being overlooked, bringing new information to the public debate, and disagreeing with the common wisdom. A cause which is conservative will be reactive – fighting against perceived change.
I realise you’re getting a bit confused because neo-fascism, leader worship and a default slide to the Divine Right of Kings is now labelled “conservatism” in the States, but you’re a wingnut. Accept your intellectual limitations.
In the sense that left leaning stories run solo and right leaning stories include a leftist rebuttal.
So you think right wing sources like free-enterprise capitalist organizations, small business bureaus and right to life groups don’t generate material? Why wouldn’t that get printed as legitimate news?
Not new and improved enough for the modern world, I guess.
I could agree with you if, by definition conservative politics were actually about preserving the status quo. If you think conservatives are content with the way things are now and don’t want changes, you are very wrong. Conservative politics are about bringing about conservatism.
Liberal and conservative are opposite theories.
Progressive and reactionary are opposites.
Immigration, social security and tax laws are all examples where conservatives have been pushing for change and liberals have been reacitionary (if we can even use the word ‘action’ at all).
So should there be more left or less left on the news?
PIATOR
Progressive politics are all about changing societ
Well, shutmymouth, I would guess then all those radical Islamists are “progressive” seeing how they want to remake the world over into the new Caliphate.
I knew there was a reason Leftists are so enamored of fellow totalitarians.
actus
I was just doing a raw news search where “left” or “right” wing was used as an adjective.
Regardless of “self-description” when the media cite one source as rightwing, libertarian or conservative yet fails to describe another as leftwing, progressive or liberal, an impression is left with the reader that the latter group has NO political affiliation.
That is bias.
yes progressive politics is all about changing society, right back to the Stalinist future.
No, no, no, Darleen.
You’re getting confused. It wasn’t the Islamiscts, but Those Whose Mention Violates Godwin’s Law who were trying to bring about something new. A certain something called the Third Rhmphmh… erm… Reikmphpher. The Third umm….
The not quite yet Fourth, but definitely after Second Reichmhgm…
Erm. Yeah.
Yep.
oh and actus: No. You have that backwards. The senator’s speeches and media reports were judged as left or right based on the pre-determined lean of the thinktanks and policy groups they cited.
“Progressive politics are all about changing society, conservative politics about preserving the status quo – by definition.”
Spoken like a true narrow minded moron. Roe vs Wade is the status quo; does that make it a principle of conservatism?
Conservatism is not simply reaction.
So if some “progressive” wants to reform my house…and I question his reforms or even oppose them, I’m being “reactionary”.
Check.
Do people actually think that in New Zealand?
I’m surprised to learn that the WSJ’s news page is the MOST liberal of all the orgs they researched. Though it does explain a few things I’ve seen in their front page news blurbs columns over the years.
Progressive politics are all about changing society, conservative politics about preserving the status quo – by definition.
Do people actually think that in New Zealand?
I think many of them do, maor. Those folks can’t understand a progressive politician like Ronald Reagan who moved society and world history so profoundly toward freedom. After all, Socialism is about being willing to surrender your freedom for security, making it the most conservative of political philosophies once government controls the distribution of benefits.
And now PIATOR to deliver a sermon on how American conservatism is the intellectual equivalent of Divine Right. Last I checked, we booted our monarchs to the curb. How about you?
And careful on sanctimony, honey–in a country where this happens–http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1417523–I’d not go throwing rocks…
Because shallow generlaizations suck, huh?
Oh, and PIATOR, it usually takes something like that for NZ to make the news here.
Just so you know we’re not worried about you invading Oregon or something.
And if you do, please pick up some trail mix for me.
“That is bias.”
The bias is everywhere. Look at the way they cover the so-called Abramoff scandal. They mention all the Republicans involved and speak of Republican corruption, but they don’t put it in historical context by mentioning Tammany Hall, which was done by Democrats.
Progressive politics are all about changing society, conservative politics about preserving the status quo – by definition.
What a crock.
The progressives have been pushing the same statist, socialist B.S. for the past 40 years. They haven’t put out any new ideas at all.
Conservatives, however, have put out numerous new ideas (health savings accounts, refurbishing social security, etc.).
The whole progressive=change, conservative=same B.S. is just that.
TV (Harry)
rest: As in, my case.
The progressives have been pushing the same statist, socialist B.S. for the past 40 years.
And they wonder why they lose elections. They’re destroying our values and trying to replace them with Marxist/socialist agit prop. First, they got rid of school prayer, then began mandatory Darwinism, then abortion-on-demand, now they’re abolishing Christmas. They are nothing but Marxists in wimp’s clothing.
Here are some examples of the Democratic double standard that afflicts media coverage: Duke Cunningham takes a bribe and goes to jail, while Nancy Pelosi takes much larger bribes and nothing happens, Dick Cheney is brutally attacked for a misstatement about Iraq, but Aaron Broussard gets on Meet the Press and tells a bald-faced lie about his grandmother and nothing happens, the media wastes half the front page on the “Abramoff scandal” but barely mentions Tammany Hall, Scooter Libby goes to jail for having a bad memory but the NYT is allowed to reveal important national security secrets without any repercussions. There are so many examples like this.
Ahem……from the article quoted by Jeff:
Emphasis is mine.
The study was based on the number references to a source of known political leaning. Whether a story is “controversy” or “information”, it is all reporting in a format, which, in turn, is read by the public. Since the reporting is done by people who generally have a bias of some sort, and tend to have habits, this is a fair measure of what their political leanings are.
It’s fair because the study bypasses the sort of stories that you cite, and looks at the sources for the reporters. In other words, your point is immaterial.
Moving the goal posts ain’t allowed, PIATOR.
I love the fact that Drudge came off left of center.
And, funny, but I’ve never heard a new idea out of a progressive. All they do is bitch.
Gail,
That’s all because of the corporate message machine that seeks to brainwash us all, man.
Wait a minute…
Darleen  A good google start. But keep in mind, depending on your search string, you might have been bringing up “leftwing” references from small conservative publications like Newsmax, American Spectator and National Review. Skewed your sample.
Try refining it by network or specific newpaper.
Or, if you want to spend less than five bucks, you can do a one-time Lexis/Nexis search. Anyone can.
Piator:
Phoney, you’ve really outdone yourself here. In the past I’ve ribbed you for being a socialist lickspittle, but you’ve taken it to a new level with this one. Do you have busts of Stalin at home? Of Lenin, Marx, and Engels? Oddly I agree with what you’ve written: at their heart progressive politics are about changing society. That was whole point of Mao’s little red book, wasn’t it? Remaking society into a socialist utopia is the ultimate goal of ‘progressive politics’ and at every turn you espouse and parrot those goals.
Let’s not quibble about the gulags, or the state-run media, or the embarrassing lack of freedoms necessary to have your wishes. Let’s not look at the historical failures of the Soviet system, the Baathists of Syria or Iraq, North Korea, or even Cuba. Let’s not count the dead. Its not possible to name even ONE workable, peaceful, or prosperous socialist system throughout all of history, yet you continue to push the US in that direction from your safe little island nation and label as an idiot anyone who prefers freedom to the yoke you so foolishly desire.
For someone so condescendingly smug and self righteous, you have an amazing capacity to ignore history. Good luck with your efforts to change the world.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. There is political media bias? Bizarre!
I think it’s funny that FoxNews uses the tagline of “Fair and Balancedâ€Â. It should have a disclaimer under it that reads, “Not compared to us. Just compared to everyone else.â€Â
I nearly pissed myself laughing one day when a commenter at a liberal website outed Sean Hannity as a conservative for referring to Republicans winning elections as “weâ€Â. Duh.
We could site a litany of independent scientific data showing that there is a liberal bias, and it wouldn’t matter. They will not see the light. Being liberal is not a position; it’s a mental disorder.
Grecian
I know. It was late, I was tired. But the more refined searches have been done, ad nauseum…and it won’t make a whit of difference to PIATOR-styled ilk. They consider their political/philosophical/ideological stance as “normative” and “objective”. Anything outside of the cult is Other, and therefore dismissable out-of-hand. Rarely do they argue the issues in any good faith sense because their arguments are fairly flabby. Conservatives/classical liberals/libertarians develop much better debating skills on the issues because we are immersed in the Leftist POV everyday – from academia, from the “news” media, from entertainment and pop culture.
Years ago the LATimes actually studied their own coverage of the abortion debate and, in a rare admission, found they HAD been biased in their coverage. Most significantly in WHO they quoted and how they labled those people. Since most of the reporters/writers were decidedly “pro-choice” they would cite and quote very reasonable pro-choicers. They would then quote the most off-the-wall/radical/kooky pro-lifers they could find and ignore any reasonable pro-life quotes.
I don’t really MIND the bias, since I can easily discern it. I just get really annoyed at those who sneer that the ONLY bias is at Fox or National Review.
But you can’t convince them or their acolytes there’s any bias. The bias is in their Vietnam-era worldview, which they don’t think is a worldview but the way things are, the way any educated person sees the world.
Look at the obsessive coverage of Israel & the Palestinians. It’s a tiny regional conflict of almost no relevance to anyone else unless you accept 1) the Arab pathology that Israel is the reason the Arab world produces nothing but misery & poverty from Morocco to Pakistan, or 2) the Vietnam era canard that the central struggle in the world is between the oppressive corrupt West & the oppressed Third World. The Israelis serve proxy for the evil Westerners, & the Palestinians are cast as the oppressed Noble Savages. (At least the savage part is right.)
This is a purely mythical conflict, a Rousseauism by way of Marx & Chomsky, but journalists – many of whom aren’t very bright – buy into it, which is why far more deadly & heinous intra Third World conflicts are relegated to Page 17.
Also: wealth is a zero-sum game, so any rich country must have gotten its wealth at someone else’s expense. So Bono is Man of the Year, a multimillionaire telling Western govts to spend billions of their taxpayers monies in “aid” to Africa, even tho Africa has already seen the equivalent of several Marshall Plans in “aid’, almost every penny of which has been stolen, looted, or squandered.
Darleen
<blockquote>”Regardless of “self-description†when the media cite one source as rightwing, libertarian or conservative yet fails to describe another as leftwing, progressive or liberal, an impression is left with the reader that the latter group has NO political affiliation.That is bias. “<blockquote>
It is unless that’s how the groups describe themselves. CATO self describes as libertarian. Heritage self describes as conservative. It can’t be bias if you’re identifying the group as it self-describes.
BA,
With some Left thought it’s not the results that count, it’s how you feel when you act that matters. It doesn’t really matter that the aid to Africa states doesn’t really solve the problem, it’s the intention of sending the money that really matters.
This applies to hate crime legislation, volunteering extra taxes on your forms in Massachusetts etc… It doesn’t matter that a murderer gets a maximum sentence, hate crime legislation makes those supporters of it feel good. It doesn’t matter that Kerry and other wealthier Left politicians didn’t participate in the volunteer extra tax on their state returns because it’s the implementation of the policy that matters, not the actual results of that legislation.
.
acthole, take it up with the Prof. Write him and question his methodology. I’m sure you are much more qualified in this area.
Absolutely, to liberals the most impt factor in a proposed policy is the backers’ noble intentions to make a better world, not the real-life real-world consequences, & not the incentives or disincentives created by it
acthole,
Here is the Prof’s website.
’Smithy’: I’ll give you this, you’re better than most other pretend/parodic ‘conservatives’. But it’s still apparent (perhaps more in other threads than this one).
To him and other mobys, in this thread and others (you know who you are)– what’s the point? So you impersonate a (certain stereotype of a) conservative, hollowly parrot conservative rhetoric– pushed to the edge of absurdity– to be, what, a foil/strawman? Why not engage in real argument, with real interlocutors, and not the stupid sock-puppet (mock-puppet) play?
God knows there are idiots on both sides of the political spectrum. And any set of ideas/rhetoric/argument (even valid & substantive ones) can be deployed stupidly, hollowly, absurdly. So you prove nothing. But why the need to manufacture your ideological opponent, just in the image you want him to be? Not confident enough in your own arguments, on their own, in your own voice? Yeah, yeah, I’m no fun. Still– I have contempt for mobys.
“Divine Right of Kings”?
Man, PIATOR – you gotta get out more.
Trying to convince a left leaning individual that there is overwhelming liberal bias in the media is like trying to convince them that the right is not comprised of lying racist fascists… pointless.
Remember, one of the hallmarks of the progressive left is the unquestioned assumption that everyone who is good thinks like you do, and that if you think it’s good, it is.
actus —
Wrong. It would be unbiased to state something like “Cato self-describes as libertarian”. The assertion “Cato is libertarian” is, in fact, a value judgement, regardless of its accuracy. The inclusion of value-judgements for one group of entities, when combined with the exclusion of like value-judgements for a different set of entities, is clear evidence of editorial bias.
What this demonstrates is that you’re missing the point, and by a wide enough margin that I suspect it’s intentional.
In other words, if it ain’t broke, fix it ‘til it is.
So you hollowly parrot conservative rhetoric
Screw off, troll. Go comment over to Daily Kos if that’s how you feel about things.
Rls
Oh. The prof doesn’t identify groups as they self describe—the media does. The prof uses the citations by senators as a gauge. So when a rightwing senator cites to the ACLU, that makes the ACLU rightwing. And that makes articles that cite the ACLU appear to have a righwing bias.
I was responding to Darleen’s idea that it is bias to identify some groups as conservative but not identify other groups.
My claim is that the value judgement that is being made is to simply follow those groups self-imposed labels. I think newspapers can rightfully say that Focus on The Family is a Christian traditional values group—based on their mission statement on the their website—without making the judgement over how ‘christian’ it is to want to beat homosexuals back into the closet. This is especially true if the label is being used for identifying purposes and the point of the story is something else.
Hmmmm.
I don’t have anything to post, but I wanted to join in the “in a time of” name game.
sw: “brown”. Well that’s appropriate.
“So you hollowly parrot conservative rhetoric
Screw off, troll. Go comment over to Daily Kos if that’s how you feel about things.”
Smithy– oh, clever. A grand performance.
Of course, you know perfectly well what I meant. But in case it’s not clear to others– you ‘parrot’ in order to mock & weaken the rhetoric… you’re ‘playing’ a conservative, a straw-man conservative. Nice act!
you’re ‘playing’ a conservative
So this is what you do, sy? You go to conservative websites and accuse the commenters of being fakes? Is this the latest liberal dirty trick? Now you’re probably going back to the Daily Kos comment sections to “brag” about how you got the conservatives at Protein Wisdom to “turn on each other” by calling one of them a plant. Well, this ain’t Reservoir Dogs, buddy.
Oh, now it’s just too obvious.
Damn, and here I was in an ear cutting mood.
Putting “Stuck In the Middle With You” on my I-Pod, Defense Guy.
Sy, does it hurt your feelings to know that the best part of you ran down your mother’s inner thigh and is now a stain on the mattress?
Ooooh! actus just took the Gold Medal in “Missing the Point!”
Let me make this crystal clear. Major Media reporters tend to identify conservative/right sources as such, and tend not to identify liberal/left sources as such.
This is because Major Media reporters, who self-identify as liberal/left on the order of 90%, identify with the liberal/left agenda and report it as the norm, not needing identification.
This is called “bias.” It creates (not accidentally) the false perception that “right” sources are driven by an agenda, but that “left” sources not so identified are more neutral.
At which point the left trots out the “corporate ownership” meme to try to change the subject.
So, Phoeney’s back.
You never answered my question from a couple of weeks ago so I’ll axe you again: are you registered to vote in the US? Yes or No.
Googling the wings only proves that “right wing” is used more often in the derogatory sense by that wonderfully unbiased press we have.
Since the country is divided fairly equally, one would expect equal assignment of the labels. But you won’t because Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is “right wing Republican,” but you will find the same news outlet say that Sen. Ted Kennedy is merely a Democrat, despite is near 100% ratings from every left wing organization that hands those things out.
Where are you getting this idea? The article Jeff posted says the opposite.
I’m curious that no one has yet noticed that the ADA (whose metrics are being used) was founded by a bunch of socialists.
Wouldn’t that make the metrics a little prima facie suspicious?
So I hear. And I say: conservative right sources tend to self identify as such, and your liberal left ( like what? brookings? RAND?) tend to not self-identify as such. And I really have a hard time calling bias when its a case of these groups being represented as what they claim to be.
“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.”
So a conservative lawmaker that mentions ACLU helps to make newspapers that mention it also be rightwing. The assumption they’re making is that lawmakers will cite to their own think tanks and will cite to them wiht equal frequency.
Do you think those are correct assumptions?
No. You have it exactly backwards.
The thinktanks were judged by the professors as left or right leaning.
References to the think tanks then were used to determine the lean of the senators and media outlets.
Are you seriously proposing that people would frequently cite sources that contradict them when trying to make a point?
Sure. I can see a rightwing senator talking about the ACLU and its secular war on christmas. Can’t you?
If you are asking if negative cites were taken into account, I don’t have that answer. It would be a flaw if someone speaking against a think tank would be counted as speaking FOR that think tank.
But in your example, if that flaw exists, the rightwing Senator or media outlet would get a check in the liberal column for mentioning the ACLU (which was labeled by the study as a liberal group). Properly, the senator would get a check in the conservative column for speaking negatively about a liberal group.
The positions of the think tanks were considered the constant in the study.
I didn’t comment on this “study” because, having an MA in Sociology, I know that the devil is in the methodological details, and “studies” can be rustled up to “prove” anything that its sponsors desire.
They have touted “studies” that purport to show differential development in black v white infants. “Studies show …” is always suspect, even when there are a plurality of them.
Curious how a poll, much more objective and reliable a measure (and I pointed out that others, like Pew, had results agreeing with the one presented) comes up with politically inconvenient results, there is a cornucopia of questions and criticisms, but a “study” purporting to “prove” something as inherently subjectively defined as ‘media bias’ (not that I think that any such project or topical focus is unworthy) is hardly put to any such intellectually rigorous examination.
Now, I did come across a posting that did reference some critiques that have been done. Here is the URL for the posting, which includes the URLs for the critiques:
http://http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/lets-take-them-at-their-_b_12559.html
Comments from Steve, on a thread at Huffington Post, on this issue, excerpt:
<snip> … the methodology in the paper mentioned in the press release cited by “perrywhite” [the UCLA study of allegedly liberal leaning media bias] (Great Ceasar’s Ghost!) is somewhat questionable. The rankings are based upon quoting of think tank and/or policy organizations such as the RAND Corporation, the Bookings Institution, and the Heritage Foundation by the media. These institutions are given proxy ratings by applying through a weighting scheme the ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) ratings of politicians who cite findings by those same institutions. Confused yet?
There are biases inherent in the list of institutions chosen as well as the ratings themselves.
F’rinstance, did you know that Drudge has a *liberal* rating according to this study and that Fox News really *is* a middle of the road “Fair and Balanced” news outlet?
Please. Pull on the other leg for a while.
A lengthy deconstruction of the methods of Groseclose and Milyo, the authors of the study, may be found at
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001169.html
and the paper itself, or at least a working version of it, may be found at
http://<a href=”http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.pdf “ target=”_blank”>www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.pdf </a>
—-
OK, that should give the more wonkily inclined on the issue something to look into, and others something to merely bash.
<objective and reliable a measure (and I pointed out that others, like Pew, had results agreeing with the one presented) comes up with politically inconvenient results, there is a cornucopia of questions and criticisms, but a “study†purporting to “prove†something as inherently subjectively defined as ‘media bias’ (not that I think that any such project or topical focus is unworthy) is hardly put to any such intellectually rigorous examination.</blockquote>
Just out of curiousity, where the fuck did you go to school?
More accurately, they were considered the conduit: that’s how the views of congressmen were mapped onto the media.
True, sunshine, that sentence was popped off distractedly. Here’s what it should have said:
Curious—when a poll, a much more objective and reliable a measure (and I pointed out that others, like Pew, had results agreeing with the one presented), comes up with politically inconvenient results, there is a cornucopia of questions and criticisms. But a “study†purporting to “prove†something as inherently subjectively defined as ‘media bias’ (not that I think that any such project or topical focus is unworthy) is hardly put to any such intellectually rigorous examination.
It still could be clearer, but at least its meaning can be grasped.
Polls are relatively objective forms of verifiable research. They aren’t perfectly reliable, but you can predict with great certainty that, to cite two examples, the recent election in the Ukraine AND the US in 2004 were both fraudulent. Polls showing Iraqis overwhelmingly (2/3 and up) want the US out, such as the 82% poll, have inconvenient conclusions.
When such an inconvenient bit of research comes out, Barnes subjects it to scrutiny with a fine-toothed comb, while the similar results in other polls are ignored.
On the other hand, a “study” that purports to show “media bias” is inherently problematic. And that study is hardly even questioned. I provided a link—sorry the links didn’t all come out—to a critique of this study that was done. Also, the suggestion that FOX is ‘middle of the road’ is something few outside the RW cheerleading crowd would accept as valid. Again, the ‘proof of bias’ sounds more like GIGO—garbage in, garbage out. But, to be honest, I leave it to those at this site to explore the original study and the critique themselves.
OK, now I suppose that should be a little clearer. Sometimes what I type in haste at the computer doesn’t come out smoothly. It isn’t a polished essay. I don’t jump up and down when someone spells the word “curiosity” with a ‘u’ that doesn’t belong there.
My question is, does it matter when I clarify what I said, or, as I suspect, was it just something to use, while still ignoring the issues that were raised in the posting, and any examination of the critique, possibly to try to formulate a countercritique?
Then, for the catch-22 to top it off, making this distinction itself between two approaches is itself offensive and reason for an invitation to leave.
Well, it would be nice to see the issues in the critique I cited engaged, to just cite one example of where I am coming from.
Not everything I type at the computer console is going to be sparkling prose, but then not everything I read on the scroll, even the original blogs, are either. I just try to grapple with the issues presented, usually overlooking issues like “curiousity”.
<objective forms of verifiable research.</blockquote>
From a supposed MA.
You just can’t make this shit up.
Schizophrenia U.
Interesting that there are the all-too-clever repartees about proper usage (even without merit) but no one seems to be interested in engaging the material cited.
Let’s see if this link to the other study works:
<a href=”http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001169.html” target=”_blank”>
Now let’s see if all these PhD geniuses have anything to say about it by way of meaningful critique
“Progressive politics are all about changing society, conservative politics about preserving the status quo – by definition.”
This is what you get when you have foreigners spouting off about American politics.
The “conservative” label for Republicans is a misnomer. The US has never had a “conservative” political party as the rest of the world defines it.
Trying the link again.
LINK TO STUDY