That the mainstream media have a liberal bias is hardly a belief limited to those on the right. Indeed, many liberals and even media personalities themselves will readily agree. But is it possible to scientifically measure media bias? Can one statistically prove its existence and determine precisely how strong it is? In his new book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, UCLA political-science professor Tim Groseclose attempts to do precisely that.
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Groseclose first explored this idea in an article he co-authored with University of Missouri professor Jeff Milyo in 2005. The article, which concluded that there was an overall liberal bias in the media (no surprise), initially attracted harsh criticism from many on the left, including Media Matters. In an interview last week with National Review Online, Groseclose recalled the initial reaction to those 2005 findings: “You get hate mail. I have to say, media bias generates the worst in people.” In spite of that, he decided to expand the study into a book, and the result makes for a read that’s both enlightening and entertaining.
Though Groseclose’s exact method of measuring media bias is somewhat complex, he does his best to explain it in layman’s terms. “It all has to do with comparing media reports to congressional speeches. The thought experiment is to ask what would happen if I gave you a set of articles from a news outlet like, say, the New York Times, and instead of telling you they were from the New York Times, I said they were speeches by a politician. If you were to read them, what would be your best guess of the ideology of that politician? That’s the whole idea behind my method.” More specifically, he derives his measurements by taking a list of the think-tank citations that a given media outlet makes, and putting it into a computer program that treats the citations as if they had come from political speeches and tabulates the results.
Groseclose gauges how liberal or conservative an individual is by using what he calls a political quotient (PQ). Simply put, a person’s PQ is a number on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being the most conservative and 100 being the most liberal. (For example, as Groseclose writes in his book, Michele Bachmann and Jim DeMint would have PQs of approximately 0, whereas Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank would score ones of approximately 100.) Groseclose opted to use issues chosen by Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal interest group, to determine the score. He also uses a scale of 0 to 100 to measure how liberal or conservative a given news outlet is, in this case calling the number a slant quotient (SQ). Since the two scores are directly comparable, Groseclose can accurately describe the extent to which a given news program or publication leans to the left or right of a given politician.
In Left Turn, as in the original article, Groseclose measures 20 major news outlets in the period 1995 to 2004. Which came out on top as the most liberal? The answer might surprise you. Although the New York Times, CBS Evening News, and the Washington Post all scored on the left, the highest slant quotient went to the news pages of the Wall Street Journal, which scored 85.1 (this was before Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. purchased the paper). “Dow Jones & Company gave a press release denouncing our study, but we stand by it,” he explains. “And since then we’ve had a number of people come up to us and say that that’s been the best-kept secret out there, that although the opinion pages are pretty conservative, the news pages are actually liberal.” In comparison, the New York Times scored 73.7, CBS Evening News also scored 73.7, and the Washington Post came in at 66.4. Which outlet was the most conservative? The Washington Times, which scored 35.4, measured farthest to the right (the next-lowest score was Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume, which scored 39.7). These news-outlet scores aside, perhaps the most startling finding of Groseclose’s study is the statistic concerning the bias of the average Washington correspondent. “I think the most important fact to know about media bias is that Washington correspondents vote about 93–7 for the Democrat in the typical presidential election. That is not just high, that is statistically significantly higher than 80–20 or 70–30.”
Essentially, without media bias...McCain trounces Obama in a landslide.
Actually, an Obama would never be nominated. Democrat candidates would range from Zell Miller types to the occasional Lieberman, who would lose, but not entirely shamefully.
The declining influence of the MSM is a good thing in this light. I'm tired of the "fourth branch" as just a Ministry of Propaganda.
I do know about the Rupert Murdoch phone hacking scandal. I also know that every news agency in England evidently does it, but they only care about the conservative.
Then it is clear that you don't watch Fox news because they have reported on it repeatedly. They also have made a point of always saying that News Corp is the parent company of Fox news.
The idea that you can gauge media bias by scaling it to congressional speeches is silly. Politicians pander, remember? Judging politicians by what they do and not what they say, we've got one heck of a leftist social welfare state, don't we? Now, is the media biased compared to THAT?
And voting like Texans? Don't get me started. We'd probably be using the word "colored" today if we all voted like Texans.
Heh. For a second there, I thought you were suggesting that the media doesn't pander.
"We'd probably be using the word "colored" today if we all voted like Texans."
Uncalled for, bud.
Then again, as the fella said, nothing brings out the vitriol like noting media bias. I think you proved his point pretty well by immediately going "over the top," dodging reason and debate - going directly for insults.
Yea everyone who disagrees with you is obviously racist and stupid!
Why don't you not comment here until you learn to argue using the conventional form (premise, premise: conclusion), rather than babbling one bitter unsupported claim after another?
I know I'm not the smartest guy in the world but I'm trying my best to not let my conclusions decide my premises anymore. Can we make a pact to try together MikeB?
Definitely got to get this book! We need more solid research like this to confirm what we've known intuititively for a while.
As a journalist and mass communications researcher, the angle I'm working on is choice of adjectives, phrasing,etc in news writing, and injection of parenthetical remarks in broadcasting.
It's July 19th, and the Washington Post has yet to run a single full length story on the "Fast and Furious" scandal. The most insidious power the leftist media has is the power to ignore..
According to Carl Bernstein, the "best traditions and values of real reporting and responsible journalism" involve getting and disseminating "the best obtainable version of the truth."
Clearly you don't understand what goes on in the minds of idealistic journalists.
You go to the finest schools, you develop a starry-eyed idealism, a slavish devotion to truth. You get a job in a top mainstream media outlet. Someone above you tells you that you need to back off this or stress that, and you bristle. You remember that when you're promoted to editor, and you are spring-loaded not to let it happen to you the way it happened to others.
Think about the NotW. Were the editors and reporters hacking phones in order to slant stories? No -- they were going way out of line in order to "break" stories, to scoop the competition. That's what a reporter yearns to do -- scoop the competition. Lo and behold, they got carried away.
You assume that privileged journalists are as venal and corrupt as you are. Sorry -- that's just not the case. They enjoy the privilege of doubt. Continue to be envious.
Journalists are a bunch of highly educated morons. How do I know this? I read their articles, see them on tv and hear them on the radio. I'm painting w/ a broad brush so there are obvious exceptions. That said, I have never been less impressed w/ a class of worker. What makes it hilarious is that they think of themselves as urbane sophisticates...citizens of the world. They are really nothing more than insulated and cocooned elites (regardless of their economic or actual education circumstances (e.g. don't have to go to a top school)). They want to think of themselves as that...and so they ape those characteristics and culture. To put it another way, I imagine that most journalists (young ones especially) are perfectly skewered by that website - stuff white people like (which could be alternatively named...stuff NYT follower elites like).
The only people who don't see that journalists and the media are the emperor who wears no clothes...are those in that same mindset. A Hari Krishna isn't crazy to his fellow Hari Krishna...but he's a loony tune to his normal cousin.
And, yes, I assume that journalists are venal and corrupt just like all men. I trust business people first and foremost...I know their motivation and it's getting money to live on and enjoy life with. A journalist's (or liberal...but I repeat myself) motivation is invariably to change the world. This invariably means...to follow policies that will make said journalist socially attractive to his fellow self identified elites...as well as allow him to feel enlightened and benevolent. The thought will never cross his mind that those policies are bad for the majority of people (economy) and/or that they have been empirically proven to fail when implemented.
How about this - in every byline...the journalist's voting record, campaign and charitable donations are listed...so we can determine his motives.
Look, you may know some journalists (or may not; this is just a comment thread after all). I admit up front that I do not. However, I don't need to in order to refute your point.
Have you worked in any large institution? A corporation or a big non-profit? I have. Many of them, actually. One of the few factors I've found in common across all these institutions is that the people involved create their own unique culture based upon the shared values of its members. Groupthink becomes a reality whether intended or not. In fact, corporations regularly hire highly paid consultants to step in and assess where improvements can be made; they do it not because of the consultants' pretty PowerPoint charts, but rather for new ideas. Large institutions of all kinds ALWAYS breed this kind of narrowing of viewpoints around the mean. It's simply human nature to want to belong to a group, and in order to do so you must take that group's creed as your own.
Now, given this established fact of human nature, are you really going to try and say that a massive, incestuous institution like that of the print and online media outlets in this country, whose members vote 97-3 in favor of Democrats, has NO internal groupthink that favors the Left? Good luck, my deluded friend.
PS - I'm going to overlook your nasty little jape about Texas voters below. I'll be generous and assume you hit Enter before thinking about what you typed. Surely you didn't mean to denigrate the voters of a state that actually has managed its finances and is producing the majority of new jobs in this country. Because I guaratee that little comment stated out loud here in Texas would attract some VERY unpleasant attention.
