Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

[DFWdem]

I haven't had time to look closely at the methodology, but this political scientist believes he now has proof regarding the "liberal media". An acquaintance whom I have political discussions with forwarded esnt me this article saying it proved the media has a liberal bias. Does anyone know if there has been a scholarly review of this work?

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research."


More at the link

[Cassandra]

1. I suspect reporting the facts...

is considered to be liberal.

[Walt Starr]

2. Not far off, his methodology is completely skewed.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

7. LOL, my first thought. If you report on the corrupt, power grabbing,

greedy actions of the WH admin, that probably means you're leaning left. MKJ

[Warpy]

9. A "study" headed by a loon who thinks the NAACP is far left

and who poisoned the study by shifting the "center" to the far right is not worth considering.

Agan, hasn't UCLA heard of FAIR? This study is bogus, based on "everybdoy knows that..." and anecdotes and an ancient Pew study of the registration of reporters (while ignoring editorial bias) and short on figures. It's a study of the prejudice of its author.

FAIR studies present facts and figures.

Anybody who knows what a study is and how to read it will discard this right wing loon's attempt to malign a majority center right press with an inappropriate label. Only a total fool would take it seriously.

[orwell]

3. Say No More...

"The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left."

Fish Wrap...

[ptolle]

4. tracking

I'm wondering if anyone has done any backtracking on this study, particularly on the authors and the funding source for this "study"?
Apologies if this duplicates anybody Else's thought or if I've posted these thought before.But given this administration's known propensity for buying columnists and favorable news coverage and also given the myriad of "think tanks" and "institutes" through which they can funnel funding to camouflage the real source can there be any surety that this isn't a bought and paid for propaganda piece?

[highnooner]

5. Here are some articles debunking it

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004006.php

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2534

[Norquist Nemesis]

6. Is this the guy that Thomlinson hired for a review of PBS?

Any "research" that claims Faux is in the middle started with Faux as it's benchmark. Pure and simple.

[Just Me]

10. For real. The benchmark has center way over on the right. n/t

[carolinayellowdog]

8. References are not endorsements

Hey,

This explanation of methodology makes it seem awfully misguided:

"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."
---------
This seems quite irrelevant as a measure of bias. Someone who rants and raves against a think tank is equivalent, by this measure, to someone who praises it to the skies. Number of mentions, not valence, is all that is measured.

CYD

[melm00se]

12. not necessarily...

a quick persual of the report, the authors discuss that on pg 10:

"...we omitted instances where the member of Congress or journalist only cited the think tank so he or she could criticize it or explain why it was wrong"

then they go onto to quantify these instances

[melm00se]

11. here is the actual

study

http://economics.missouri.edu/Working_Paper_Series/2005/wp0501_milyo.pdf

[Ksec]

13. Went through it

And its easy to make something look bias. If the news org reported the facts its Liberal. If they parroted the bush talking points its Centrist. No amount of Kool Aid would constitute a far right bias. So the study is flawed and I wouldnt give it any credibility , because of the way it was set up/

[Mabus]

14. don't miss his paper on how PACs are good

PAC Contributions: Mistrust is Misplaced

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS from political action committees (PACs) are often painted in the press as the functional equivalent of bribes. The jaded voting public certainly seems to have a notion that corporate PAC donations, in particular, buy tax breaks and subsidies for special interests. Indeed, campaign finance reform was a strong theme in the 2000 presidential race.

But Graduate School of Business political economist Timothy Groseclose takes the unconventional view that the mistrust is misplaced. In research conducted with Jeffrey Milyo, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, and Stanford political science doctoral candidate David Primo, Groseclose contends that there is a dearth of evidence to support the accepted wisdom that PAC money plays a nefarious role in American politics. "While reform advocates warn that the sky is falling, no one has asked, 'Is there really enough money being spent by PACs to influence congressional decisions?'" says Groseclose.

rest of article at http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/community/bmag/sbsm0102/faculty_research_pac.html

I also see that he has donated to a republican Herman Cain http://opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOfThou=0&txtName=Groseclose&txtState=CA&txtZip=&txtEmploy=&txtCand=&txt2006=Y&txt2004=Y&txt2002=Y&Order=N

[theoldman]

15. Any well informed person will lean to the left.

The media is well informed and that is why they lean to the left. It's only the ignorant people or the bribed that will lean to the right.