Liberal media
m |
m (→Communications research) |
||
| Line 21: | Line 21: | ||
===Communications research=== | ===Communications research=== | ||
| − | Most scholarly research in communications tends to find that bias | + | Most scholarly research in communications tends to find that bias in favor of either political party will balance out on the whole. A widely cited meta-analysis of media bias in presidential elections (D'Alessio and Allen) comes to this conclusion.<ref>D'Alessio, D. and M. Allen. Media bias in presidential elections: a meta-analysis. ''Journal of Communication'' Volume 50, Issue 4, pages 133–156, December 2000. [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02866.x/abstract]</ref> Another study (Watts et al) suggests that the media's "self-coverage" of bias helps to perpetuate the notion of bias.<ref>MD Watts, D Domke, DV Shah, DP Fan. [http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/~dshah/CR1999a.pdf Elite cues and media bias in presidential campaigns] ''Communication Research'' Vol. 26 No. 2 1999, pp. 144-175</ref> |
==Epistemic closure== | ==Epistemic closure== | ||
Revision as of 01:46, 19 June 2012
| Is it news? |
| Random articles |
| Resources |
| The Latest News |
The liberal media, sometimes known as the liberal-biased media or more recently the lamestream media (per Sarah Palin), is what wingnuts call all news, entertainment, and information sources that do not perfectly toe their party line. This consists of — oh, practically everything except Rush Limbaugh's show and Fox News, with even the latter of questionable truthiness to some right-wingers.[1]
Contents |
Meaning of liberal bias?
The concept of the "liberal media" is more or less doctrine among wingnuts, but according to a 2009 Gallup poll, 45% of respondents described the news media in general as "too liberal," (a 2011 Rasmussen poll had 46% responding that journalists were "more liberal" than the subjects[2]) suggesting this is a common perception.[3] How can we tell if there's any truth to this assertion? It's difficult to operationalize all the variables. What counts as media? TV, radio, newspapers, the internet? Should only "straight news" be counted or should editorial, commentary, and opinion be added in as well? Should "centrist" reporting be considered unbiased or should fact-based reporting that might contradict either side be considered unbiased? This also raises the question of why the media would be so biased against the views of its own audience. The US is, in general, considered to be to the right of many nations like those in the European Union, so it seems strange that its media would have such a strong leftward bias and that the market hasn't corrected this bias.
Commonly cited research
Journalist party affiliation
In any case, a few pieces of research are usually put forth as definitive "proof" of the so-called liberal media. Various polls have shown a leftward skew among journalists. A 2006 Pew poll found that 31% said that they were "a little to the left" while 9% replied that they were "far left" for a total of 40%. A total of 32% of journalists were registered Democrats according to a 2002 Pew poll, down from the 1992 numbers.[4] The percentage of those identifying as left of center is only marginally above what would be expected as the "ideal" distribution of 33.3%.
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, authors of Manufacturing Consent, have argued that even if journalists are personally liberal, advocates of "liberal bias" in the media are ignoring the fact that media outlets are often owned by corporations. This, they argue, means that a confluence of factors, including the owners exercising their prerogative to overrule editors, the influence of advertising money, and reliance on the government and corporate-backed experts for information can negate the bias of the individual journalist.[5]
Bernie Goldberg's Bias
The book Bias by former CBS journalist Bernie Goldberg is commonly cited. However, much of Goldberg's book relies on anecdotal evidence of his experience working with Dan Rather and other CBS journalists and contains some factual errors and unsubstantiated speculation.[6] The main problem with Goldberg's book is that it collects a number of instances of bias but doesn't attempt to illustrate a systematic bias using broad empirical measures. In fact, many of the instances he cites as "liberal bias" could be seen as conservative bias or simply lazy reporting. For example, he faults Tom Brokaw for not reporting on a jet engine failure because it was made by NBC's parent company, General Electric. Numerous instances like this are cited throughout Herman and Chomsky as examples of conservative bias. Another unsupported claim Goldberg makes is that the media always identifies conservative political figures as conservative but doesn't do the same for liberals (supposedly because they see liberal as the "mainstream"). He offers no statistics. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg looked at the labeling of a number of political figures and found that liberals received partisan labels more than conservatives.[7] As Nunberg notes, the study was not comprehensive (it only looked at print newspapers), though it does offer more than baseless speculation.
Goldberg also frequently argues that news network care more about ratings than accuracy (as if you needed someone to tell you that) and that coverage is often biased against the poor and minorities and in favor of white middle-class people. Again, one wonders why this should be construed as "liberal" bias. Perhaps Goldberg has a point about behind-the-scenes newsroom politics, but he fails to prove a systematic bias.
Groseclose and Milyo
A 2005 study by UCLA political scientist Timothy Groseclose and University of Chicago economist Jeffrey Milyo is often wheeled out as "definitive proof" of the liberal media. Groseclose and Milyo used ratings of Congressmen given by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) to quantify their "liberal quotient." They then took a list of think tanks and advocacy groups and assigned them a liberal quotient based on how many times they were cited by Congressmen with certain ADA ratings. They then compared this to the number of times these organizations were cited by the mainstream media.[8] There are a number of obvious problems with this methodology. One is that some issues aren't germane to "balance." For instance, a citation from the NAACP (rated a liberal organization) on the issue of racism isn't going to be "balanced" by a citation of the Ku Klux Klan. Another is that the Congress at the time of the study was majority Republican, which would affect the baseline and is probably why Fox News and the Washington Times were the only outlets to come out as conservative. A number of other methodological flaws have been pointed out by critics of the paper.[9]
Communications research
Most scholarly research in communications tends to find that bias in favor of either political party will balance out on the whole. A widely cited meta-analysis of media bias in presidential elections (D'Alessio and Allen) comes to this conclusion.[10] Another study (Watts et al) suggests that the media's "self-coverage" of bias helps to perpetuate the notion of bias.[11]
Epistemic closure
The epistemic closure debate was a bout of blogospheric navel gazing by a number of liberal and conservative pundits from the political wonk-o-verse that discussed the issue of the liberal media, among other things.
As a rhetorical tactic
Moonbats contend that the constant complaining that the media are liberally biased has been extraordinarily useful to the conservative movement as a means of browbeating media outlets into shifting rightward. During the 1992 elections, then head of the Republican National Convention Rich Bond was quoted as saying:
“”"There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media].... If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one."[12]
|
An easily verifiable example of this is "media watchdog" organizations like Brent Bozell's Media Research Center that criticize scientific fact as having a "liberal bias." For example, MRC and its affiliates like NewsBusters often accuse the media of liberal bias when stories about evolution or global warming are run that don't give time to creationism or climate denialism. Thus, the term is often used to sweep inconvenient facts under the rug, as when former First Lady Laura Bush dismissed criticism as simply "liberal media bias."[13]
The term is also used as a selling point, as in "The stories the liberal media doesn't want you to know about!" This is reminiscent of certain conspiratorial slogans like those of Kevin Trudeau, i.e. "The cures they don't want you to know about!"
In all likelihood, the liberal media is simply a product of the hostile media effect mixed with the wingnut persecution complex.
See also
- Liberal Bias
- Mainstream media, the alleged bastion of the liberal media.
- Regnery Publishing, the alleged antidote to the liberal media and publisher of Bernie Goldberg's books.
- Watchdogs of the liberal media: Accuracy in Media, Media Research Center and its NewsBusters affiliate
External links
- Natalie Jomini Stroud and Stephen D. Reese. Objectivity & Balance: How Do Readers and Viewers of News and Information Reach Conclusions Regarding Objectivity and Balance?
Footnotes
- ↑ FOX News & Wal-Mart Sponsor National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Convention This Weekend, Americans for "Truth"
- ↑ 2011 Rasmussen poll
- ↑ Gallup media polling report
- ↑ The American Journalist: Politics and Party Affiliation, Pew Research
- ↑ See also Herman and Chomsky's documentary The Myth of the Liberal Media.
- ↑ Wikipedia's chapter-by-chapter rundown and FAIR's review.
- ↑ On the Bias, Geoffrey Nunberg
- ↑ Groseclose, Tim and Jeff Milyo. A Measure of Media Bias. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 120, Number 4, November 2005, pp. 1191-1237, Full text of an earlier draft is available.
- ↑ Reaction to Groseclose and Milyo: Mark Liberman at Language Log, Brendan Nyhan, Media Matters
- ↑ D'Alessio, D. and M. Allen. Media bias in presidential elections: a meta-analysis. Journal of Communication Volume 50, Issue 4, pages 133–156, December 2000. [1]
- ↑ MD Watts, D Domke, DV Shah, DP Fan. Elite cues and media bias in presidential campaigns Communication Research Vol. 26 No. 2 1999, pp. 144-175
- ↑ What Liberal Media?, The Nation
- ↑ Laura Bush interview with Fox News, May 2010.