The myth of the Liberal media bias
I’ve sad it before and I’ll say it again, I'm sick of hearing about liberal bias in the press. Recently this issue has been brought up again in a few threads by people who don’t take the time to either remove their heads from their conservative arses, or who dare not investigate anything for themselves, but just rather listen to what they are told.
The idea that the U.S. has a "liberal media" began with a book called The Media Elite, by S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman and Linda Lichter. This was back in the 80’s and people refused to let it go, especially conservative pundits and their sheep.
In a not so recent post I used the example of press coverage during the Bush/Gore election that the “liberal media bias” train of thought was just a myth. Here were the facts that I posted. The following is a sample of 3000 articles written about the candidates and the breakdown was thus:
Positive Gore 13% Bush 24%
Neutral Gore 31% Bush 27%
Negative Gore 56% Bush 49%
(numbers taken from the Pew Charitable Trust Project for Excellence in Journalism, based at the Columbia School of Journalism and is a non partisan body)
So there the media showed a little more love to G.W. than Gore, hardly a smart move by a liberal media. But that wasn’t enough, people still ***** about it, so here are more facts to chew on.
If you do a nexus search regarding Total Number of Think Tank Citations in Major Newspapers and Radio during 1995 you’d come up with the following answer:
Conservative 7792
Progressive 1152
More recently David Croteau of Virginia Commonwealth University distributed questionnaires to journalists who cover national politics and/or economic policy. His questionnaires went to 78 national news organizations, including ABC News /ABC Radio, Associated Press /AP Broadcast News, CNN, NBC News, New York Times, Time, USA Today/USA Weekend and the Wall Street Journal.
The 141 journalists and bureau chiefs were questioned:
Q#22. On social issues, how would you characterize your political orientation?
Left 30%
Center 57%
Right 9%
Other 5%
Q#23. On economic issues, how would you characterize your political orientation?
Left 11%
Center 64%
Right 19%
Other 5%
I think that shows a more “centered” media than a liberally biased one.
But more so than the journalists and bureau chiefs, it is the owners of the corporations that own the media that dictate the “flavour” or direction that their organization will take. We see far more conservative pundits like Pat Buchanan, Fred Barnes, John McLaughlin, David Gergen, Robert Novak, William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will, William Safire, Cal Thomas, Jonathon Alter, Joe Klein, Robert J. Samuelson, James Kilpatrick and Rush Limbaugh than liberal pundits.
Conservatives promote the myth that the media in the US has a decided liberal slant. By continually doing that it raises public skepticism about liberal news stories, hides conservative bias when it appears. The likes of Ann Coulter and Bill O’Rielly have made a career of this.
William Kristol (a GOP strategist) even admitted, "I admit it: the liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures."
Pat Buchanan once stated, "The truth is, I've gotten fairer, more comprehensive coverage of my ideas than I ever imagined I would receive." He further conceded: "I've gotten balanced coverage and broad coverage -- all we could have asked… For heaven sakes, we kid about the liberal media, but every Republican on earth does that." (for both Kristol’s and Buchanan’s comments see Norman Solomon, "Politics: What is Disinformation?" San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 8, 1996.)
I don't ask you to be a democrat or a liberal. I am neither, I rather like to think of myself as an independent. All I ask is that before you start spewing party rhetoric that you investigate what you are saying, and for a few of you, perhaps pull your head out of your arse.
Sorry for the long rant, I know no one will read it but I had to get it out of my system.