Media bias in the United States

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Media bias in the United States is the description of systematically non-uniform selection or coverage of news stories. Claims of bias in the media include claims of conservative bias, claims of libreral bias, and claims of mainstream bias.[1] There is at least one watchdog group that attempt to find the facts behind both biased reporting and unfounded claims of bias.[2] An article in Scientific American expressed concern that many Americans seek out biased news, in an effort to find confirmation for their preconceived opinions.[3]

A poll of likely 2008 presidential election voters released on March 14, 2007 by Zogby International reports that 83% of those surveyed believe that there is a bias in the media, with 64% of respondents of the opinion that this bias favors liberals and 28% of respondents believing that this bias is conservative.[4]

Contents

[edit] History

Before the rise of professional journalism in the early 1900s, newspapers reflected the opinions of the publisher. Frequently, an area would be served by competing newspapers taking differing — and often radical by today's standards — political views.[5]

Accusations of media bias have a long history:

In 1728 Benjamin Franklin, writing under the pseudonym "Busy-Body", wrote an article for the American Weekly Mercury advocating the printing of more paper money. He did not mention that his own printing company hoped to get the job of printing the money. It is an indication of the complexity of the issue of bias when it is noted that, even though he stood to profit by printing the money, Franklin also seems to have genuinely believed that printing more money would stimulate trade. As his biographer Walter Isaacson points out, Franklin was never averse to "doing well by doing good".[6]

In 1798, the Congress of the United States passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which prohibited the publication of "false, scandalous, or malicious writing" against the government, and made it a crime to voice any public opposition to any law or presidential act. This act was in effect until 1801.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln accused newspapers in the border states of bias in favor of the Southern cause, and ordered many newspapers closed.

In the 19th century, many American newspapers made no pretense to lack of bias, openly advocating one or another political party. Big cities would often have competing newspapers supporting various political parties. To some extent this was mitigated by a separation between news and editorial. News reporting was expected to be relatively neutral or at least factual, whereas editorial was openly the opinion of the publisher. Editorials might also be accompanied by an editorial cartoon, which would frequently lampoon the publisher's opponents.[7]

At the start of the 20th century many American newspapers engaged in yellow journalism to increase sales. William Randolph Hearst, editor of several major-market newspapers, deliberately falsified stories of incidents, which may have contributed to the Spanish-American War.

In the years leading up to World War II, politicians who favored the United States entering the war on the German side accused the international media of pro-Jewish bias, and often asserted that newspapers opposing entry of the United States on the German side were controlled by Jews. They claimed that reports of German mistreatment of Jews were biased and without foundation. Hollywood was said to be a hotbed of Jewish bias, and pro-German politicians in the United States called for Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator to be banned, as an insult to a respected leader.[8]

During the civil rights movement in the 1960s, some White Southerners stated that television was biased against White Southerners and in favor of mixing of the races. In some cases, Southern television stations refused to air programs such as I Spy and Star Trek, because of their racially mixed casts.[9]

During the labor union movement and the civil rights movement, newspapers supporting liberal social reform were accused by conservative newspapers of communist bias.[10][11]

In November 1969, Spiro Agnew, then Vice President under Richard Nixon, made a landmark speech denouncing what he saw as media bias against the Vietnam War. He called those opposed to the war the "nattering nabobs of negativism."[12]

[edit] Claims of a liberal bias

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Liberal bias in the media is the result of liberal principles and ideas influencing the coverage or selection of news stories.

Critics of the media say this bias exists within a wide variety of media channels including network news shows of CBS, ABC, and NBC, cable channels CNN and MSNBC as well as major newspapers, news-wires, and radio outlets, especially the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, the Associated Press, and National Public Radio (NPR]).[13]

ABC News political director Mark Halperin supports the concept of a liberal media bias, saying that as individuals most journalists, and news producers, hold liberal political views and that these views affect their reporting.[14] In a survey conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1997, 61% of reporters stated that they were members of or shared the beliefs of the Democratic Party. Only 15% say their beliefs were best represented by the Republican Party.[15]

A 2002 study by Jim A. Kuypers of Virginia Tech, Press Bias and Politics, investigated the issue of media bias. In this study of 116 mainstream US papers, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, Kuypers found that the mainstream press in America tends to favor liberal viewpoints.[16] They found that reporters expressed moderate or conservative points of view were often labeled as holding a minority point of view.[16] Kuypers said he found liberal bias in reporting a variety of issues including race, homosexuality, welfare reform, environmental protection, and gun control.[16]


[edit] Watchdog groups

Media Research Center, NewsBusters, and Media Matters Watch support the claim that the media has a liberal bias, with The Media Research Center founded with the specific intention to "prove ... that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values".[17]

[edit] Cited cases

[edit] Watergate

Richard Nixon said that liberal bias in newspaper reporting had a detrimental effect on his political career.[18]

As chronicled in David Halberstam's The Powers That Be, the Los Angeles Times, who had supported Nixon's first run for the United States House of Representatives, declined to support his run for the United States Senate, his 1960 presidential campaign, or his 1962 California gubernatorial campaign. Halberstam said the paper's final break with Nixon came during Vietnam and Watergate, which was roughly the same time Henry Luce's Time began running articles critical of the Nixon Administration. Not long after this, Vice-President Spiro Agnew began attacking the media in a series of speeches--two of the most famous having been written by White House aides Patrick Buchanan and William Safire--as "elitist" and "liberal."[18]

[edit] Lewinsky Scandal

The breaking of the Lewinsky scandal by conservative Matt Drudge, instead of Newsweek, who originally had the story and did not report it, was cited by the Drudge Report and other critics as an example of liberal media bias.[19]

[edit] Iraq War

Another criticism of the media is that it has covered the bad news in Afghanistan and Iraq, where American-led coalition forces are currently engaged in controversial military action, while ignoring the good news. Critics point to the heavy coverage of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, a perceived obsession with coalition and civilian body counts, threats of a military draft, and perceived mismanagement of the conflicts.[citation needed] These critics state that progress, such as economic development, political reform, and increasing numbers of local police and defense forces, is rarely covered.[citation needed]

[edit] Other cases

In his book The Bias Against Guns, John Lott states that the American media reports stories which suggest that guns in the hands of private citizens are responsible for crimes while ignoring stories where a gun in the hand of a private citizen apprehended a criminal.[20]

Conservative politicians alleged media bias resulted in differing treatment of Senators Robert Byrd and Trent Lott over racial issues.[citation needed] Byrd, a Democrat and a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, used the term "white nigger" in an interview.[21] Lott resigned as Senate majority leader under criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike regarding a comment about Lott's home state of Mississippi supporting then-segregationist Strom Thurmond's 1948 Presidential campaign ("We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we would not have had all these problems over all these years either.")[22]

In June and July 2005, the chair of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson, appointed as chairman by President George W. Bush, investigated his own corporation for liberal bias, using government funds, and did not find any evidence of liberal bias.[citation needed] Tomlinson also commissioned a $10,000 study into Bill Moyers' PBS program, "Now with Bill Moyers" without informing the board of the investigation.[23] Some board members stated that his actions were politically motivated.[24] Tomlinson resigned from the CPB board on November 4, 2005.

In February 2007, Charles Rust-Tierney, the former head of the Virginia branch of the ACLU (a nonprofit group often accused of a liberal agenda)[citation needed] was arrested for possession of violent child pornography. Commentator Bill O'Reilly alleged that the Washington Post was the only "major liberal news organization" to report the story.[25] O'Reilly drew a contrast to the widespread media coverage of the Ted Haggard scandal several months earlier.[citation needed]

[edit] Authors

Several authors have written books on liberal bias in the media. Some examples include:

[edit] Claims of a conservative bias

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Conservative bias in the media is the result of conservative principles and ideas influencing the coverage or selection of news stories.

Believers in conservative bias claim[citation needed]:

Conservative media bias is said to exist for several reasons:

  • Ownership: The owners of media corporations tend to be wealthy, therefore supporting conservative economic policies[citation needed], and the politicians which keep these polices in place. They may be in a position to dictate editorial and hiring policies.
  • Media Concentration: The mass media comprises a few very large media corporations.[citation needed] Such a uniformity of ownership means that stories which might not be to the benefit of these large corporations may not be run.[26]
  • Capitalist Model: In the United States the media is operated for profit, mostly funded through the sale of advertisements. This tends to drive news, commentary, and public affairs towards supporting industry and mercantilism generally.[27]

Multi-billion dollar media conglomerates own the majority of news stations, and may provide a source of bias.[citation needed] NewsCorp and General Electric are rarely described as liberal companies.[citation needed] The CEOs of these three companies (and the other two major media companies, Disney and Time-Warner) are Republican.[citation needed] Editorial policy is set from the top down in virtually all media organizations.[citation needed] Similarly, the media magnate Rupert Murdoch can hardly be described as liberal.[citation needed]

Liberals argue that there is a heavy bias in US media in favor of corporate interests.[citation needed] They claim that the news is described as a product to be sold to consumers, funded by advertisers.[citation needed] Furthermore, a considerable amount of news is directed towards the wealthy, and disproportionately conservative, population in the form of Stock Market analysis and discussion.[citation needed]

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a self-described progressive media watch group has argued that accusations of liberal media bias are part of a conservative strategy, noting an article in the 20 August 1992 Washington Post in which Republican party chair Rich Bond compared journalists to referees in a sporting match: "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."[28]

[edit] Cited cases

Some cases cited as examples of conservative media bias include the media's failure to cover many of the early anti-globalization demonstrations[citation needed] or its depiction of the protesters as troublemakers and prone to violence.[citation needed] Similarly, leftist demonstrations are never shown from high vantage points, from the air, or from other positions that would make the number of protesters evident.[citation needed]

Among the media sources accused of conservative bias are Fox News, the Washington Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Beehive Standard Weekly, New York Sun, San Diego Union-Tribune and the Arizona Republic[citation needed].

Possible conservative media bias can be seen in the results of a study examining Americans' belief in a connection between Iraq and the events of 9/11. The year-long study by the University of Maryland, College Park's Program on International Policy Attitudes found that more than two out of three Americans held the view[29] that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attack and that the head of state of Iraq had a "collaborative relationship with Al-Qaeda." The study also demonstrated that Americans who relied on Fox News for their coverage of the war in Iraq were more likely to hold such views.[30] According to former Fox News producer, Charlie Reina, "The roots of Fox News Channel's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered."[31]

The large amount of media coverage of the Lewinsky scandal is often cited as an example of conservative bias. The media at the time engaged in lengthy and graphic discussions of sodomy and other sexual acts, often speculatively.[citation needed] Many conservatives are highly offended by the concept of sodomy[citation needed], and the Republican Party capitalized on this opportunity to portray Bill Clinton as immoral.[citation needed]

The New York Times, which is often accused of liberal bias by conservative critics, published Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Judith Miller stories uncritically reporting President Bush's arguments in favor of military action against Iraq, and his assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction which posed an immediate threat to the U.S. and Europe. The CIA has since determined that most of these assertions were false.[citation needed]

Some observers of alleged conservative bias cite as an example the contrast between the press coverage of President Bill Clinton's multiple affairs with that of George H. W. Bush's alleged but unproven affair with Jennifer Fitzgerald.[citation needed]

Some point to the CBS network declining to air a planned miniseries on Ronald Reagan because of complaints of inaccuracy and bias made by conservative groups, or the cancellation of a Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher by the ABC network after sponsors withdrew in response to comments the host made regarding the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center ("We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.") as instances of conservatives wielding power in the media via economic pressure.[citation needed]

Not long before Super Bowl 38, it was reported that a 30-second political advertisement called "Child's Play" sponsored by MoveOn.org, a well-funded liberal advocacy organization, was rejected by CBS (which televised the Super Bowl) on grounds that the ad violated the network's policy against accepting advocacy advertising, according to a CBS spokesperson.[citation needed] The ad was critical of Bush administration fiscal policies. However, a 30-second spot produced for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy by Ogilvy & Mather, advocating national drug enforcement policies, was accepted for broadcast. Martin Franks, executive vice president of CBS, stated that there is "a thorough vetting of every ad that appears on CBS. End of sentence." Advertisements during the Super Bowl are some of the most expensive ad time on television due to the high ratings of the event.[32][33]

In 2003, MTV, which, like CBS, is owned by Viacom, refused to air another Moveon.org ad, this one opposing the war in Iraq. The ad was rejected on the grounds that it was an advocacy advertisement from an interest group.[citation needed]

In 2006 after the elections Fox News leaked a memo apparently intended to skew its coverage.[34]

[edit] Watchdog groups

Alleged conservative bias has been documented for many years by media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), supported by scholarly research by media critics such as Ben Bagdikian, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, Jeff Cohen, Robert McChesney, Edward Hermann, Sut Jhally, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy, and Jim Hightower.[citation needed]

A 1998 study from FAIR found that journalists are "mostly centrist in their political orientation";[35] 30% considered themselves to the left on social issues compared to 9% on the right, while 11% considered themselves to the left on economic issues compared to 19% on the right. The report explained that since journalists considered themselves to be centrists, "perhaps this is why an earlier survey found that they tended to vote for Bill Clinton in large numbers." FAIR uses this study to support the claim that media bias is propagated down from the management, and that individual journalists are relatively neutral in their work.

Other media watchdog groups which make claims of conservative bias include Media Matters for America, and PIPA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in blogs, such as Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall, in reports from Air America Radio, and in the writing of journalists such as Salon.com's Joe Conason.[citation needed]

[edit] Authors

Several authors have written books on conservative bias in the media, including:

[edit] Bias in the comics

The Doonesbury comic strip, a topical daily cartoon, has often been accused of liberal bias. In 2004 a conservative letter writing campaign was successful in convincing Continental Features, a company that prints many Sunday comics sections, to refuse to print the strip, causing Doonesbury to disappear from the Sunday comics in 38 newspapers. Of the 38, only one editor, Troy Turner, executive editor of the Anniston Star in Alabama, continued to run the Sunday Doonesbury, albeit necessarily in black and white. However, on September 12, 2005, the decision to drop Doonesbury from The Guardian (UK) was reversed less than 24 hours later, after the strip's followers voiced strong discontent.

Doonesbury is not the first cartoon to blur the distinction between the comics and editorial cartoons. Li'l Abner by Al Capp routinely parodied southern democrats through the character of Senator Jack S. Phogbound. Pogo by Walt Kelly caricaturized a wide range of political figures including Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, Robert F. Kennedy, and Eugene McCarthy. Little Orphan Annie espoused a strong anti-union pro-business stance in the story "Eonite" from 1935, where union agitators destroy a business that would have benefited the entire human race.

Modern comic strips routinely take political stands. Mallard Fillmore by Bruce Tinsley and Prickly City by Scott Stantis are both proudly conservative in their views. In addition to Doonesbury, Non Sequitur and Opus promote liberal views.

[edit] Opposing views

Mainstream media organizations accused of slanted reporting[37] often go to great lengths to defend their objectivity.

In addition, some liberals maintain that there exists in the media a conservative bias, precise opposite to constant claims from conservatives. Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News is one of those who argues against any significant liberal bias. Reviewer John Moe sums up Alterman's views:

“ The conservatives in the newspapers, television, talk radio, and the Republican party are lying about liberal bias and repeating the same lies long enough that they've taken on a patina of truth. Further, the perception of such a bias has cowed many media outlets into presenting more conservative opinions to counterbalance a bias, which does not, in fact, exist.[38] ”

Many of these critics also say that most media outlets are owned by wealthy individuals, many if not most of whom are on the right[citation needed] (for example, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of FOX News; FOX is often a target of those who charge conservative bias). Moreover, they say, both the print and broadcast media survive from advertising revenues, which makes the media rely to an extent on corporations; they thus claim that these media are less likely to present information that could harm potential advertisers.

Critics also point to the worldwide perception that US media is more right-wing than in most other democracies, and less likely to challenge an official position than most other countries' media. Certain neoconservatives, such as Irving Kristol, have said that the charge of "liberal bias" has been exaggerated for rhetorical purposes. Foreign news agencies sometimes break stories before the domestic press when the contents might be unfavorable to an American right-wing point of view. For example, when the BBC ran revelations that the state of Florida had been over-aggressive about removing alleged criminals from the voter register (which many argue[citation needed] probably delivered the state and therefore the White House to George W. Bush in the2000 election), no US news agency ran the story.

Many foreign news media tend to be considerably more left-leaning than even the most liberal of mainstream U.S media sources.[citation needed] This is especially the case with the numerous foreign news organizations that are owned or controlled by their respective governments (see media bias).[citation needed]

On the other hand, those who claim there exists widespread liberal bias argue that a number of these wealthy business owners are liberals, so great wealth does not necessarily entail conservatism. They point to Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, as well as other liberal figures who are multimillionaires such as George Soros, John Kerry, Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, John Edwards, Bill Gates, and many Hollywood stars. These people have injected considerable amount of cash to support left-leaning media in the United States, most notably Soros' involvement with Air America Radio.

Film critic Roger Ebert, in his review of Elephant (2003), gave an account of a reporter from NBC who approached a story about violent movies with preconceived conservative bias.[39]

The propaganda model proposed by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book Manufacturing Consent deems possible bias of the journalists themselves to be an insignificant matter, but claims that structural and economic causes filter the type of news published. They claim that the five main causes of conservative bias are media ownership by large corporations with financial interests aligned with conservatism, advertising by large corporations as the main source of funding for media, dependency on "established" institutions to supply their demand for sources of news stories, organized conservative flak, and "anti" ideologies that align with the financial interests of the corporations that own and fund the media (such as anti-communism). Chomsky and Herman substantiated their claim of conservative bias by examining news stories by, for example, counting the number of conservative versus liberal sources and guests.[citation needed]

[edit] Research

Steve Ansolabehere, Rebecca Lessem and Jim Snyder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analyze the political orientation of endorsements by U.S. newspapers;[40] (the paper is forthcoming on the Quarterly Journal of Political Science). They find an upward trend in the average propensity to endorse a candidate, and in particular an incumbent one. There are also some changes in the average ideological slant of endorsements: while in the 1940s and in the 1950s there was a clear advantage to Republican candidates, this advantage continuously eroded in subsequent decades, to the extent that in the 1990s the authors find a slight Democrats' lead in the average endorsement choice.

Self-described as "the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly,[41] a study by political scientists Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeff Milyo of the University of Missouri at Columbia, both of whom have written for conservative think tanks (American Enterprise Institute), advocacy groups (Federalist Society), and periodicals (The American Spectator),[42] was published in December 2005 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The study's stated purpose was to document the range of bias among news outlets.[43] The research concluded that of the major 20 news outlets studied "18 scored left of the average U.S. voter, 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, while only the Fox News "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter." The study also showed that the Drudge Report was "left of center". In this study, "left" and "liberal" are treated as synonyms, and are identified with think tanks cited by Congressional members of the Democratic Party, while "right" is identified with think tanks cited by Congressional members of the Republican Party. The report also states, however, that the news media also show a remarkable degree of centrism, since all but one of the outlets studied are, from an ideological point of view, between the average Democrat and average Republican in Congress. The methods used to calculate this bias have been shown to posses faults as explained by professor of Computer Science and the Director of Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania Mark Liberman.[44][45] Mark states that the model chosen leads to "very implausible psychological claims, for which no evidence is presented." and concludes by saying he thinks "that many if not most of the complaints directed against G&M are motivated in part by ideological disagreement -- just as much of the praise for their work is motivated by ideological agreement. It would be nice if there were a less politically fraught body of data on which such modeling exercises could be explored."[44]

John Lott and Kevin Hassett of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute studied the coverage of economic news by looking at a panel of 389 U.S. newspapers from 1991 to 2004, and at a subsample of the two ten newspapers and the Associated Press from 1985 to 2004.[46] For each release of official data about a set of economic indicators, the authors analyze how newspapers decide to report on them, as reflected by the tone of the related headlines. The idea is to check whether newspapers display partisan bias, by giving more positive or negative coverage to the same economic figure, as a function of the political affiliation of the incumbent President. Controlling for the economic data being released, the authors find that there are between 9.6 and 14.7% fewer positive stories when the incumbent President is a Republican.

Riccardo Puglisi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looks at the editorial choices of the New York Times from 1946 to 1997.[47] He finds that the Times displays Democratic partisanship, with some watchdog aspects. This is the case, because during presidential campaigns the Times systematically gives more coverage to Democratic topics of civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare, but only when the incumbent president is a Republican. These topics are classified as Democratic ones, because Gallup polls show that on average U.S. citizens think that Democratic candidates would be better at handling problems related to them. According to Puglisi, in the post-1960 period the Times displays a more symmetric type of watchdog behaviour, just because during presidential campaigns it also gives more coverage to the typically Republican issue of Defense when the incumbent President is a Democrat, and less so when the incumbent is a Republican.

[edit] Additional information

According to Reporters Without Borders the media in the United States lost a great deal of freedom between the 2004 and 2006 indices, citing the Judith Miller case and similar cases and laws restricting the confidentiality of sources as the main factors.[48] Additional reasoning is that reporters who question the American "war on terror" are regarded as suspicious.[49] The United States is now ranked 53rd out of 168 countries, placing it near Japan and Uruguay. However, they are ranked below all but one European Union country (Poland) and below most OECD countries.

According to Noam Chomsky, American commercial media encourage controversy within a narrow range of opinion, in order to give the impression of open debate, but do not report on news that falls outside that range.

According to David Niven, of Ohio State University, research shows that American media show bias on only two issues, race and gender equality.[50]

Accusers of liberal or conservative bias alike typically ignore the dictionary meanings of those words (as do modern political parties). In fact, in the current political discourse, the words seem to have meaning that shifts depending on point of view. The Oxford American Dictionary defines "liberal" in the political sense as "favoring democratic reform and individual liberty" and "conservative" in the political sense as "favoring private enterprise and freedom from government control".

[edit] References

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  43. ^ www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664. Retrieved on 2007-03-28.
  44. ^ a b Liberman, Mark (2005-12-23). Multiplying ideologies considered harmful. Language Log. Retrieved on 2006-11-06.
  45. ^ Liberman, Mark (2005-12-22). Linguistics, politics, mathematics. Language Log. Retrieved on 2006-11-06.
  46. ^ Lott, John R. and Hassett, Kevin A. (October 19, 2004) Is Newspaper Coverage of Economic Events Politically Biased? SSRN 588453
  47. ^ http://ssrn.com/abstract=573801, (link to the abstract)
  48. ^ www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=17430&Valider=OK. Retrieved on 2007-03-28.
  49. ^ www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=639. Retrieved on 2007-03-28.
  50. ^ David Niven, Tilt?: The Search for Media Bias, Praeger Publishers, 2002, ISBN 0-275-97577-0

[edit] See also


[edit] Organizations monitoring bias

[edit] Non-partisan

[edit] Liberal

[edit] Conservative

[edit] Examples/sources

  1. Extracts from Agnew's talk here
  2. Lichter, S.R., Lichter, L.S. and Rothman, S., 1992. Watching America: What Television Tells Us About Our Lives.
  3. Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News is one of those who argues against any significant liberal bias. Reviewer John Moe sums up Alterman's views:
    "The conservatives in the newspapers, television, talk radio, and the Republican party are lying about liberal bias and repeating the same lies long enough that they've taken on a patina of truth. Further, the perception of such a bias has cowed many media outlets into presenting more conservative opinions to counterbalance a bias, which does not, in fact, exist." ISBN 0-465-00176-9
  4. Media Imperialism is a critical theory regarding the perceived effects of globalization on the world's media. It is closely tied to the similar theory of cultural imperialism.
    "As multinational media conglomerates grow larger and more powerful many believe that it will become increasingly difficult for small, local media outlets to survive. A new type of imperialism will thus occur, making many nations subsidiary to the media products of some of the most powerful countries or companies. Significant writers and thinkers in this area include Ben Bagdikian, Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman and Robert McChesney."
  5. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, a book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.
    ..."the pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably distorts the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported. This occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who happen to favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized."
  6. A UCLA political scientist released a peer-reviewed study which concluded that, in general, "almost all major media outlets tilt to the left." [2] Self-described by UCLA as "the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them", it used a somewhat complicated pattern to figure out the political center of the electorate and based the positions of the media on that center. As the first peer-reviewed study to use this particular measure of political position, the study's claims have been contested due to some of its methodogy. [3]
    "Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. And a few outlets, including the New York Times and CBS Evening News, were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than the center. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample." [4]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

[edit] Non-partisan

[edit] Liberal point of view

[edit] Conservative point of view

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