Media bias proved with science

Science proves that the mainstream media is a bunch of hippies. The UCLA study compared media news reports, excepting op-eds, to speeches by members of Congress, thereby comparing the reports against a known and measurable political commodity.

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. ...

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

I've always thought that the people who blast Fox News as being "Republican" or the "conservative" news channel completely miss the point. It was never about being the Republican news channel. It was always about making sure that at least equal time and respect was given to conservative view points, which is not always the case on other channels. People were so unused to seeing conservatives given equal voice on TV, I think, that once conservatives got that air time and respect, it was so different as to be shocking and upsetting. the left-leaning outlets became the new "center," and when people saw more (but what is actually equal) weight being given to conservative viewpoints, they shouted "bias!"

I also think it's lame when people make the supposedly counter-intuitive claim that the mainstream news is actually conservative, and merely reflective of the supposed bias of its' big-business owners. They make the grand assumptions that 1.) media owners are politically conservative, an assumption for which I have seen no data (which stands in stark opposition to repeated political surveys of mainstream news reporters, who consistently vote Democrat), and 2.) the media owners have a.) the time, b.) the inclination, and c.) the organizational ability to influence news converage.

I think it also reveals ignorance of the corporate structure and operations of private media companies. One of the first things they taught me in J-school was about "The Wall" between the business and editorial sides of any news gathering operation. Open any magazine or newspaper, and take note of how the executives for each side are presented seperately. Additionally, a growing trend inside the media business is towards consolidation of the business sides of ostensible editorial competitors. For example, in Madison a few years ago, the two local newspapers consolidated their business operations. The (liberal) Capital Times and the (conservative) Wisconsin State Journal even went as far as to print their papers in the same facilities.

Unfortch, I don't think this study will change much about the way media report the news. I think many will attack the methodology, and I think even more will use the results to support the theory that the liberal bias is "institutional," and has little to do with individual reporters' or editors' biases. There may be some truth to that, and I'll be interested to see how liberal blogs react to this study. But I think it's time to stop arguing that liberal media bias doesn't exist.