From this report by UCLA News: Media
Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist
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.These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is
believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range
of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.“I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have
shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican,” said Tim Groseclose,
a UCLA political scientist and the study’s lead author. “But I was surprised at just
how pronounced the distinctions are.”
Well I will admit that I am bias and nothing in this report surprised me.
Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report
was slightly left of center.“One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was
based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites,”
said Groseclose. “Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself
wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection
of the overall bias of the media.”
That’s true.
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.
Nothing surprising about that.
Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than
opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials
and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street
Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.
Well no one I know would be surprised by that.
Any-who, it was a nice read. Certainly confirms a lot of my beliefs.
Hat Tip: Drudge Report