Study Finds Most Central Media Outlet?

[Texsox]

Link to

 

  Do the major media outlets in the U.S. have a liberal bias?  Few questions evoke stronger opinions, and we cannot think of a more important question to which objective statistical techniques can lend their service.  So far, the debate has largely been one of anecdotes (“How can CBS News be balanced when it calls Steve Forbes’ tax plan ‘wacky’?”) and untested theories (“if the news industry is a competitive market, then how can media outlets be systematically biased?”).   

 

 

      Few studies provide an objective measure of the slant of news, and none has provided a way to link such a measure to ideological measures of other political actors.  That is, none of the existing measures can say, for example, whether the New York Times is more liberal than Tom Daschle or whether Fox News is more conservative than Bill Frist.  We provide such a measure.  Namely, we compute an ADA score for various news outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Drudge Report, Fox News’ Special Report, and all three networks’ nightly news shows.

 

 

      Our results show a very significant liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress.  Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABC’s World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives.  One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample.  Our other measure found that Fox News’ Special Report is the most centrist.  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. 

[Reddy]

thats a bunch of BS, who did that report? Some random dude who's personal bias may be skewed just as much... and who is an "average congressman"???

[mreye]

That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.

 

 

But, that's what makes it liberal or conservative leaning.

[Texsox]

thats a bunch of BS, who did that report?  Some random dude who's personal bias may be skewed just as much...  and who is an "average congressman"???

Here's the methodology from the study, I guess you didn't follow the link.

To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks.  We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate.  By comparing the citation patterns we can construct an ADA score for each media outlet.  

 

 

      As a simplified example, imagine that there were only two think tanks, one liberal and one conservative.  Suppose that the New York Times cited the liberal think tank twice as often as the conservative one.  Our method asks:  What is the estimated ADA score of a member of Congress who exhibits the same frequency (2:1) in his or her speeches?  This is the score that our method would assign to the New York Times.  

 

 

      A feature of our method is that it does not require us to make a subjective assessment of how liberal or conservative a think tank is.  That is, for instance, we do we need to read policy reports of the think tank or analyze its position on various issues to determine its ideology.  Instead, we simply observe the ADA scores of the members of Congress who cite the think tank.  This feature is important, since an active controversy exists whether, e.g., the Brookings Institution or the RAND Corporation is moderate, left-wing, or right-wing.  

[Texsox]

But, that's what makes it liberal or conservative leaning. 

The Gop's biggest complaint isn't in the editorials and opinion pieces, it can't be with Rush, Hannity, Savage, et. al. on for hours each day, they clearly lead the way in opinion.

 

The GOP complains that there is bias in the reporting of so called "straight news".

[mreye]

The Gop's biggest complaint isn't in the editorials and opinion pieces, it can't be with Rush, Hannity, Savage, et. al. on for hours each day, they clearly lead the way in opinion.

 

The GOP complains that there is bias in the reporting of so called "straight news".

No, I get that, but I'm just saying that that's why Drudge is "centrist" because they took out editorials. All Drudge has is links to stories. How can that be biased?

[Texsox]

No, I get that, but I'm just saying that that's why Drudge is "centrist" because they took out editorials. All Drudge has is links to stories. How can that be biased?

I assume they looked as his by-line material and the stories he linked to. If all he did was link to pro-GOP, or Pro-Dem articles he would have skewed one way or the other.