The "Liberal Media". It's been proven true!

[Rack of T'Pol]

Please note...

I originally posted this study in the Neutral Zone forum...But it got flamed to death over there. So by posting it here, I'm hoping the fact that this forum is moderated creates an environment where the study can be discussed and debated without flames and spam.


Hi,

I'm new here and two of my many passions are Trek and Politics...And I was hoping we could have a calm, reasoned and kind exchange of ideals? And yes, I am a Republican. But, my brother is a Liberal, and a politically active one, and I still love him. So...


NOTE: Please go check-out this website. And pay special attention to the blue links down towards the bottom. I can only post 1000 words or I would post them all...

http://www.akdart.com/media.html

An excerpt...From the Media Bias Page:

Many people complain about political bias and incompetence in the electronic media, and many other people think there's no basis for such complaints. For a long time I resisted the idea of producing a page like this because I thought it was too obvious. Some of you still can't see it, so some of the evidence is presented below. This page includes several subtopics worthy of review.

Political bias may be impossible to avoid in today's fast-paced 24-hour news coverage. News programs today are apparently designed to retain the attention of hyperactive and impatient viewers — people with dozens of other channels from which to choose, and a remote control always nearby.

• I find it interesting that he doesn't mention the blatant fact that FOX News is CREAMING CNN and MSNBC in the ratings - So I ask...Could we be seeing a "Liberal Bias" right here? As some have pointed out (Below), broadcast news is dangerous, not because of what's reported, but what is not reported. This applies equally to both television and radio. Fortunately we now have the internet to fill the voids.

Other points of interest found in this report...55% Of Voters Agree: The Media Is What’s Really Wrong With Politics

Example: http://www.mediaite.com/online/voters-agree-media-problem-politics/

The U.S. Supreme Court made waves in Jan. when it blocked limits on political spending by corporations – and not in a good way, according to ABC pollster Gary Langer. His data showed strong-to-overwhelming majorities of people among all political persuasions opposed the ruling – clearly, ours is an electorate that does not approve of freewheeling, unchecked campaign contributions. But a new poll, conducted by Rasmussen Reports, showed a majority of people believe there’s an even bigger problem in politics today...

When forced to choose between media bias and runaway campaign contributions as the greater scourge on our political scene, 55% of voters chose the media.

• Newsweek’s Daniel Stone's take on the results on the magazine’s political blog, The Gaggle:

• "It’s somewhat obvious that increasingly ideological programming on the cable channels has contributed to polarization. The sheer fact that Glenn Beck made $32 million last year illuminates just how big of a business opinion journalism is. (It’s also a factor of why CNN, the most centrist of the three cable power hitters during prime-time programming, has seen its ratings slump over the past years.)"

• Stone’s points are true, but it’s worth noting that his Beck's example doesn’t really reflect the dynamics of the poll in question. According to Rasmussen, 68% of Republicans and 62% of unaffiliated voters said media bias was a bigger problem than campaign contributions. However, just 37% of Democrats made the same choice.

THIS SEEMS TO BE AN ADMISSION BY LIBERALS THAT THE LEFTIST MEDIA OVERWHELMINGLY FAVORS THEM...I SEE NO OTHER POSSIBLE ANSWER.
​

• In other words, the voting bloc far and away more likely to consider Beck’s influence a threat to the political climate is overall much less likely to find that influence to be the biggest problem in the political realm.

• And while it’s certainly a noteworthy result that media bias was such a decisive “winner” in the poll, it didn’t “eclipse” lobbying in voters’ minds, contrary to Stone’s assertion. From Rasmussen’s report...

If anything, the most intriguing result of the poll might be that the percentage of people who find media bias a more pressing issue than campaign contributions has not changed at all in the last year and a half...

In fact, according to Rasmussen’s article on their August 2008 survey, 36 percent deemed campaign contributions a bigger problem in that poll. In the more recent poll, 32 percent voted for campaign finance as the more pressing issue. The fact that fewer people today apparently find campaign contributions a greater issue than media bias – despite a landmark Supreme Court ruling in the interim that could dramatically increase corporate campaign contributions – isn’t just intriguing…it’s a bit stunning!

MORE PROOF OF THE MEDIA'S LEFTIST LEANINGS...

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx

Liberal media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

By Meg Sullivan December 14, 2005 Category: Research

• 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 the liberal bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

• "I SUSPECTED THAT MANY MEDIA OUTLETS WOULD TILT HEAVILY TO THE LEFT BECAUSE SURVEYS HAVE SHOWN THAT REPORTERS, AND THOSE IN THE MEDIA, TEND TO VOTE MORE DEMOCRATIC THAN REPUBLICAN...BY A VERY WIDE AND CONCERNING MARGIN...80% TO 20%...SAID TIM GROSECLOSE, A UCLA POLITICAL SCIENTIST AND THE STUDY'S LEAD AUTHOR.

• "BUT I WAS SURPRISED AT JUST HOW PRONOUNCED THE DISTINCTIONS ARE." "OVERALL, THE MAJOR MEDIA OUTLETS ARE QUITE MODERATE COMPARED TO MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, BUT EVEN SO, THERE IS A QUANTIFIABLE AND SIGNIFICANT LIBERAL BIAS IN THAT NEARLY ALL OF THEM LEAN HEAVILY TO THE LEFT." SAID CO-AUTHOR JEFFREY MILYO, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI ECONOMIST AND PUBLIC POLICY SCHOLAR...A LIBERAL HIMSELF!

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

• Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation...

• Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

• "A media person would have never done this study,"said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."

• 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.

• Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter. THIS POINTS OUT THE SIMPLE FACT THAT THE MEDIA IN GENERAL, SAVE FOX NEWS, ARE CLEARLY LEFTIST LEANING.
  

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."

• 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...BUT STILL, FOX NEWS IS OUTNUMBERED 2 TO 1...LIBERAL TO CONSERVATIVE

• "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...But again, FOX News is outnumbered 2 to 1.

Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.

An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress ( 85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74...BUT STILL DISPLAY A LIBERAL BIAS.

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.

• 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.

• "By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's.

The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.

"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.

The results break new ground...

"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the obvious liberal bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."

Now...Check-out this article from Wikipedia...

THE LIBERAL ELITE...

In the United States the term liberal elite is a political phrase to describe affluent, politically liberal-leaning people. IT IS COMMONLY USED WITH THE PEJORATIVE IMPLICATION THAT THE PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT THE RIGHTS OF THE WORKING CLASS, ARE THEMSELVES MEMBERS OF THE UPPER CLASS! OR AT LEAST, THE UPPER MIDDLE CLASS, AND ARE THEREFORE OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE REAL NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE THEY CLAIM TO SUPPORT AND PROTECT...BASICALLY, THE LIBERAL POLITICIANS ARE WILLING TO PANDER TO ANYONE'S NEEDS IF SAID PANDERING LEADS TO VOTES.

As a polemical term, "Politically Elite" has been used to refer to political positions as diverse as secularism, environmentalism, feminism, and other positions associated with the left.

• HISTORICALLY, 80 PERCENT OF NEWS REPORTERS, PRODUCERS AND STAFF OVERWHELMINGLY VOTE DEMOCRAT...YES, A WHOPPING AND VERY TELLING EIGHTY PERCENT VOTE WITH LIBERAL AGENDAS IN MIND!

• CONSERVATIVES DON'T STAND A CHANCE UNLESS THEY CAN SOMEHOW BYPASS THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA AND TAKE THEIR MESSAGE DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE...THE VOTERS! WE CAN ONLY ASSUME THAT THIS WOULD BE A SIGNIFICANT REASON FOR LEFT-SKEWED VIEWS REPORTING. THUS DOING A GREAT INJUSTICE TO HALF OF THE COUNTRY (CONSERVATIVES)...

• 

• And last but certainly not least (Unfortunately, I can't provide all the links this article contains, but I have tried to bold the individual links for easy identification, but still, you'll need to go there to see all of the claims for yourself...And it's certainly worth your time)...And yes, there are some conservative organizations being investigated for "Conservative Bias"...But they are out-numbered by about 10-1 (TEN TO ONE!! TALK ABOUT LIBERAL BIAS!?!)

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias#Impartial_organizations_monitoring_media_bias


Impartial organizations monitoring media bias

* FactCheck.org
* Facts on File (requires membership)
* Center for Media and Public Affairs


Conservative organizations monitoring liberal bias...

* Accuracy in Media, a conservative media watchdog group founded in 1969 by Reed Irvine.
* Media Research Center (MRC) Media Resarch Center, website that provide examples of claims about liberal bias and misinformation in the news.


Liberal organizations monitoring conservative bias...

* Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal media watch group which has been offering criticism of public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts.
* Media Matters for America, website providing examples of claims about conservative bias and misinformation in the news.


Other blogs and websites about media bias...

* Media Lens, a media analysis website based in the United Kingdom.
* Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal leaning group, aims to strengthen participatory democracy by investigating and exposing public relations spin and propaganda.
* Glasgow Media Group
* Media Bias Ratings (MBR), website presenting public polls to track perceived media bias by the public.
* Media Bias Indicators, from Chronically Biased.
* Glasgow University Mass Media Unit
* Politmus.com, a website that allows users to rate and comment on media bias.
* Skewz.com A website that employs a user-generated rating system that allows the community to vote on the political bias (liberal vs. conservative) of traditional and new media. Also has a media bias chart.


Websites/blogs focused on specific media organizations...

* Biased BBC, a blog critical of BBC News.
* CBCwatch, a blog critical of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
* cnnEXPOSED.com, details examples of CNN's alleged pro-U.S. bias in war and national security reporting.
* A site critical of the Daily Mail
* Chronicle of Bias: A site that talks about alleged liberal bias in the Houston Chronicle
* Times Watch, website updated daily that provide examples of claims about bias in the New York Times reporting.


Websites/blogs focused on media about or in specific regions...

Israel:

* Israel's Media Watch, bias in the Israeli media.
* "Those Aren't Stones, They're Rocks" -Seth Ackerman Article concerning perceived pro-Israel bias
* Honest Reporting, a site about anti-Israeli media bias.

Netherlands:

* Bad News from the Netherlands.

Finland:

* Bad news from Finland.

Middle East:

* CAMERA, another site documenting bias in the coverage of Middle East.

* Tracking Propaganda to the Source: Tools for Analyzing Media Bias by Richard Alan Nelson.
* What's Wrong With the News? - Analysis of what is wrong with the media today.
* Weekly Network Bias Rankings and discussion
* Content Analysis
* The Memory Hole (site for the preservation of FOIAed docs and material removed from government sites)
* The Media Awareness Project (About drug reform)
* Blinded By Science: How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality by reporter Chris Mooney
* "A Measure of Media Bias" - a paper-in-progress attempting to analyze media bias by looking at source stats.

 

[Garak]

 

[T'Baio]

Oh noes...

How does this affect teacher's salaries?

 

[SPOCKED]

Please note...

I originally posted this study in the Neutral Zone forum...But it got flamed to death over there. So by posting it here, I'm hoping the fact that this forum is moderated creates an environment where the study can be discussed and debated without flames and spam.

That is not likely to happen - whatever problems you had in TNZ are likely to find their way right back here. Regardless, re-posting in another forum is considered spam. Closing (before the horde descends)

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

I just watch the BBC.