News media leftist bias proven in UCLA study.

[lendaddy]

Well I'll be a monkeys uncle, I never would have imagined

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

[jyl]

Funny, the conservatives here usually have no use for academic studies by political science professor types. But when we see an academic study that supports your own view, and suddenly its credible and important, eh?

Seriously, this is an interesting study, but the methodology is - well, you could call it subject to doubt.

Read the article carefully. They counted the number of times that each media piece referenced think tanks and policy groups. The more references to liberal think tanks, the more liberal the article was "scored", and vice-versa for references to conservative think tanks. Regardless of what was actually said about the think tanks or policy groups.

For example, a story on FOX News could be devoted to criticizing liberal think tanks or bashing liberal policy groups (NAACP, etc), and that story would be scored as "liberal". Or the a Wall Street Journal article on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could contrast the views of environmental policy groups (Sierra Club, etc) with the views of oil companies, and that story would be scored as "liberal".

I think that is a pretty artificial way of categorizing media articles as liberal or conservative, and it makes me think skeptical of this study. I will admit that I have a bias, which is that I don't have a high opinion of political science and sociology "research". An issue on which I may agree with the conservative OT members.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA 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 and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, 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.

[lendaddy]

Right, a blatently flawed ten year study. Fair enough, no bias....move along.

[CamB]

So what classifies a think tank or policy group as conservative/liberal/or centre?

Most call themselves non-partisan .

As for this:

the average ADA score in Congress (50.1)

Ummm, Congress is right wing (you know, more Republicans). At this stage, the study incorrectly appears to assume that the average congress vote = the average US voter (ok) = "centre" (not ok).

Centre isn't a US concept (a bit like the World Series isn't the world). A truely centrist media would be centrist across its whole audience, not just the US.

But really, I need to see the whole article - there is no indication in that news release about the significance of the results.

[lendaddy]

So they set out on a ten year study using only their own funds to avoid partison claims and low and behold their methodology is so flawed that the entire study can be dismissed in seconds.

That's the claim?

You don't think that over those ten years Bob might have turned to Dave and said: You know I was thinking about the premis of our study and............

[jyl]

Originally posted by lendaddy
So they set out on a ten year study using only their own funds to avoid partison claims and low and behold their methodology is so flawed that the entire study can be dismissed in seconds.

That's the claim?

You don't think that over those ten years Bob might have turned to Dave and said: You know I was thinking about the premis of our study and............

len, you're not reading carefully. They didn't work on the study for ten years. They had college undergrads review news stories published or broadcast over the past ten years. Here, I'll pull out the quote for you: "in the work, which took close to three years to complete"

Anyway, why are you so impressed by the "ten year" thing? If there's a problem in someone's methodology, does it matter if he uses that methodology for three years, ten years, or twenty?

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by jyl
len, you're not reading carefully. They didn't work on the study for ten years. They had college undergrads review news stories published or broadcast over the past ten years. Here, I'll pull out the quote for you: "in the work, which took close to three years to complete"

Anyway, why are you so impressed by the "ten year" thing? If there's a problem in someone's methodology, does it matter if he uses that methodology for three years, ten years, or twenty?

No I'm not impressed by that, I just think you should go into research consultation. You could have saved these guys a lot of trouble!

[Joe Bob]

Hmmmm, the media is full of lefties? Gorsch...never woulda believed it.....thank God for the right wingers that balance them out.

[CamB]

Most research at university tends to be searching for a robust methodology. All I'm saying is that this one is hit and miss. I've read the article reasonably well now:

http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm

Essentially the methodology appears to be that politicans are the link from media to think tank. I believe it is telling me that think tanks are allocated an ADA-equivalent score (which is a score which ordinarily measures the degree to which politicians voted left vs right) based on the average score of the politicians which cited those think tanks.

Despite the authors protestations, I don't think this is a good measure of left vs right leaning. I've already noted that it supposed that US = centre (but do note they aren't basing it on the current congress, which is good), when I would say the world is centre.

There are many problems with the causality implied by "quoting" of think tanks. The implication is that a politician or media outlet quotes a think tank due to their own liberal/conservative bias. Other reasons they might quote the think tank might include the effectiveness of the think tank in promulgating its ideas, or the amount of info produced by the think tank.

Its not - based on my quick read - a terrible study, but it isn't beyond question and the results are not particularly strong statistically.

[aways]

Leftist bias in the MSM is so frekin OBVIOUS, I can't believe anyone on the left would even bother trying to deny it. It's a good way to size up the integrity of a leftist. If they admit that a leftist bias exists in the MSM, you can at least begin a conversation with them. If they deny it, they are truly delusional, and it's best to not waste your breath. The only TV news outlet without a leftist bias is FOX, which is why the lefties b!tch so much about it. It's the only one they have to complain about.

[techweenie]

Who paid for the study?

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by techweenie
Who paid for the study?

If you had read it they said:

"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.

Oh my!, now what?

[Nathans_Dad]

Duh...this is like proving that water is wet. The only people who don't think the media is biased to the left are those who are more left than the media. Course to them the media is horribly biased to the right.

Where are all the news stories on how Bush knowingly lied about the war and led us into Iraq to line the pockets of his cronies and Halliburton? Where is the story about how Cheney is directly descended from Satan himself? Damn right wing media...

[slakjaw]

Ten year study.

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by Nathans_Dad
Duh...this is like proving that water is wet. The only people who don't think the media is biased to the left are those who are more left than the media. Course to them the media is horribly biased to the right.

Where are all the news stories on how Bush knowingly lied about the war and led us into Iraq to line the pockets of his cronies and Halliburton? Where is the story about how Cheney is directly descended from Satan himself? Damn right wing media...

I agree, but CoolChick for instance will fight to the death saying there is no bias. It's both hilarious and frightening at the same time.

[slakjaw]

There is no bias. The media reports the news that all they do. I cannot figure out why conservatives think there is a bias. Maybe its because Rush tells them to think that way?
A lot of liberals think there is a bias too, which is just as lame.

Is this an example of two completely different groups of people who cannot think for them selves?

Only took me 2 minutes to figure that out.

[Nathans_Dad]

Thanks Slakjaw, I think you should just keep posting about Bush being a trator...

oh yeah, "them selves" is one word.

[kach22i]

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."

This is what I've been saying, along with many others; PBS is in the middle.

The right wing hate machine will target anyone and anything.

[slakjaw]

Originally posted by Nathans_Dad
Thanks Slakjaw, I think you should just keep posting about Bush being a trator...

oh yeah, "them selves" is one word.

Thanks for pointing that out.

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by kach22i
This is what I've been saying, along with many others; PBS is in the middle.

The right wing hate machine will target anyone and anything.

I don't think it said PBS is in the middle, just that one show.