Notes & Comments January 2006
Stop the presses!
This just in: media bias is real.
A report from UCLA has the amazing news: Media Bias Is Real! Who would have thought it? A press release from the university summarizes the painstaking research of Tim Groseclose, a political scientist at UCLA, and Jeffrey Milyo, an economist from the University of Missouri. These two scholars, aided by twenty-one research assistants, spent ten years combing through U.S. media coverage. Their findings, due out momentarily in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, reveal the extraordinary scoop: there is a systematic liberal bias in U.S. media! I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican, Mr. Groseclose said. But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are. Compared to members of Congress, Mr. Milyo added, major media outlets are quite moderate, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left. Extraordinary! We never would have guessed.
There were a few surprises in Messrs. Groseclose and Milyos findings. For example, out of twenty major media outlets they studied, the news pagesas distinct from the editorial columnsof The Wall Street Journal ranked number one as the most liberal, beating out even CBSs Evening News (remember Dan Rather?) and The New York Times, which took second and third place respectively in this dubious sweepstakes. It is unclear how Messrs. Groseclose and Milyo managed to distinguish between the news and the opinion columns of The New York Times. Its become a specialized talent. We cant do it, nor do we know anyone who can, though perhaps with twenty-one research assistants we could make a creditable try. In any event, although the results of this study were hardly earthshaking, we are glad to see them published under the aegis of a universityhitherto an institution unremarkable for acknowledging liberal bias. Perhaps Messrs. Groseclose and Milyo will now turn their attention to the university itself. U.S. media revealed a liberal bias by a factor of eighteen to twenty; what do you suppose the numbers would be if the subject were the university?
A Message from the Editors
Support our crucial work and join us in strengthening the bonds of civilization.
Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.
This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 24 Number 5, on page 1
Copyright © 2023 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2006/1/stop-the-presses