"Liberal" Media: Y/N?

August 9, 2009 3:23 PM

[PoliticsFilter] Is there any validity to the assertion that the US media is, in fact, biased toward the liberal viewpoint?

My dad (Republican, Bush supporter and campaigner) continues to assert that he "has proof!" of our "liberal media". I'm sick of hearing it but don't really have any facts and figures of my own to back up my belief that our media is, overall, fairly objective (...and the lack of aforementioned facts and figures is making me feel uncomfortably hypocritical...)

So, where can I find information on this subject to 1) better inform myself of the reality of the media situation, and 2) share with him so we can have a (hopefully) rational discussion about the subject rather than a "yes it is!" "no it isn't" shouting match?

posted by hapax_legomenon to Media & Arts (48 answers total)

Well, there's this study, which reports everyone believes objective media is biased toward the other side.
posted by Jon_Evil at 3:34 PM on August 9, 2009

Well, during the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections, study(ies) were done showing that Peter Jennings facial expressions exposed a bias toward the Republican candidates. Kind of random, but it just popped into my head after reading this question.
posted by ishotjr at 3:36 PM on August 9, 2009

The best counter-argument is that any News media is biased toward making as much money as humanly possible.
posted by The Whelk at 3:36 PM on August 9, 2009 [3 favorites]

Wasn't meaning anything by also starting my answer with "well." I hadn't read the previous answer at the time. :-)
posted by ishotjr at 3:36 PM on August 9, 2009

If it's facts and figures you want, check out Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media?, which makes a very strong case against the myth of liberal media.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 3:37 PM on August 9, 2009

Possible, non-comprehensive, source/support for his assertion:

MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485/


Also:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2008/07/24/medias-campaign-donations-tilt-100-1-favor-democrats

Draw your own conclusions about the validity of the sample and the metric as a whole.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 3:50 PM on August 9, 2009 [3 favorites]

I've always believed that because everyone has a worldview to which he or she subscribes, it would be impossible for any person and/or organization to be completely unbiased.

For instance (and nothing against you, Pater),

"...the myth of liberal media" makes a subtle assumption that liberal media is a myth (whether or not it was originally meant to make this assumption).

The phrases, "pro-life" and "anti-choice" may reference the same group of people, but each has an obvious contradiction in connotation.

Personally, I prefer it when a source makes clear its bias. And feel that this idea to avoid yellow-journalism, while beautiful and ideal, is in reality a sham.
posted by litterateur at 3:51 PM on August 9, 2009 [2 favorites]

Those who own the printing press will do whatever it takes to protect their interests. For example, MSNBC was insulting Fox anchors, so Fox anchors talked about GE (NBC parent) doing business in Iran. A deal was brokered where both sides shut up about the other, and business goes on as before. Journalism isn't a noble profession, it's a profit center owned and operated by big money interests. Left/right-wing, whatever. It's self-serving to the interests of the big-money.
posted by GamblingBlues at 3:56 PM on August 9, 2009 [4 favorites]

The problem is that neutrality (as litterateur notes) is not attainable, and that some of the "establishment" US media (NYT, Washington Post) do reflect a sort of centrist, not-really-very-left-wing, old-fashioned liberalism. An alternative line of attack would be against the widespread perception among conservatives that "their media" is "fringe" media that is putting up some kind of noble fight against "the mainstream". You might like to track down the viewing and listening figures: Fox and Limbaugh are the mainstream. Since the fans of Fox and Limbaugh don't argue that these outlets exhibit a liberal bias, showing that these outlets dominate the US media landscape is an alternative way to attack your father's position.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 3:58 PM on August 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

Bias is in the eye of the beholder, and as mentioned everyone thinks they're at the center. So "liberal" compared to what?

I think the real question is whether the media is more liberal than the voting public, and the answer is "on average, yes."

The majority of voters think that the press deliberately slants news during elections to favor candidates the reporters favor. (From a year ago.)

A Harvard study found that press coverage of Democrats was far more positive than coverage of Republicans.

So did a UCLA study.

Wikipedia has an article.

Journalists give far more money to Democrats than to Republicans in the form of campaign contributions.

A different point: It's true that Alterman and others have argued that it's not so. But it's particularly interesting that the only people trying to argue that way are themselves leftists. From their point of view, since of course they're in the center (since everyone thinks they're in the center) and since the press agrees with them then the press can't be biased.

This lot, on the other hand, are clearly right-side and they make it their mission to point out cases of what they think is liberal bias. Even if you don't agree with them politically, you may find some of what you seek by examining their examples.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:04 PM on August 9, 2009 [3 favorites]

And to balance Alterman's book, consider Bernard Goldberg. He wrote his book after spending 30 years working for CBS News.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:08 PM on August 9, 2009

One other avenue you might pursue: Bush appointed a watchdog for public broadcasting during his tenure. The conservative individual was charged with evaluating National Public Radio to build support for taking away npr's funding. The watchdog found that npr was more objective, and gave more air time to dissenting views than most conventional media. npr.org, of course, happily published a program on their site calling attention to the watchdog's analysis. You could most likely find the original in their archives. I'm sure Bush was mighty frustrated.
posted by effluvia at 4:19 PM on August 9, 2009

My dad (Republican, Bush supporter and campaigner) continues to assert that he "has proof!" of our "liberal media".

What facts does he have? Ask him that and then investigate the facts to see if they hold up.

share with him so we can have a (hopefully) rational discussion about the subject rather than a "yes it is!" "no it isn't" shouting match?

This may be impossible. Some people just like to bash others and be on top, never mind evidence or facts. This could make things get ugly.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:21 PM on August 9, 2009

One thing to consider is that when people talk about the "liberal media" they frequently (typically?) assume not only that individual journalists and organizations are sympathetic to left-leaning views, but also that these journalists and organizations actively seek to mislead the public. At least, this has been my experience in talking to that type of American conservative (hi Mom!).

I think game warden has a sensible approach: if you really want to have this discussion, don't try to "prove" that there isn't a point of view behind media outlets but focus instead on the landscape of media outlets.
posted by Meg_Murry at 4:21 PM on August 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

1) there's a huge difference between what journalists (if we can still call them that) believe and what they say/are told to say on television.

2) Republicans have been pursuing objectively disastrous policies for the last eight years, and the result of that is negative press from the failed policies they enacted.
posted by Jon_Evil at 4:27 PM on August 9, 2009

There was an extensive australian survey a few years (i couldn't ggl it)
which examined peoples political attitudes according to their profession.
Perhaps someone else knows where to find it?

As I can't find it this is my best recollection of the results.

The differences were surprisingly strong, people in occupations (IN AUSTRALIA!) which required a high level of education, or were very involved with other people - health workers, teachers, journalists - overwhelmingly had progressive political views.

People in professions (IN AUSTRALIA!) which are essentially in competition with other people or were focussed on money - traders, retailers, accountants, real estate agents - overwhelmingly had conservative views.

Lawyers - straddling both categories - I believe were split fifty fifty.

At the time there was quite a bit of smug comment along the lines of "So if you have a good education and care about other people you have progressive political views and if you don't you don't?"
posted by compound eye at 4:41 PM on August 9, 2009

It's my general impression that the NY-based media is "biased".

Manhattan voted 555,214 Obama to 82,707 McCain/Palin in 2008, almost a 90% split. That is a skunking, and I don't see why the media elite would differ significantly from the overall population there.

But that's at the personal level. At the institutional level, the major broadcast and publishing media have to walk a finer line of selling their wares plus also meet whatever editorial requirements the rich white guy signing the checks requires.

I wouldn't get into an argument or even a political discussion with your dad. Life's too short for that crap.
posted by @troy at 4:42 PM on August 9, 2009

Lawyers - straddling both categories - I believe were split fifty fifty.

Lawyers here generally give ALL their money to Dems. It's really quite embarrassing.
posted by @troy at 4:43 PM on August 9, 2009

Until your typical evening news show airs pieces along the lines of "corrupt Pennsylvania judge says God not allowed in science classrooms" or "socialists renew their attempts to undermine the best health care system in the world", the right/conservatives/neocons/whatever will accuse the media of having a "liberal bias". Likewise, until the typical evening news show airs pieces like "ridiculous fundamentalist pseudoscience defeated in landmark case" (etc), the left/liberals/progressives/whatever will accuse the media of having a "conservative bias". This harks back to Jon_evil's comment above. Because the media isn't obviously dismissive of one's enemies and their causes, it must be biased towards "the other side".

A different problem is the ongoing shifts in what it means to identify oneself as "liberal" or "conservative". Since the news conglomerates operate with big-city sophistication, they're not exactly going to be seen as back-to-the roots, old-time family values. Clearly the news media don't consider a woman's place to be in the home, because they employ female journalists, and are not disdainful when reporting on interesting new youth trends or events than involve traditionally "liberal" demographics.

I realize this doesn't really answer your original question, but it might help illustrate why accusations of liberal/conservative bias in the American news media are short-sighted and arguments about it useless.
posted by Maximian at 4:44 PM on August 9, 2009

External view: ask anyone in Europe if they think the US media is 'liberal' or 'left wing' and you will have to pick them up after they've been rolling on the floor laughing for a couple of minutes straight.

But then it generally seems that 'centrist' in Europe = left wing in the US.
posted by Coobeastie at 4:46 PM on August 9, 2009 [2 favorites]

Here's a paper that was discussed previously on Metafilter showing that yes, there are biases (of varying statistical significance) that show a pro-Democratic bias in ABC, CBS, and NBC, with a pro-Republican bias in FOX. The tests were simply studies of the chances related to reporting a drop or rise in approval ratings in a Dem/Rep president. Note that these are essentially Clinton-Bush biases, and not liberal-conservative ones.

The author says: "Despite testing for bias using an objective (dare I say, “fair and balanced?”) methodology, all of the outlets demonstrated what appeared to be at least some selection bias that matched the popular caricature of their supposed prejudices."

The discussion was here. The author later adjusted the findings, and specified that biases on both sides were ststistically valid on some tests, unlike what some articles on it which made it sound like only FOX was biased. Others in the mefi thread made that mistake as well.
posted by FuManchu at 4:46 PM on August 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

pro-Democratic bias in ABC, CBS, and NBC, with a pro-Republican bias in FOX

These are at the DNA level I think. FOX News was created ex-nihilo in the late 90s to serve the ~30% of the country that detested the four major news networks. Better to have 100% of 30% than 25% of 70%. FOX openly caters to the evangelical/fundamentalists, which endears it to them to no end. Smart business. Smart public information control.
posted by @troy at 4:51 PM on August 9, 2009

Ask your father whether a majority of the public supports public health insurance. Chances are he doesn't know. The MSM is not reporting that a majority does, in fact, want it, and it doesn't even really matter how the question is asked.
posted by rhizome at 4:52 PM on August 9, 2009

I feel pretty strongly that most production decisions are made in order to sell copy or get viewers in order to sell ads. This would apply to tv news producers and magazine and newspaper editors and owners. I think that individual reporters are motivated to gain prestige among their colleagues, to please their producers/editors, and to achieve fame/fortune.
I don't have any statistical evidence to support this, but pretty much anything your dad comes up with as an example of liberal bias (or anything your liberal friends come up with to explain Fox News' republican bias) can be incorporated into this theory.
So basically I'm seconding The Whelk's answer from above. There can be more than two (liberal vs. conservative) reasons to have bias and dirty, filthy lucre does a far more competent job of explaining the phenomenon.
posted by Quizicalcoatl at 4:52 PM on August 9, 2009

You have to define "liberal" as meaning mainstream Democratic party before it starts to make sense as a possibility. Is that what you're trying to (dis)prove?

As mentioned a touch upthread, mainstream media when viewed in a context where Republican and Democrat aren't the only sides of the spectrum you'll find that while the media might be slanted a bit towards the Democratic side, it is still quite to the right. They care about big money and big business and their own interests, generally all of which are at odds with what most outside the mainstream would consider to be on the left.
posted by teishu at 5:08 PM on August 9, 2009

Lawyers here generally give ALL their money to Dems. It's really quite embarrassing.

Cite, please.

Because I know more hard right Republican attorneys than I care to admit.
posted by ambrosia at 5:14 PM on August 9, 2009

A visual analysis of television presidential campaign coverage from 1992 to 2004 suggests that the three television broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- favored Republicans in each election, according to two Indiana University professors in a new book.

GOP Lawmakers Outnumber Democratic Lawmakers 2 To 1 In Stimulus Debate On Cable News

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.
posted by nooneyouknow at 5:24 PM on August 9, 2009

Chocolate Pickle: "A different point: It's true that Alterman and others have argued that it's not so. But it's particularly interesting that the only people trying to argue that way are themselves leftists. "

That's because the ones on the right merely *assert* that the media is leftist.
posted by notsnot at 5:25 PM on August 9, 2009

You might find both Manufacturing Consent and Outfoxed useful; Manufacturing Consent in particular is useful for refuting the perception that the New York Times is a is pinko lefty rag the way my crazy Republican uncles insist it is.

Neither are particularly recent but they will give you a pretty good foundation.
posted by ambrosia at 5:36 PM on August 9, 2009

Lots of thoughts at The Daily Howler.

Plenty of archives making a case--with examples--that Democrats/Liberals have been worked hard in the NYT, WaPo and elsewhere.
posted by ambient2 at 6:20 PM on August 9, 2009

It's also worth considering the viewpoint that if the reporters tend to skew left, that means people who do the research, are well informed, talk to the involved parties, etc, tend to end up thinking that the democratic party has the better platform...

If one reads the opinion pages (or did so back when they had editorial pages) it's easy enough to find out what the position of the editors of these papers is. They don't hide it - they try not to let it interfere with their journalistic integrity on the other pages, but they do reveal who they endorse. Usually the NY Times and the Washington Post are behind centrist Dems or sometimes Northeast Repub types. If this is what is meant by liberal, they are liberal.

Of course, for some left wing folks, Bill Clinton is no more liberal than GWB etc etc, but by common american standards, those two major papers are slightly to the left of center. Papers like the Washington Times and the New York Post are usually to the right on their opinion pages.

"the media" is a vague conglomerate and especially with talk radio and the internet included, it is really not possible to paint with one brush, but if one wants to consider individual entities, I think you can find out what sort of bias they are more likely to have by reading their editorial pages.
posted by mdn at 6:43 PM on August 9, 2009

I have only two things to contribute:

1) "The Media" is a fuzzy term. Are we including talk radio? If so, the stats would change. Newspapers? Just television is something of a narrow sample.

2) Polling the individual workers down on the lowest possible level will give quite different results when compared against the "product" of each media organization. Hey, we all have bosses who do have us do things which we find ill-conceived, right?
posted by adipocere at 6:48 PM on August 9, 2009

Pretty much what teishu said. If you are starting out with the premise that Democrats are liberals, then you're already missing the point. There are very few democrats these days who qualify as being much farther left than Bill Clinton, which is to say not much. So just saying that more journalists support democrats doesn't even prove that the journalists are liberal personally and certainly doesn't say anything about their contributions to the corporate media.
posted by octothorpe at 7:02 PM on August 9, 2009

As shown in many of the above links, reporters tend more toward the democratic party than the republican party. I don't think that alone makes the coverage biased. Rather, I think most news outlets, with one really big Fox exception, try their hardest to be politically neutral in the coverage, perhaps to the detriment of the coverage.
posted by caddis at 7:09 PM on August 9, 2009

First of all, "liberal" is not the same as "Democrat." I know many "liberals" who think that our Democratic party is very "conservative." The media favoring the Democratic party, its candidates, and its policies is not the same as it having a "liberal bias." I think what people mean when they say this is that the media is in the pocket of the Democratic party.

Second, "liberal" and "conservative" are not fixed points on a fixed line. One could argue, and I have zero proof for this, that since the media is in the business of making money/attracting viewers, they'll pander to the middle. So it could be reasonable to assume that wherever the media is is the middle. Maybe the middle has moved over, and conservatives who complain about the "liberal media" are unwilling to acknowledge that. If we put today's media back 20-30 years (where many people still live), it would be liberal; today it's the middle.
posted by thebazilist at 7:09 PM on August 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

According to the above responses, it appears the correct response to someone who thinks there's a liberal bias in the media is: "Open your eyes, dude, the democrats pushing for universal healthcare are just as conservative as the repuglicans, man. You should totally listen more to Europeans, they understand the world so much better than Americans. My semester abroad there was so awesome. I met this girl who..."
posted by FuManchu at 7:24 PM on August 9, 2009

It might be, or it might not be. But it doesn't matter. They believe it, so it is true.
posted by gjc at 7:41 PM on August 9, 2009

I would just add that a lot of this goes back to the 70s. Specifically, Watergate and, perhaps even more influentially though now less well-known, the Pentagon Papers case.

Leaving aside, for a moment, that the idea that the media is or ought to be objective is largely an artifact of a mid-20th century status quo with 3 national broadcast networks and perhaps 3 national papers...during the period after WWII and up until the 1960s, the national media had generally been pretty deferential to government and officials, not reporting on politician's personal peccadillos, etc. At the time, unless you were on camera or had a nationally syndicated column, being a reporter was a pretty blue-collarish white collar job. You didn't need a college degree. You certainly didn't need a journalism degree. The pay wasn't spectacular. You had a union. Slightly more glamorous than being a civil servant.

But then the 70s came along. The coverage of the protest movements, the decision to publish classified documents concerning war strategy, and last but not least the Watergate scandal, changed the relationship of the press to the government to a far more oppositional stance, and a generation of young reporters flooded into the profession inspired by Woodward and Bernstein, convinced that they were going to expose the next great lie of the government. This new generation were more educated, and did conceive of reporting as a glamorous job. Pay scales and prestige rose.

By the eighties, the backlash had started, and conservatives began to complain of the liberal bias of the press...
posted by Diablevert at 7:53 PM on August 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

>My dad (Republican, Bush supporter and campaigner) continues to assert that he "has proof!" of our "liberal media".

What facts does he have? Ask him that and then investigate the facts to see if they hold up.

Seconding this. It may very well be that when he says he has "proof," if you simply raise an eyebrow and say "oh? And what proof is that?" that he'll say something like "have you ever noticed that they never cover Westboro Baptist demostrations any more?"

And then you can just stare at him a second, burst out laughing, and walk away, because you've realized that it'd just be too silly a discussion, and that'd be the end of that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:00 PM on August 9, 2009

Mod note: few comments removed - if you're not answering the question could you keep editorial comments to yourself? thanks.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:36 PM on August 9, 2009

This is an unwinnable argument, you know. But I'd direct your dad to two things:

• Here's the story of a Guardian journalist who went on a Daily-Mail only diet for a month, and he talks about how it colored his worldview: overall, the world became a scary place really fast. He knew certain stories were either untrue or radically embellished, but as he'd self-embargoed himself from other sources, he couldn't "fact check".

• The On the Media podcast from WNYC/NPR is, I think, the best critical look at the media - all of it, liberal and conservative - in America today. Free, weekly.
posted by mdonley at 10:16 PM on August 9, 2009

Is there any validity to the assertion that the US media is, in fact, biased toward the liberal viewpoint?
No.
While individual journalists may give money to liberal candidates, what matters more is whether news media content skews in one direction or another.
And the content of mainstream media reporting skews center-right.
This study from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that, "On select issues from corporate power and trade to Social Security and Medicare to health care and taxes, journalists are actually more conservative than the general public."
posted by univac at 10:32 PM on August 9, 2009

I'm with Coobeastie - for a long time I honsestly though that any suggestion of a liberal media bias in the US was a kind of American running joke that I didn't get. I have since learned otherwise. So I guess it depends on where you're coming from.
posted by primer_dimer at 2:50 AM on August 10, 2009

First, you have to consider that, in the US, "liberal" tends to be, when judged against traditional definitions, pretty-much centrist-to-center-right. There just isn't much in the way of a true liberal viewpoint expressed in the mainstream press in the US (save for the rare moments they give time to someone like Dennis Kucinich.)
posted by Thorzdad at 4:57 AM on August 10, 2009

"Liberal Media" (when said without the crazy) means how the sitcoms show gay people in a sympathetic or good light and the jokes are gay-affirming instead of demeaning, that Hollywood is constantly pushing the boundaries of how much sex they can cram into a PG-13 film, and so on.

The sense in which "Liberal media" is true doesn't apply to news media, (quite the opposite) which in the USA, is either wingnut rightwing insanity (Fox news etc), or centrist right ("respectable" US news). Since respectable news is far left of wingnut insanity, it looks crazy lefty to the wingnuts who have no global point of reference, despite being heavily right by the standards of the developed world.
posted by -harlequin- at 9:38 AM on August 10, 2009

You can't beat the Alterman book for source material here. I've recommended it over and over again on Metafilter.

It's true that Alterman and others have argued that it's not so. But it's particularly interesting that the only people trying to argue that way are themselves leftists. From their point of view, since of course they're in the center (since everyone thinks they're in the center) and since the press agrees with them then the press can't be biased.

It's overwhelmingly clear in the book that Alterman recognizes that he is a leftist; this characterization of his position is impoverished. The theses of the book are, roughly,

1) The bias of the mainstream media is towards reporting conflict rather than truth. If one side says that water is wet and the other says that water is dry, the Washington Post (or whoever) will run a story with a quote from each side and a headline that says "Conservatives, Liberals disagree about state of water" rather than bothering to figure out whose position is correct.

2) The political views of mainstream reporters are generally left-leaning, but a) there's little evidence that this affects what gets published, maybe because b) the political views of publishers lean rightward.

2) Actual leftist media entities are dwarfed in number and impact by those on the right.
posted by Kwine at 12:13 PM on August 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

Some food for thought here. Markos Moulitsas founded dailykos.com on the premise that, "Progressives don't have a voice in the modern media." Basically, while Rush Limbaugh was on the radio doing what he does, there was no loud-mouthed opposing counterpoint with the same kind of legion of devoted followers.

The fact is, the journalists that I know feel that there is a code of basic neutrality to be adhered to, and they bend over backwards to meet it. I believe that this is a widespread moral belief among professional journalists. One of my best friends complained that he was having trouble writing a story about Sarah Palin's tenure as Alaska's governor, because everyone he spoke to in Alaska for source material hated her, even her fellow Republicans, and he couldn't find anyone with a positive counterpoint. After my epic facepalm, I said to him, "Maybe that IS the story? That she was that bad?"

I think that Paul Krugman, a lefty among lefties, said it best.

Personally, while it depends on which news outlet is doing the reporting, I sense a tendency to report things in more of the way that the conservatives would like to hear it said. But that's anecdotal, and it says more about the American right-wingers' skill at "controlling the message" than anything else.
posted by Citrus at 12:59 PM on August 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

There is nothing you can do to disprove your father's assertion that the media has a liberal bias. You can no more accomplish that than you could convince a christian that there is no god, or convince an atheist that there is a god.

People only agree with you when you agree with them. Tell your father what he wants to hear and watch how quickly he agrees with you. It's like magic! :)

I've worked in the media (news radio) and I can tell you for a fact that the media, as a whole. has a neutral bias to the point of absolute dishonesty. Our society has become so polarized that media organizations feel the need to present both sides of a story, even when there clearly are not two sides of a story. Thus, news media often air downright lies for the sake of presenting "the other side of the story."

Note that I said they "air" downright lies. They don't create them... instead, they do the typical (and completely useless) dual interview with someone from each party. 90% of the time, one of the two is lying for the sake of politics.

The vast majority of our news media are awful. I'd say they're all awful, but it's not fair for me to judge the ones I haven't seen, heard or read yet. They're probably pretty awful too though :)
posted by 2oh1 at 11:07 PM on October 9, 2009 [1 favorite]