Is Media Bias An Established Fact Now That Even Harvard Sees It?

gixaholic · #1 (**permalink**) 11-10-2007, 08:20 AM

Investor's Business Daily: Is Media Bias An Established Fact Now That Even Harvard Sees It?

A new study finding the media give far more favorable coverage to Democrats than Republicans could have settled once and for all the debate over whether the news we get has a liberal bias.

After all, it was done by the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy.

Still Dizzy · #2 (**permalink**) 11-10-2007, 09:18 AM

Just took them a little longer to realize what ANY thinking person knows.

sachem · #3 (**permalink**) 11-10-2007, 03:24 PM

I agree the MSM has a Humanist/Secular bias. So what? We are after all a Humanist/ Secular nation.

Realist1 · #4 (**permalink**) 11-10-2007, 03:39 PM

Just a "Slight Bias"?

On TV, evening network newscasts gave 49% of their campaign coverage to the Democrats and 28% to Republicans. As for tone, 39.5% of the Democratic coverage was positive vs. 17.1%, while 18.6% of the Republican coverage was positive and 37.2% negative.

These findings are in line with a number of other studies that date back to the early 1970s:

• In 1972, "The News Twisters" by Edith Efron analyzed every prime-time network news show before the 1968 election and found coverage tilted 8 to 1 against Nixon on ABC, 10 to 1 on NBC and 16 to 1 on CBS.

• In 1984, Public Opinion magazine found that Reagan got 7,230 seconds of negative coverage and just 730 seconds of positive; Mondale's positive press totaled 1,330 seconds, vs. 1,050 negative.

• In 1986, "The Media Elite" surveyed 240 journalists at virtually every major media outlet and found that in presidential elections from 1964 to 1976, 86% of top journalists voted Democratic. A 2001 update found 76% voted for Dukakis in 1988 and 91% went for Clinton in 1992.

• A 1992 Freedom Forum poll showed 89% of Washington reporters and bureau chiefs voting for Clinton in '92 and only 7% for George H.W. Bush.

• A 2003 Pew survey found 34% of national journalists called themselves liberal and 7% conservative. By 7 to 1, they also felt they weren't critical enough of President Bush.

• In 2005, a study of bias by professors at UCLA, Stanford and the University of Chicago determined that only one media outlet — Fox News Special Report — could be tagged "right of center."

Still Dizzy · #5 (**permalink**) 11-10-2007, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Realist1

Just a "Slight Bias"?

On TV, evening network newscasts gave 49% of their campaign coverage to the Democrats and 28% to Republicans. As for tone, 39.5% of the Democratic coverage was positive vs. 17.1%, while 18.6% of the Republican coverage was positive and 37.2% negative.

These findings are in line with a number of other studies that date back to the early 1970s:

• In 1972, "The News Twisters" by Edith Efron analyzed every prime-time network news show before the 1968 election and found coverage tilted 8 to 1 against Nixon on ABC, 10 to 1 on NBC and 16 to 1 on CBS.

• In 1984, Public Opinion magazine found that Reagan got 7,230 seconds of negative coverage and just 730 seconds of positive; Mondale's positive press totaled 1,330 seconds, vs. 1,050 negative.

• In 1986, "The Media Elite" surveyed 240 journalists at virtually every major media outlet and found that in presidential elections from 1964 to 1976, 86% of top journalists voted Democratic. A 2001 update found 76% voted for Dukakis in 1988 and 91% went for Clinton in 1992.

• A 1992 Freedom Forum poll showed 89% of Washington reporters and bureau chiefs voting for Clinton in '92 and only 7% for George H.W. Bush.

• A 2003 Pew survey found 34% of national journalists called themselves liberal and 7% conservative. By 7 to 1, they also felt they weren't critical enough of President Bush.

• In 2005, a study of bias by professors at UCLA, Stanford and the University of Chicago determined that only one media outlet — Fox News Special Report — could be tagged "right of center."

But how can this be? ALL the Liberal/Socialists on here say that Mainstream Media is FAIR!

tpb · #6 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 08:56 AM

The significance of this bias is that there is so large a segment of the population, I'd estimate upward of 75% who take very little interest in politics. Most of those, however, still vote in major elections.

Those are the people who this is all about--the ones who rarely or half-heartedly tune into primarily mainstream media sources and who tend to believe the crap being spewed there.

Cookie Parker · #7 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 09:29 AM

Speaking of bias in media...here's the op ed page of the source used to bashed 20 newspapers and media sites....

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- A Boom That Falls On Deaf Ears

Quote:

Not according to a new IBD/TIPP Poll, which highlights one of the economy's most peculiar paradoxes. To wit: Most Americans don't think much of it.

Here we are in the 67th month of expansion — a stretch that's seen, among many other positive developments, an increase of $1.65 trillion in real national output, the creation of 9.4 million jobs, a 40% jump in personal wealth, a 17% rise in real after-tax incomes and a 4,650-point advance in the Dow Jones industrial average — and fully 63% of the public thinks conditions are "fair" or "poor."

Not only that, but 55% expect a recession in the next 12 months — despite the fact that the biggest worry these days, at least on Wall Street, is that the economy will be stronger going forward than anyone expected.

View larger image

There were some notable exceptions in the poll results. Forty-six percent of investors, for example, see conditions as "good to excellent" vs. 27% who don't. (Among noninvestors, it was 27% "good to excellent" vs. 71% "fair to poor.") Politics seems to enter into it. Sixty-three percent of Republicans are in the "good to excellent" camp vs. 19% of Democrats.

But otherwise, the findings were bearish across the board — even by income. Those making more than $75,000 a year were almost as downbeat — with 62% describing the economy as "fair to poor" — as the 71% of those who make $30,000 or less.

None of this is new. Other polls also have found Americans down on the economy in general (though satisfied with their own financial situations).

To this point (and specifically in a six-part series we did in the fall of 2004), we've blamed the bearishness on the spin that the media put on economic coverage. By now, it's almost a given that the mainstream media — the largest newspapers, the big newsmagazines and the TV networks — have a decidedly liberal slant.

When it comes to the economy, this has manifested itself in negative coverage when a Republican is in the White House and positive coverage during Democratic administrations.

Bias is still at work, as even the poll respondents recognize. (Sixty percent see the coverage as liberal.) But we've begun to wonder if the negative spin on economic news during the Bush administration is all that has made people unjustifiably bearish.

Does it, we wonder, also have something to do with a basic lack of knowledge among journalists about how the economy works?

There is, for example, a real disconnect on issues such as tax cuts. One would think that the prosperity that resulted from the cuts of the 1920s under Coolidge, the 1960s under Kennedy, the 1980s under Reagan and now the 2000s under Bush would lead the media to acknowledge the possibility that if taxes are lowered, growth is stimulated and more revenue is raised to pay for government services.

Yet, coverage invariably dwells on the need to raise taxes on the "rich" to permit increased government spending.

We have shown on these pages how the Bush tax cuts not only pulled the economy out of recession but also have kept it buoyant in the face of normally insurmountable obstacles. Those include the onset of war, a natural disaster that leveled a whole region of the country, a tripling of energy prices and a quintupling of federal interest rates.

Yet in our poll, taken last week, more respondents listed the Bush cuts as "negative" for the economy than positive. Even among $30,000-and-under earners, who saw their federal income-tax liability virtually eliminated under the Bush program, the split was 45% negative to 13% positive.

Sure looks like a FOX wannabe to me...ROFLMAO!!!

Yeah, some "unbiased" reporting on "bias" in the news...

You guys crack me up!!!!

oceanbreeze · #8 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 09:55 AM

We quit watching the news back in 2000. If you can't see the media is brainwashing, good luck with life.

tpb · #9 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 10:58 AM

Regarding the IBD/TIPP Poll cited above:

This illustrates what I alluded to in my post above.

It is a matter of FACT that the economy is thriving, and that all levels of the population are benefitting from the boom. It is also a FACT that the tax cuts are at very least correlative, and very probably, causative of the economic boom.

Yet what are the views as expressed in the poll cited above? That a large segment of the population sees the economy as shaky and denies the benefit of tax cutting. How could this happen? It happens because the media is bias, not only on matters of opinion, but in spewing propaganda which is contrary to FACT--in plain words, LYING.

A poll like this may not mean much, but the same thing happens on election day. A lot of good normal people get hoodwinked by the media into voting contrary to their own views and core values. And without that media bias and this conning of voters, the left in this country, with its anti-American positions and policies, wouldn't have a chance.

freedomlover · #10 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tpb

Regarding the IBD/TIPP Poll cited above:

This illustrates what I alluded to in my post above.

It is a matter of FACT that the economy is thriving, and that all levels of the population are benefitting from the boom. It is also a FACT that the tax cuts are at very least correlative, and very probably, causative of the economic boom.

Yet what are the views as expressed in the poll cited above? That a large segment of the population sees the economy as shaky and denies the benefit of tax cutting. How could this happen? It happens because the media is bias, not only on matters of opinion, but in spewing propaganda which is contrary to FACT--in plain words, LYING.

A poll like this may not mean much, but the same thing happens on election day. A lot of good normal people get hoodwinked by the media into voting contrary to their own views and core values. And without that media bias and this conning of voters, the left in this country, with its anti-American positions and policies, wouldn't have a chance.

Whose hoodwinked? If you buy into the scenario that the "economy is still booming", I would say your living in a bubble. The dollar is at all time lows, consumer confidence is down, housing has crashed, outsourcing overseas is at an all time high, retailers are expecting mediocre sells for the holidays at best. Higher fuel prices, higher gas prices, higher food prices, ect. are eating up middle to lower incomes discretionary spending. And the government is manipulating interest rates and the stock market to protect those that still have discretionary income.