Boaz on Media Bias

* I do think you have to be careful.

Cato and AEI and self-conciously libertarian and conservative organizations, respectively. Brookings is to the left of center in American politics, but it was not created explicitly to advance liberal ideas or causes. It is thus a more contestable point whether Brookings (for example) is accurately characterized as a liberal think tank in a way that it is not for Cato as a libertarian one. If the Center for American Progress were not given an ideological label when CATO or AEI or Heritage was, that would be a clearer sign of some sort of bias.

News isn’t about current events.

agnostic –
But what “liberal” groups are there with the prominence of “conservative” groups? What do you expect a search count to really tell you?

First, as I said earlier and others have mentioned – if you self-identify as “conservative”, as virtually all the major conservative think tanks do, then of course a paper is going to call you “conservative”. If you don’t self-identify as anything they’re much less likely to.

But even then, the article lines NELP and CBPP up against Cato and AEI. I could believe that NELP is as liberal as Cato and AEI are libertarian and conservative respectively. CBPP though? Maybe, but that’s getting a little murkier. Brookings? No way. No where near as liberal as AEI is conservative.

What are you looking for? A fifty-fifty split? What on Earth would lead you to expect that a fifty-fifty split is “fair”?

This is the same kind of logic that gets people riled up when it comes to climate change – if its not fifty-fifty then its not “fair”.

Who says that fifty-fifty makes sense as what’s “fair” in the first place?

I don’t really care about liberal media bias or whatever. I actually think the complaints are grossly exaggerated and mostly a self-serving complaint that some article doesn’t say what you want it to say, and thus you are going to call it “biased” because it doesn’t match your own bias. But even given the existence of media bias, which of course exists, the liberal bias of the NYT is balanced out by the conservative bias of the WSJ. And the liberal bias of MSNBC is balanced out by the conservative bias of Fox News (well actually outweighed since Fox is a joke at this point). If you don’t read other sources besides ideologically comforting ones, than you probably like the bias anyway. All around everyone wins. Bias is washed out for those that care. And those that want the bias are comforted. Sounds like Pareto optimality to me!

Also, I think what is going on is that conservative and libertarian institutions tend to identify and define themselves by their ideology – which is why they get the ideological label. Brookings Institution is obviously moderate center-left, but it doesn’t define themselves by that ideological label whereas Cato does define themselves by the libertarian label. I would assume the same goes for this “National Employment Law Project.” They probably don’t define themselves by an ideological movement, though they probably are ideological.

Also, do you really need to even identify what political spectrum an organization named “National Employment Law Project” identifies with?

ziel –
“Strengthen American democracy; Foster the economic and social welfare, security and opportunity of all Americans; and
Secure a more open, safe, prosperous and cooperative international system”

Is a liberal mission statement?!?!?!?

AEI gets more explicit in many of its events, speakers, and publications.

Nevertheless, I was very careful not to say that AEI self-identified as conservative and Gabriel only said they were “self-consciously” conservative, which I would agree with.

If you think Brookings is as liberal as AEI is conservative, I would suggest that you may not be very familiar with these two organizations.

Daniel – “expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise”

is a conservative mission statement?!?!?!?

Are you really incapable of deciphering what these mean? I’ll help:

“Strengthen American Democracy” – American democracy needs strengthening? Obviously this is meant to increase the relative power of the so-called “disenfranchised” – a typical liberal trope.

The second point uses the very term “social welfare”, a term that only has meaning for liberals – it’s meaningless to anyone who does not think that individuals are responsible for their own “social welfare.”

The third item – “a more…cooperative international system.” That’s called Internationalism – and that falls on the liberal side of the ledger.

I’m not saying they’re a leftist organization, but enough on the liberal side that to pretend otherwise is misleading. The other orgs mentioned in the article are clearly left wing – there’s no excuse there.

I’d say Brookings is probably a more reliable institution than AEI – I think their “scholars” are generally more scholarly (or rather Brookings has less out-and-out hacks than AEI has).

“Liberals” and “conservatives” does not refer to organizations, so you’re off in talking about which ones self-identify and which don’t. In plain English, “liberals” refers to a group of people, and so does “conservatives.”

The NYT makes over mention of the conservative group of people much more than they do the liberal group of people, and by a ratio of 2:1. I didn’t discover that the ratio was within some small range around 1:1 — 2:1 obviously shows a bias.

I’d expect the opposite bias for Fox News, and so would anyone else. Taking all major media outlets into account, what do you think the distribution of this ratio looks like? (Rhetorical question.)

Liberals don’t see liberal bias in the way fish don’t see water.

I think FredB is absolutely correct. I take this post as an observation and not a critique. Of course it is only acceptable if our (Bryan’s) side is more correct methodologically. If an irrational voter/public demands a media, it makes sense that the media that they demand is irrational.

If however, we are the ones that are irrational, the tables would seemingly be turned. A liberal might retort FredB by saying, Libertarians don’t fear bias the way that lemers don’t fear gravity.

Of course, the great thing about being libertarian is that the logical problem of, “no one can be unbiased, therefore I cannot be unbiased,” leads to only one philisophical conclusion…

Bias is usually displayed in what is not said verses is said. So the two examples are not proof by themselves but when you combine them with 100’s of other example their is clear proof. I am talking about the same news organization. I have listened to NPR news long enough to know they are socialist for the most part and I have listened almost an hour a day for years. For example never once with the health care debate did they ever get someone from even the middle to discuss their opposition. I must of listened to countless hours of reports and commentary on the issue. Not even regular contributors from Fortune or Forbes said anything about it before it passed. The news casters would only summarize the opposition argument or give a 10 second sound bit. Only after did it pass did I here someone from the opposition explain why it was bad and that was by a ranking congressman. I mean a lot of it was in somewhat neutral terms, but there was plenty of pro sections but never a real con section. However, that was until right before the vote. Then pretty much all you heard was people explaining why this organization was wrong to oppose and betrayed them, how great this was going to be, or how people really wanted this. My tax dollars at work, not a lot of difference from communist funded “news” I have listened to and read some. I guess I should not be surprised considering the 2008 democrat convention felt exactly like a communist party political event, and for the most part was covered like one to.

@Scrutineer

It’s hard to take that study seriously. Firstly, their proxy is incredibly crude. And it would force me to accept that the Wall Street Journal is “more liberal” than the NYT, and given how poorly the study is done I’m not ready to assume my eyes are lying to me.

For example, the Center for Responsive Politics is coded as being “liberal” by their proxy. There is nothing liberal or conservative about the institution, it just reports political contributions. Or the NRA is coded as just ever-so slightly conservative, with the ACLU being more conservative. Yeah, I’m sure the NRA is less conservative than the ACLU. I’m just sure of it.

Sorry, that study is a poorly done. It’s not surprising you’d get such absurdity using the dumb proxy they use.

Instead, newspaper journalists rely on the established “neutrality” of using “alleged” and similar words. This brings out the patina of journalistic integrity, but better demonstrates an unwillingness to do any research whatsoever . . . at least that would show an incumbent to be what is often quite accurately alleged: a liar, a backroom deal-maker, a two-face, a what-have-you.

I am a newspaper reporter, and this is absolutely correct, I’m afraid. I try not to use “he said” when the person is making a serious charge or an easily verifiable charge against someone else. However, it is not possible to cross-reference every claim someone makes in a story. Unless you want the news delivered a week late.