Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind by Groseclose PhD Tim

Author:Groseclose PhD, Tim
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2011-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

Thus, to summarize the third lesson, if you want a good idea of what it means to be centrist in America, you won’t find it in New York City, nor in Washington County, Utah. The key is visit a few NASCAR counties, or a place like Reno, Long Island, Tucson, or Dallas.

13. “Wise Men from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Say…”

JUST BECAUSE JOURNALISTS’ personal opinions are liberal, so goes a common claim, that doesn’t mean that their reporting will be biased. As Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate, notes, “But—for the millionth time!—an opinion is not a bias! The fact that reporters tend to be liberal says nothing one way or another about their tendency to be biased.”1

I agree with Kinsley. The survey evidence that I presented in earlier chapters does not prove that the reporting of journalists is biased. Further, to some extent, I also agree with the “corporate media” theorists: That is, many corporate bosses pressure their journalists not to report in the far-left manner the journalists desire. This may happen because the boss is conservative and has a personal stake in the news that his company reports. More benignly, he may want to maximize profits, which usually means reporting the way his moderate consumers desire.

I also agree with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She has noted, “Another explanation would hold that norms of journalism, including ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’ blunt whatever biases exist.”2

In sum, although the personal views of journalists, in general, pull their reporting to the left, countervailing forces pull their reporting the other way—toward the center, and maybe even past the center to the right.

But even if such countervailing forces exist, that by no means implies that they are stronger than the personal views of the journalist. Notwithstanding the claims of the far left—even if the journalist works for a corporation, and even if her boss is conservative—this does not end the argument. The net effect of all the forces is an empirical question.

And the only way to answer that question is to examine the content of the media. As Don Quixote noted, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

This and the next three chapters are devoted to such proof of the pudding. I discuss three methods, all of which measure the bias of the content of the media.

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