From 1964 to 1976 people in the media voted for the more liberal candidate from 81 to 94% of the time.

That, more than anything else could, tells you where their interests lie.

There, case settled!

Your comment also alerted me to the fact that UCLA has rearranged subdomains, breaking two links - which I just repaired.

1. Most media outlets are more liberal than the average U.S. voter.
2. With the exception of the WSJ, all of the media outlets included in their study are more conservative than the average democrat.
3. All media outlets are more liberal than the average Republican voter.
4. Fox News (ADA score = 40) is 23 points more liberal than the average Republican voter (ADA score = 17). Why don’t Republicans complain about the liberal bias on FOX News?
5. The “distance” (23 points) between FOX News and the average Republican voter is GREATER than the distance between the average U.S. voter and the NYT (20 points).

I think you missed the essential concept of the study: the liberal/conservative rankings are NOT based on democrat = liberal in any way.

The ratings are based upon the voting records as published by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). These ADA scores distribute the members of both houses on a scale from extremely liberal to extremely conservative.

So, Groseclose and Milyo are saying that the democratic party, which is at most only 40% liberal, defines liberal-ness.

Seems to me that there was an agenda - to defining the terms that would result in the desired results.

Another point worth mentioning is that the media would more than likely seem to have a liberal bias, even if it didn’t, since the duty of the media is to act as a watchdog and to question authority. Both liberals and the press share this characteristic, so people could reasonably infer a liberal bias even if no bias exists.

Thanks for your comment - all excellent points.

Apology - for unobvious reasons Spam Karma marked your comment for the moderation queue. That is why you did not see your comment immediately posted.

I’ll do some testing to determine why Spam Karma was suspicious.

The Groseclose-Milyo paper is fatally flawed and its conclusions are wrong.

TR decries linking of media newsreporting politics to that of elected congresscritters, and also wants to limit definitions of bias to the “accuracy” of reporting, as if bias only produces inaccuracy in what is said.

These form the basis for TR’s “there’s no such thing as liberal media bias” articles, and are specious.

As he admits, selection of what news to report is a huge issue, which he admits is also included in his definition of “accuracy.” Which logically leads to the conclusion that his preference for an “accuracy” measure is really no different from what G&M have measured. They simply measured non-critique citations of certain sources. Their methodology is not biased by the selection of which sources.

On the media-congress relationship, it’s an obfuscation to play with the idea that congress references “centrist” sources more. Play with the data and outcomes all you like, you still will get the same relative results, which is what counts in this case. Media news reporting is generally liberal — whether a lot or a little — rather than conservative.

And its no surprise. Rabidly liberal news reporters can’t possibly compensate for their own personal biases. Pew research leaves no doubt of the personal views of national reporters. How can national reporters so one-sided in their societal views (91% don’t think God-belief necessary to be moral, 88% think homosexuality should be accepted by society) think they can possibly remove their bias in reporting to people who think so differently than they? (Public: 40% and 51% on the same questions)

You say:
“As far as I can tell it is a non-contact sport - you posit various straw men and then knock them down. I couldn’t find anything logically connected to the actual content or methodology of the Groseclose/Milyo study.”

I am afraid you must not have read my response carefully. I don’t create any straw men at all. The examples I pick are cases that are directly related to the authors’ assumptions. As I point out repeatedly, the authors’ ACLU example is in itself a vindication of my critique of the first part of their paper. The authors’ example citing the median based approach is in itself a vindication of my critique of their approach. I simply borrowed their example and modified it with more numbers to make the point even more clearer.

Also, just because a paper is circulated among peers and receives no significant critiques that changes its position does not indicate that the paper is correct. History is replete with papers that were published after peer review, that were later shown to be incorrect. The real question is whether or not most of the people publishing research on media bias truly understand how to define the question of media bias (especially in the American context). It is possible to get carried away with a sophisticated study that produces interesting conclusions based on flawed assumptions.

Thanks.

The Groseclose-Milyo paper is fatally flawed and its conclusions are wrong
.
Regarding Lott/Hassett, I’m not sure which paper of theirs Sperry refers to, but if it is the paper “Is Newspaper Coverage of Economic Events Politically Biased?”, then that paper is also seriously flawed.

Fatally flawed, seriously flawed - rather strong declaratives!

If you’re not sure which Sperry paper is referenced, you could try your text search function - it is discussed several places in the body of the article and in the footnotes.

As to fatally flawed - I’ve read your post criticizing Groseclose/Milyo (G/M) carefully. As far as I can tell it is a non-contact sport - you posit various straw men and then knock them down. I couldn’t find anything logically connected to the actual content or methodology of the Groseclose/Milyo study. I spent enough time examining material on your site to conclude that your mission is to attempt to rebut any evidence of liberal media bias in the US news. Did I get that right? That’s an exhausting mission - I salute your energy.

Reading your criticism led me to scrutinize my own attempts to summarize G/M - it became quickly obvious that I had also misrepresented their study. While I attempted to explain the general concept to a non-mathematics reader I introduced my own spurious points. E.g., regarding quantifying the position of a centrist voter, which is interesting but quite peripheral to the logic of the study. That’s the same sort of error that tripped up Nunberg. I’ll fix it soon…

I’ve been searching on and off for the past year - unsuccessfully - for informed criticism that finds flaws with their work (the null search result doesn’t prove non-existence, possibly just lack of persistence). The response to the Geoff Nunberg critique is footnoted/referenced in the Dec 2004 Groseclose/Milyo - the Nunberg critique itself is linked in their response. While I thought the G/M response was conclusive, the absence of any counter-rebuttal does imply that Nunberg was satisfied that his points were covered in the reply. I should say absence of a counter-rebuttal by Nunberg in my search results.

There’s a volume of amateur discussion pro and con on the web - surprisingly, conservatives generally think the results are valid, liberals generally don’t like the results. Which tells us little about the strength of the G/M paper.

The commentary I’ve found by professionals with the statistics competence required to analyze G/M have been positive about the methodology (but I infer these profs agreed with the results, irrespective of the quality of the study). So I’m still looking… comments suggesting serious critiques would be appreciated.

Latstly, the following argument is similar to what I just criticized in the eriposte.com piece, in that it doesn’t make contact with the G/M content, but I’ll offer it anyway because it is less work:

The researchers published a working draft of this study 15 months before final publication. That draft was circulated and reviewed at Harvard, Yale and other economics grad schools, as I’ve found it in their archives.

I’ve not discussed with the researchers, but I do have a Ph.D. in mathematics and thus some research/grad school time behind me. That protocol is normally followed by researchers soliciting criticism and contributions before final publication - i.e., striving for the highest quality result they can manage. Since the final version is subtantively the same as the original as to methodology and central conclusions, that supports the inference that the professional community doesn’t have serious problems with this work.

The Groseclose-Milyo paper is fatally flawed and its conclusions are wrong.

A detailed response/critique is here:
http://media.eriposte.com/2-9.htm

Regarding Lott/Hassett, I’m not sure which paper of theirs Sperry refers to, but if it is the paper “Is Newspaper Coverage of Economic Events Politically Biased?”, then that paper is also seriously flawed. Rebuttal here:
http://media.eriposte.com/2-10.htm

Regards.

Thanks for the comment (2nd comment on WSJ). I realized I should add a footnote to the post with more extracts from the study.
Please see Footnote [1] Wall Street Journal left of CBS, New York Times?

except for that one major outlier.

I was a bit surprised to see WSJ left of NYT, but I think it is correct. The WSJ news pages are significantly left - the editorial content significantly right.