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Bong Lover on 15 May 2013
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Kasz216 said:
Bong Lover said:

Not that this is going anywhere, but the liberal media bias thing is a huge red herring that conservastives would do well to reject as soon as possible. They won't and they will cling onto the liberal media monster to explain away everything under the sun.

In reality, there is no liberal media bias. It's true that more jourtnalists identify as liberals then conservatives, and this is where this ongoing myth always goes to the well. It's based on statments like "Their political views will subconciously slant coverage" to more outright claim of a grand liberal agenda to mislead the public.

Instead of going by this kind of meta information, look up the actual research that is done on the subject and one sees that the coverage is almost completely even. There is nothing in the data of actual coverage that shows any significant liberal bias in US media. It just isn't there.

So where does the myth come from? The liberal bias myth is itself an example of bias, in this case confirmation bias. It's a theory many people want to believe, so they will give much more weight to information that supports the theory then information that denies it. An example of this is on display in the quoted post where an article from the Meda Research Center is presented as some sort of credible proof for a liberal media bias.


Actually... the research that's done on the subject often shows the same thing.  At least when looking at the content, rather then how much content exists.  For example... all the news networks are reporting about Benghazi... which would count under most studies as a "Conservative news story."   Though, is it when the reporters and guests all talk about how it's a non issue?

It's the same thing as stories about women in the Media... the actual numbers are fairly favorable... the content however?  Generally sort of dismissive and riddled with code words.

 

Most media will reach the center... but it's worth noting... that the actual media center is left of the actual center of peoples beliefs.

I mean, a decent example i'd say is gay rights.  I've supported gay rights longer then most people have... and it isn't hard to see that gay rights have gotten MUCH better media coverage over the years then the number of people who supported gay marriage would of suggested.  Why?  The meida is generally supportive of gay rights.   Therefore reports about "Gay's ruining morality" and other such bullshit only existed on fringe rightwing networks.... even when that was what the majority of Americans believed.   While things about people being discriminating against gays was often talked about... even when it was the law of the land... (and the popular law of the land.)

Outside of stories about how it's suddenly way more popular.  I'd argue that gay marriage coverage hasn't changed.  Which, I support gay marriage and seeing more conservative coverage of it would of made me want to bash myself in the head with a brick, but i'm not so myopic to pretend the cause in particular i supported got an advantage as far as how the media treated it.

 

Another example is abortion rights.  Most people are for abortion rights... but also for stricter limits on abortion.  News generally slants towards full choice (as most news reporters do) and a few right wing people go the whole "Pro Life" route.  Nobody argues or reports  for the middle ground most people wants.

Also, as for the Media Research Center.  It was simply a good summary of a bunch of research that does exist.

Just a couple of things:

Research on this type of thing does not simpy say that this topic is conservative and this topic is liberal and tally up the number of articles. They determine what they describe as tone, which is an attempt to establish the slant of the article. That means there will be a number of conservative leaning articles on Benghazi, and a number of liberal leaning articles on Bengazhi.

As for the Media Reserch Center, you should not use any of their material to try to make a point about media bias. It's a hyperconservative orgnization with just one agenda: Prove and counteract liberal bias in media. Their methodology is laughably unscientific and their 'research' is 100% partisan.

Finally. It's possible that the media strive towards a center that is slightly left of the true political center in the US. My point is that this shift is very small if there at all, and certainly this bias gap is much smaller than the bias people themselves have when reading the news. In short, the concept of a liberal media conspiracy is a dead end. There's no real proof for any significant bias and it's extremely dabatable how much impact this bias would have anyway.