Topic: Measuring Liberal Media Bias: An Interview with Tim Groseclose

[jpatrickham]

Monday, 24 October 2011 17:52 Roger Aronoff

 
"Liberal media bias is a subject we at Accuracy in Media confront on a daily basis. We identify examples, explain the significance, and present facts, figures and informed opinions that the media usually choose to ignore. In a recent interview with AIM, Tim Groseclose discussed his recent book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.

Groseclose is a professor of political science and economics at UCLA and has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slants of media outlets.

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He does this by measuring the political content of the news, and converting that content into an “SQ,” or “Slant Quotient,” of the outlet. To determine bias, he compares SQs of news outlets to the “PQs,” or “Political Quotients,” of voters and politicians. In the book, Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points on a scale of 100. Groseclose attempts to quantify and understand liberal media bias by applying rigorous academic standards.

For the most part, Groseclose hits the nail on the head. He points to studies that demonstrate that a high percentage of reporters vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, and their political donations reflect that. He talks about how much more often liberal think tanks are cited as sources than conservative ones, and how conservative sources are identified by their political leanings far more often than the liberal ones.

He brings a very interesting dimension to the discussion, yet I think that in some ways, by adhering to these academic standards, the forest is missed for some of the trees. For example, he identifies Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report as “a left-leaning centrist,” mainly because so many of the publications he links to are liberal. But I don’t find that to be an accurate assessment. I see his point, and how he arrives at it, but it strikes me that Drudge is generally linking to these articles because, as we often demonstrate, there are facts and quotes in these articles that support the conservative viewpoint, or expose the liberal hypocrisy, if only those points were emphasized rather than buried in the linked stories."

http://www.rightsidenews.com/2011102414791/life-and-science/culture-wars/measuring-liberal-media-bias-an-interview-with-tim-groseclose.html?

[AlanS]

We've know this for years, so this is just now news? Did taxpayers fund the study?

[Libertas]

This is a private outfit so I doubt taxpayer funds are behind this.

http://www.aim.org/

And they go back quite a ways...

http://www.aim.org/about/history-of-aim/

And, you have to take Wiki with a large grain of salt when they start commenting on anything political, but right/wrong/indifferent AIM had a hand in pushing the Vice Foster/Fort Marcy Park story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_in_Media

I kinda like how they went after Fox on Globull Warming though!

[jpatrickham]

If anyone doesn't know the Mainstream Media is slanted, then they are STUPID!
That ain't the problem, no one is doing anything about it, that is the problem!

[Libertas]

As long as we have Ruling Class clowns dominating the GOP there is little impetus to change that paradigm...they may spout off now and then about bias, but they are impotent to do jack squat about it.  I challenged the big shots in MN GOP over a decade ago to put their money where their mouth was and start pooling resources to establish alternative conservative media enterprises (TV, radio, print/online media) to get messages out without having to go through the liberal media lens...these Club for Growth types didn't even have the courtesy to respond with an F-U!

Gutless cowards, that's what constitutes the vast majority of Repub's...completely gutless.  They think they can manipulate the master manipulators!  Idiots!

[jpatrickham]

As long as we have Ruling Class clowns dominating the GOP there is little impetus to change that paradigm...they may spout off now and then about bias, but they are impotent to do jack squat about it.  I challenged the big shots in MN GOP over a decade ago to put their money where their mouth was and start pooling resources to establish alternative conservative media enterprises (TV, radio, print/online media) to get messages out without having to go through the liberal media lens...these Club for Growth types didn't even have the courtesy to respond with an F-U!

Gutless cowards, that's what constitutes the vast majority of Repub's...completely gutless.  They think they can manipulate the master manipulators!  Idiots!

A lot of what you say is reason I wouldn't mind the threat of a real Conservative Third Party if things don't change. Democrats don't care they have Communists, and Anarchists aboard. All Politics are Local to them anyhow. To many clown RINOs in the Republican Party, and they need to disappear, like yesterday!