A soon to be published study on the media from UCLA confirms that the existence of media bias. The study led by UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo a economist and public policy scholar from the University of Missouri ranked the news pages of The Wall Street Journal as the number one left leaning media outlet followed by the CBS Evening News, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times in that order.
For some readers ranking the Journal as the number one liberal outlet might be a surprise but not to long time readers who have noticed the divergence of the news department from their conservative editorial brethren.
What is surprising is that the professors rank the Drudge Report as left of center based on articles Drudge lists on other web sites and not the material that Drudge himself writes. Groseclose says the ranking is a reflection of the overall bias of the media.
As for centrist outlets, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer topped the list followed by CNN’s NewsNight With Aaron Brown(replaced by Anderson Cooper), Good Morning America and Special Report With Britt Hume from FOX News. The study was conducted by using the Americans for Democratic Action congressional ratings and calculating an average rating of the U.S. voter.
The professors then used 21 research assistants spilt evenly between conservatives and liberals to review U.S. media coverage for the past 10 years and tallied the number of references to think tanks and public policy organizations like the NAACP on the left or the Heritage Foundation on the right. They then repeated this process with the speeches of the lawmakers to come up with a score.
In the end out of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 were deemed left of center and 1 (Special Report With Britt Hume) as right of center.
The liberals will surely try and ignore or discredit this study as they have tried to do with previous polls and studies showing a liberal bias. But it’s pretty had to refute when it comes from academia and when the basis of the study are the ADA rankings, neither of which are known for the conservative streak.
Don Irvine is the Chairman of Accuracy in Media, Accuracy in Academia’s sister organization.
