Does the media have a left-wing bias?

Question

"... identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties."

Based on this sample provided by MSNBC, it seems that journalists are overwhelmingly liberal. (This fact was already clear to me based on my exposure to students of the Journalism school while I was getting my graduate degree)

Do you believe that journalists are able to overcome their personal (and mostly left leaning) biases and report balanced news?
Or, do you think that personal beliefs influence their writing and reporting, resulting in a leftward biased media?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485

Answer 1

There is a lot of honesty and openness out there (as witnessed by the fact that this report was released).

However, it is undeniable that most journalists have a tendency to view events from a liberal perspective and slant the news to accommodate that bias. (Sometimes the story is slanted slightly; sometimes it is slanted a LOT (leaving out important facts, stating things out of order, so they seem to mean something that isn't true, etc.).)

Of course any opinion that the media are biased has to answer the question "biased relative to what?" Certainly most American media aren't to the left of Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, so they are biased to the RIGHT relative to those particular individuals.

I think the question is whether the media are biased relative to the American public. And since the American public represents a broad spectrum of views, that question will have a different answer for each individual, each topic, and each member of the media.

However, if you take an overall average of all Americans' views, all stories in the news, and all media outlets, I think that the average media outlet, reporting the average story, takes a viewpoint that is SOMEWHAT more liberal/left-leaning than the average American. Obviously, Fox News is more conservative/right-leaning than the average American. But if you bring in the slight left lean of the other news on TV, and the very liberal positions of many newspapers (offset somewhat by right-wing newspapers), I still think that the average media outlet comes out to the left of the average American.

Incidentally, Comedy Central is an example of a media source that leans to the left. I'm referring to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report. Jon Stewart pretty much admits that he is very liberal, although he sometimes hides behind the idea that Comedy Central isn't really doing news, so he can say whatever he wants. But it is really obnoxious to watch him interview Al Gore and just fall all over himself to praise the former Vice President and not ask any tough questions. Then the next night he will talk to someone with a conservative viewpoint, and make the questions as tough as he can, interrupt constantly, state his own viewpoint, dismiss the guest's views by making irrelevant wisecracks (we're not really a news show, you know), and by playing to his "stoned slacker" audience (that's his term) to get them the crowd to applaud for views opposing those of the guest. In short, "fair and balanced" he's not.

Then there's Stephen Colbert who poses as a spokesman for the far right. But the standing joke is that he's wrong about everything he says, so you laugh at him, fully aware that underneath his conservative veneer, he's a liberal who is laughing right along with you.

But the really discouraging thing is that Comedy Central was approached by a comedian who wanted to do a comedy news show that would put a conservative slant on the news. He was sent packing because "that would not fit without network's image."

So there you have it. You can argue about whether the real news is slanted, but Comedy Central has clearly decided that its fake news WILL be slanted.

Answer 2

Newsbusters? You might take a look at the biases of your own sources there, before you trust them to comment on others :) Still, this is a bit more thought than is typically put into a "the media is biased" question, so I'll bite. MSNBC and NPR make no bones about their left-wing bias - they're basically the left's equivalent of FOX and talk radio. As for NBC (as well as ABC and CBS), they're prime-time television news. Prime-time TV doesn't have a liberal or conservative bias; they have an idiocy bias. That Palin story was likely followed up with a fluff piece about a waterskiing squirrel, 15 minutes of someone reading the weather, and perhaps a piece on the Kardashians. Those shows cater to people who aren't really interested in news at all - they just want a brief spot of entertainment, and they tend to like celebrities, cute things, and scary stories. So really, you've got a couple of people who are biased toward the left (and are very up-front about that), a couple who are biased toward the right, and many, many sources that aren't biased toward the left OR the right - but which may be aimed toward people with deeper or shallower interests in news. I've always used the rule of thumb that if you're WATCHING (as opposed to READING) your news, you've already put yourself in the demographic of people with limited attention spans, so you shouldn't expect much out of your sources.

Answer 3

The logic that I see above would be like a part of the German government saying that Nazis were out of control and these people would dismiss it on the idea if it were true then it won't be published. The retort would be that our news media is not Germany and you would be right. So accept the idea that our media can criticize itself by admitting to a lopsided liberal bias. The Columbia school of Journalism (#1 in the area) has a 15 to 1 liberal bias in professors.

Let me explain by example; I live near KCMO and the only paper here is the Kansas City Star. The Star is very liberally biased. The Star refuses to use the term "illegal alien" or illegal anything. A story runs that three men are found dead in a field northeast of town. The field is a marijuana field and the men are "hispanic". I called the the reporter and asked the legal status of the men and the reporter told me she didn't know. I asked their nationally and she said she didn't know. After a couple of minutes she admitted that the men were Mexican and they were illegally in this country. I asked why she didn't print this and she told me that the editor didn't think that part of the story was germane. If they had found three dead Germans, Russians, or Koreans in this country illegally I would think that was germane. They reported that four women speaking only Chinese were arrested for prostitution in an apartment. The reporter admitted that they were in the country illegally but no one at the paper was interested how they got here or who sponsored them.
Why did Bill Clinton get impeached? Most people will say that he lied about sex because that is how the media spun it. He obstructed justice, suborned perjury, and lied in front of a grand jury.
What did Scooter Libby do? Most people will say that he outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. He did not. He was convicted of lying in front of a grand jury. He got 30 months, Clinton made $50 million making speeches to Arabs and Communist Chinese.
A story appeared today in the paper about a woman appointed to a committee who is a member of the Minutemen. The story was front page, it asked five different ways what was a minute man. The last paragraph of the front page started quoting someone describing vigilantes. If you went to page 4 then you found out that she was part of the legislative arm of the minutemen. It also contested the notion that minutemen were vigilantes. This was all on page 4. My old journalism teacher (MU) also said that most people don't look at the next paper so get you point in on page one.

Answer 4

Where the media leans is a completely subjective subject. Anyone who is conservative will believe that most media is liberal, while people who are liberal feel the media is conservative. Even stations who call themselves "Fair and Balanced" will yell at and turn off the microphones of guests that disbelieve their propaganda. The only non biased media is a media that avoids answering the "Whys" and refuses to use adjectives. CNN seems to do well with that, while MS NBC is more liberal. But that is completely overshadowed by FOX News which is EXTREMELY biased. Rupert Murdock (owner of FOX) is even farther to the right than Bush, and uses his media outlet to practice his freedom of speech. He has that right, but we must understand that FOX is not news, it is only a 24 hour EDITORIAL channel. If it was fair and balanced they wouldn't have to repeat "Fair and Balanced" 20 times an hour to convince the uneducated masses. The people would just know. I mean look at Hannity and Colmes. Hannity has the captain of the football squad looks, while they did their best to find a sniveling weakling who can not oppose Hannity to symbolize the left.

Answer 5

Frankly, I think what motivates the media is quite simple: $$$$. They report what the people want to hear. Fox News knows that the majority of its listeners are conservative so they have a right wing bent. CNN knows that a majority of Americans want a timetable for Iraq so they report on all the ways this may or may not happen. If the press was only left wing they would not have always called Reagan "the great communicator".

Answer 6

It has a CORPORATE BIAS!!! The "media"...ALL 150 "channels" on your cable/satellite box...are owned by FOUR Corporations (GE, Westinghouse, Disney (psyops specialists and "News" (Propaganda) Corp). ALL these corporations are also "defense" contractors or own "subsidiaries" or have "partner" companies that are in the defense and/or oil "business".

Even the "entertainment" has been honed to develop a "group think...hive mentality" and to focus "public opinion" narrowly to achieve the corporations "goals"...FOR INSTANCE...the myth that the "media" has a "liberal" bias when in FACT the "media" is a puppet show to train the sheeple to think the corporate way. The "goal" is total World Domination and the complete enslavement of every person on earth...the ultimate feudal empire...a "New World Order".

Answer 7

Yep, but think about this way:

Journalists job is to hunt out the corruption in politics, they seem to think the Dems and liberals are doing things better. Maybe theyre on to something?

I personally assume that any media is going to be biased. It isnt usually hard to tell which ones try to be unbiased and which ones dont bother. However, that is why I watch both Fox and CNN, then go online and try to read a few more accounts of the story. I also try to find the actual legal wording of the laws they refer to since all media outlets love to reword things to imply something totally different.

All media is inherently dishonest, but if you know that going into it you can still make informed decisions.


John::: That has little to do with bias or being a traitor. That has to do with the media being about freedom of information and about open door policies for the gov't. The media is seperate from the gov't so that the gov't can be held accountable. This gov't makes it clear that that is not desired. They have no desire to reveal their secrets, so they are the natural enemy of the media. If anyone is the traitor here, I say it is the one who wants to rule without telling the People (supposedly we're in charge of the country, remember?) what is going on.

Answer 8

i think it is possible to report the news and moderate political discussion in a deatched way, like Tim Russert does on meet the press; but many journalists no longer do this 100% of the time.

fox news is clearly to the right, but thats a drop in the ocean of liberal-television news, and really tv media in general. print media is also very much to the left, as are most journalism schools. talk radio is to the right because its the last place where govt regulation is at a bare minimum; and people can get away with having opinions that dont fall in line with the leftist mindset of American media.

Answer 9

You can't seriously be asking this question. The media is owned by the same corporations that own the politicians. In other words, the media is about as left-wing as Hillary Clinton. Considering that she is a racist warmonger, that amount is none!

Answer 10

Yes, everyone is biased in some way. And most of the media is biased towards to the left. There are some conservative talk shows here and there, but many of the large media companies and newspapers are left-leaning.