David, it may well be the case that some media bias is intentional. I see the value of the information I presented as helping us to become more aware of bias in the media information we consume. Although the Gallup poll results are broadly consistent with the UCLA study, it is clear that there is wide variation in the degree and direction of bias that individuals perceive. This information can help us to calibrate our judgments of bias in our information sources.

Michael, ultimately the media rankings are based on the ADA rankings of Congress, correlated via citation patterns. If Democrats moved to the right and changed their citation patterns while the media did not; and if the ADA ranked Democrats more conservatively as a result, then the methodology of the study would not change media scores.

A natural way to judge the quality of a measure is looking at the effect of changes in the underlying data. Suppose that there was a strong shift to the right in the Democratic Party. This would probably lead the media to have a stronger “liberal bias” using the methodology of the article. The right becoming more extreme would have the same effect. But there is no corresponding change in the behavior of the media. I t^hink it is very hard to make sense of the ranking.

Dave’s view that the truth has a liberal bias is certainly not inconsistent with the data…

More fundamentally, I believe that you are conflating two very different kinds of biases. Your site seems primarily devoted to correcting unconscious biases due to misapprehension of reality (or if your prefer Baysean probability theory). These types of biases are usually unintentional, and there’s little resistance to correcting them once the error is demonstrated. Your mission seems to be to help us find and use more accurate scales.

The bias in politics, journalism, advertising and education is of a very different type. Practitioners of this these trades have a vested interest in intentionally distorting their presentation of information to achieve results which they believe are desirable. They are not mistaken, they are simply lying. These professionals are like the butcher resting his thumb on the scale. Accuracy and precision are the very last thing they want.

I think we all know that politicians and advertisers lie. But, why should journalists and educators lie? After all, aren’t they devoted to the pursuit of truth? In fact, many journalists and educators enter these fields with the specific intention of attempting to achieve political or social change that they think is desirable.

In a recent speech broadcast on National Public Radio, Bill Moyer praised Antonio Gramsci and Michael Moore for showing the way for more “activitist” journalism. Michael Moore’s Farenheit 911 needs no introduction for the use of misinformation and bias in the pursuit of propaganda. Gramsci was an Italian communist who developed the concept of using the intelligensia to condition the proletariat for communism through the intentional manipulation of news, media and education.

Media and academic bias are real and obvious to any observer. Fortunately, they are less effective than intended thanks to the highly attuned bullshit detectors which most people deveop. If you can not yet spot phonies, here are three simple heuristic tests that will effectively spot a large fraction of intentional lies:

1) Is the action proposed in the interest of the person or organization making the appeal? In law this is called “cui bono?” (who gains?).

2) Does the person or organization actually abide by the actions they demand of others?

3) Does the person or organization making the appeal reject solutions to the problem they present if the solutions don’t agree with their overarching agenda?

Can these tests lead you astray? Of course they can, but so can the most exquisite analysis of covariance testing. As George Box noted many years ago, “All models are wrong, some models are useful.”

The news desk is not the editorial desk. The study ranks the news, not the editorials.

Read the news pages from both Investors Business Daily and The Wall Street Journal side by side for a week. The two papers clearly come at the same stories from different angles.

There is a reason why Noam Chomsky quotes approvingly from the pages of The Wall Street Journal, not Investors Business Daily.

I second that apology, for citing CBS in the first place – the first news link I found on the subject. I didn’t know much about it, or which way its bias goes ^_^

I feel strongly about these results, so won’t comment on the reliability or not of the methodology – the possibility for confirmation/disconfiration bias is too high.

What would be interesting would be to break down the general term “liberal”, which covers ideas like internationalism, paternalism, concern for the poor and obsession with fairness, interest in the arts, etc… and see what idea is the most significant in giving this liberal bias to the media. And is it the same liberal bias in the WSJ as the NTY?

The WSJ is interesting here. If the editorial pages do in fact bear some relation to the news content, my guess is that what makes it liberal is reporting on those issues where liberal overlap with libertarian – or maybe where liberals overlap with the rich. Can someone who knows the WSJ well give me an opinion on this?

the truth has a well-known liberal bias.
I think it does – but only because of the social conservatives. They are fond of making unsupported pronouncements on various issues (“gay marriage causes the breakdown of the family”; “crime is caused by a lack of a strong father figure”) and are relatively mainstream in conservatism. Their equivalent on the hard left are less influential, and tend to make pronouncements that are harder to deny (“free trade depresses the wages of American workers!” – a statement that is very misleading, but technically correct in the short term). Maybe the liberal deference to experts means that most quoted experts will indeed follow liberal lines?

Remove the social conservatives, and reality may well have a conservative bias.

I believe media bias is separate from the cognitive biases all humans are burdened with, the kind of things you guys discuss here. My theory would be that political biases are the cumulative effect of the many cognitive biases outlined in academic literature.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a libertarian/conservative. I think it’s pretty obvious to most that the major US media organizations are consitently biased in terms of how they characterize events, sources, and people, as well as what issues they select to report. End of disclosure.

I think it’s telling how liberals scream and howl whenever this issue is raised. The discussion quickly becomes ad hominem attacks on Rupert Murdoch or Matt Drudge (or others). They don’t even pretend to consider if it’s true.

The libertarian side of me says that CBS News and the New York Times have every right in the world to slant the news as far left as they please. Wherever there is an open market for ideas and low barriers to entry, such as in cable, internet, or radio, the market will respond. I just wish every media outlet, right and left, would fess up to their political leanings. It seems that only relatively recently in the history of the media, post WWII perhaps, that they all pretend to be neutral. In the past, newspapers or journals were clearly pro-union or pro-prohibition, or whatever. I belive we’d be better served if outlets did what they used to, wear their political leanings on their sleeves.

But maybe the bigger problem is political bias in the academy, but that’s a different can of worms!