Pew Research Journalism Project has a slightly interesting survey out:
Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives:
- Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.
- Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.
- Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.
- Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.
By contrast, those with consistently liberal views:
- Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some – like NPR and the New York Times– that others use far less.
- Express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. NPR, PBS and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals.
- Are more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or “defriend” someone on a social network – as well as to end a personal friendship – because of politics.
- Are more likely to follow issue-based groups, rather than political parties or candidates, in their Facebook feeds.
The survey results were characterized in this manner at HuffPo Politics:
Conservatives are more likely to distrust news sources that don’t reflect their point of view, the study said.
The delicious irony is in how liberals continue to fail to perceive the obvious: That the reason why conservatives trust “one” major news source than “trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured”, is for similar reasons as to why liberals gravitate toward all those other news outlets. The other ones- NPR, NYTimes, MSNBC, etc.- tilt center-left to far left. FOX News is the only cable news network that leans conservative.
What is deeply frustrating is in how so many liberals fail to see the bias in mainstream publications like the NYTimes, CBS, NPR, WaPo, etc. They tend to think of these news organizations as non-biased, non-partisan, and objective in their straight news coverage- and accurate (Re: “Facts have a liberal bias.“).
The Pew Research survey itself fails to draw this conclusion:
When it comes to choosing a media source for political news, conservatives orient strongly around Fox News. Nearly half of consistent conservatives (47%) name it as their main source for government and political news, as do almost a third (31%) of those with mostly conservative views. No other sources come close.
Consistent liberals, on the other hand, volunteer a wider range of main sources for political news – no source is named by more than 15% of consistent liberals and 20% of those who are mostly liberal. Still, consistent liberals are more than twice as likely as web-using adults overall to name NPR (13% vs. 5%), MSNBC (12% vs. 4%) and the New York Times (10% vs. 3%) as their top source for political news.
This “wider range of main sources for political news” makes it sound like liberals are much more exposed to diverse news and worldly-wise because of it; however, this is just not the case. Not only do the news outlets these self-identified liberals tend to like, lean with a leftward tilt; but in some cases, they are merely parroting/intellectual-plagiarizing from one another. Of course this happens with the AP and Reuters. But it also occurs when you have a traditionally very influential paper like the NYTimes. It reports a certain story, and other outlets- from national to regional and localized rags- essentially parrots and cites what was written in the NYTimes.
A great example of this type of group-think occurrence happened when the 2007-8 Pentagon-funded study, The Iraqi Perspectives Project, was mischaracterized by McClatchy’s reporter, Warren Strobel, who wrote about an important report that he hadn’t even read, because it hadn’t been released yet. Other news organizations ceased upon the same bullet points, which prompted the Pentagon to release the study itself, because reporters were mischaracterizing the actual findings.
As Scott wrote back in March ’08:
His [Mark Eichenlaub of Regime of Terror fame]article highlights in perfectly plain sight just how a single, biased writer will bite on a rumor from a single anonymous source about a report that hadn’t even been revealed, and then a total falsehood becomes propagated by the Old Media. When the actual report came out, anyone and everyone reading it could see that it listed innumerable documented and confirmed connections between Saddam’s regime and the network of terror groups called, Al Queda.
~~~ This one is definitely worth the read. Think about what it shows: NO ONE in the McLatchy Newspaper chain of editors, no one at ABC, no one at the New York Times, no one at CNN, no one at the Washington Post, no one at AFP, and no one at any of the blogosphere sites that posted the original article actually read the report. NONE. Old Media/traditional media outlets are supposed to be special because they have armies of fact checkers yet no one in any of these armies ever saw the actual report. The actual report contradicts the original article at almost every turn.
Is there a fact checker anywhere, or have these outlets collapsed into rumor parrots? Were it not for spellcheck, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a spelling error from the original made it to all the outlets. Would yuo?
For the record, Scott took the time to read the entire report, in blogging about it. So did Mata. I’ve only read parts. And unlike so many journalists who are not experts on the topic, Scott is, having read a great number of government documents, declassified intell reports, etc., going directly to the source and not always relying upon the filter of a journalist’s reporting. Scott’s authored a couple of books worth checking out on Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda; and on Iraq.
The report described in the article was finally released to the public, and its contents are almost completely contrary to the leaked “article” that described it beforehand.
In fact, if anything this new study should finally put to rest the false perception that Saddam’s regime was too secular to work with radical Islamic holy warriors, and it should be a genuine wake up call for people who continue to ignore the threat posed by state-sponsors of terror like Saddam Hussein once was.
To this day, due to the strength and power of mainstream media, most people are unaware of Saddam’s ties to Islamic terror and have simply been told, “There was no al Qaeda in Iraq before 9/11” or before OIF. They were led to believe that it was all just a Wolfowitz/Feith/Cheney neocon fantasy/fabrication. A recent example of the influence and reach of the NYTimes is in seeing how many people expressed shock when Chivers article came out, talking about chemical weapons found in Iraq that so many people apparently were unaware of.
They were unaware, probably because they read only the wide diversity of liberal news outlets.
Further on in the Pew study report:
Liberals, overall, trust a much larger mix of news outlets than others do. Of the 36 different outlets considered, 28 are more trusted than distrusted by consistent liberals. Just eight earn higher shares of distrust than trust. Still, among those eight, the levels of distrust can be high: fully 81% of consistent liberals distrust Fox News, and 75% distrust the Rush Limbaugh Show.
This is just silly. Rush Limbaugh?! Rush Limbaugh is a pundit, openly and unashamedly partisan. He is not “straight news” but more like the op-ed section of a newsrag. Why are they including him and others like John Stewart and Stephen Colbert as a source for news? And when one looks at the filthy laundry list of “36 different outlets”, a big “duh” as to why they trust 28 of them.
Politifact characterizes this Pew point, this way: Pew study finds Rush Limbaugh least trustworthy news source. But then, Politifact is another outlet that should be better self-labeled as “PolitiPartisan”. It would be the honest thing to do.
Liberals with a wider swath of media outlets to trust from just means they have a wider echo chamber for them to inhabit. That’s all.
Hot Air’s Allahpundit’s takeaway from this is that liberals really are jerks (on account of being defriended for political views expressed on Facebook- whee!).
Bernard Goldberg’s Arrogance is a great read for any doubting Toms out there in regards to liberal bias in modern, mainstream journalism.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
@retire05 #145:
“When? Back up that claim.”
YOUR REQUEST IS DENIED.
I’m not playing that game with you anymore.
The last time I did as you asked and provided you with the requested information, and then requested the same from you, your response was that you had better things to do than waste YOUR time digging through old posts, and that I should do my OWN research.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on ME.
No thanks, Sweetheart.
Not this time.
@George+Wells:
Then we can all legitimately assume you are telling another one of your fairy tales.
@George+Wells:
Oh, come on, Geroge. Screening? Who is it you think does the shooting, passengers? Someone that turns suddenly violent at the sight of a blackboard?
These are people that are bound and determine, however they have rationalized it, to do what they are about to do. Signs, locked doors, rules and regulations do not stop them. A check point will not stop them unless it is manned by an armed guard… but then you wouldn’t need the screening, would you?
Or, perhaps on the “No Guns” sign, we could put an additional sign that says “Pretty Please”? Would that be worth a try?
Not more aggressively. Just enforced. Note that in New York City they curtailed violent crime by employing “stop and frisk”. Now, the liberal mayor of New York stopped that successful practice, not wanting to violate the rights of thugs; better to violate the rights of law abiding citizens by denying them the right to defend themselves.
Do Obama, Holder, Jackson, Lee and Sharpton ever speak out against blacks shooting blacks? Do they ever demand that people in those neighborhoods step up and cooperate with authorities to stop gang violence, drug trade and random shootings? No, they spend their time blaming white people and “income inequality” which liberalism exacerbates.
Yeah, you are fighting a losing battle… because you are wrong.
@Bill:
How many children have been slaughtered in Chicago just this year alone? And this weekend, two children, one age two and one age four, were slaughtered in St. Louis. Those kids were not safe on their own streets. They would have been safer in a school.
Liberals are quick to tell conservatives “Hey, if you don’t support abortion, don’t have one.” Yet, when it comes to the Second Amendment, they would try every trick in the book to prevent even law abiding citizens from having a firearm. The mantra then becomes “Hey, I don’t want a firearm and I don’t want you to have one, either.
My guess is that more children will die in the next year from Obama’s open border policy and the EV-D68 virus brought across our open borders. Maybe the liberals can legislate EV-D68 Free Zones.
@retire05: See, these deaths are meaningless because they cannot be used by the left for political gain. What is most disgusting is that they do not realize anyone notices this and they keep doing it, carrying out their self-righteous pretensions. For, to address this violence, the have to address those committing the violence and the cause of the violence. Addressing those committing the violence would weaken their voting base and addressing the cause of the violence would be an admission of ideological failure.
Though more legal gun ownership has not, as the liberal logic would suggest, resulted in more gun violence, the left continues to pursue more gun restrictions on legal ownership. Even though the fact that more gun ownership could be a contributing factor to a drastic reduction in gun crime, the left pursues more restrictions on legal ownership. Why, it’s almost as if restricting ownership, despite the proven fact that when legal ownership is banned, what is left is ILLEGAL ownership and, along with that, rampant crime, the left wants more than anything else (including public safety) gun ownership restrictions.
Simply put, the left fails.
After each and every shooting like this last on in Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Washington state, there are renewed calls for more restrictive gun laws.
This was no exception.
The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility is backing Initiative 594.
But, as in EVERY case like this one, there is an interesting point:
This deplorable incident would not have been stopped by I-594.
(In fact every law proposed does NOTHING to stop these shootings.)
What we did learn, in many cases, was that a few people saw something going wrong with the individual before the incident.
But they didn’t act before the fact.
They hadn’t ”connected the dots,” about where their acquaintance might go.
Maybe the idea of ”better safe than sorry,” should be encouraged.
Let’s talk about CBS, trusted by most liberals, few conservatives.
A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a “government-related entity” that planted classified documents on her computer.
The most shocking finding was the discovery of three classified documents that were “buried deep in her computer’s operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.
How easy she would have been to set up, had Obama supporters in gov’t needed to.
But CBS lost interest in her coverage of the deadly attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, and killed her stories of the federal “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal, saving them the need to frame her.
Looking at this despicable behavior, how is it possible to consider CBS as a ”trustworthy” news source?
Thousands of citizens are killed a year by illegal immigrants. What does the left do about that?
Why, they encourage more illegal immigration, release dangerous illegal immigrants from jail and make excuses for the problem.
Of course, a gun will NEVER vote for a liberal, so they have nothing to lose by banning them.
Here’s part of the problem (as Bill or someone also brought up a zillion comments ago):
It’s the covert bias, that’s not being acknowledged; also, it’s bizarre to me that they are mixing as “news” sources, mainstream straight news outlets with political pundits weighing in on the straight news who are open about their political bias and perspective.
Specifically, the WSJ op-ed pages. That leans conservative. The rest of the rag does not.
I haven’t looked at what questions were asked the respondents. But speaking for myself, I read all of these and rely upon them to report what’s going on in the world. They do some important work. I get useful information from them, even if filtered through a liberal’s perspective/perception of the events they are reporting on.
The fact that Salon can’t even see the leftward tilt of the NYTimes, CBS, etc. is part of the problem; but then….oh, yes…Salon is hardly centrist, calling-it-straight-down-the-middle politically, itself now, is it?
It would be far more honest if journalists and newspapers simply admitted openly in which direction they lean, politically.
@Wordsmith: To me the problem is determining what is the middle. What is the baseline used to determine whether a media is right or left–and how far. Who makes this determination?
Can there be agreement on what is fair and balanced? I might say CNN. , some one else FOX, another MacNeill Lehrer. If someone makes a determination to watch only one or two sources of news they are NOT going to be fair and balanced themselves.
@Wordsmith:
Weasel Zippers has done yeoman’s work in tracking the insanity that is Salon.com:
http://weaselzippers.us/?s=Salon
Now we have Sharyl Attkinsson coming out with her book revealing how CBS would dump her stories (she did fantastic work on the Fast and Furious scandal) in order to protect the current Administration. We have heard reporters complain that this Administration is the most secretive in our history (I would disagree with that; FDR absolutely controlled the media, locking out those journalists who questioned the wisdom/legality of the New Deal, going so far as to persecute William Randolph Hurst while the FDR Administration condemned Hitler for controlling the press as they did the same) and what we have now is the Walter Philosophy of Journalism on steroids. Journalism students are now taught that the Gods of Journalism, Walter Lippman, Walter Duranty and Walter Cronkite, were right and it is a journalist’s duty to shape the news and create opinion, not report the news in an unbiased fashion.
Print media is a dying industry. Cable news now shapes public opinion, and because there is one cable channel, Fox, to go up against the alphabet cable behemoth, the left is having a snit fit. How dare anyone present a opposing view point? But the truth can be found, and usually it is the conservative bloggers that are stepping up to the plate and demanding true reporting. No wonder the Democrats want to go after Drudge, which is nothing more than a clearing house for other articles. Can’t have the unwashed masses knowing what is really going on.
@Rich Wheeler:
Quite obviously the “middle” is to practice professional integrity and treat news as if it were a science of information gathering. Report each news story honestly and completely with no political bias whatsoever. Report all the news regardless of whom might be politically damaged or helped by the report. Avoid allowing commentary on news reports, and if it is necessary to interview a possibly biased person or political operative, ensure that you also either interview opposing opinions or make it clear that their commentary might be biased. Ask the tough questions and if necessary hold their feet to the fire, refusing to accept diversionary tactics as answers. Carefully investigate stories to ensure as much as possible that the information is as correct as possible, and make it clear when some information is suspect due to possible political bias (such as when an initial story is from a far-right, far-left, or from an otherwise biased news source). Correct any errors or bias in reporting promptly, openly and as prominently as the original report was given. Endeavor to report the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
@Ditto: Well written. Now tell me if such a person or news organization exists?
Caution Your answer may? reveal YOUR biases.
@Rich Wheeler:
Well, for me the problem isn’t so much whether a person is actually in the middle (wherever that may be) between two extremes; but in the lack of either self-awareness, honesty to self and readers in where the journalist stands politically. It’s the belief that personal bias doesn’t color ones writings; which is not to say that leftist or right-leaning journalists are incapable of a form of objective, professional news reporting. But it requires great diligence and integrity; and it requires self-awareness.
Bias comes in many forms. It is not always intentional. I believe a number of mainstream journalists aren’t out there with an agenda, attempting to stealth-push their politics. They may criticize their side of the aisle honestly and fairly as well as they criticize those on the opposite side. However, it remains that they are perceiving events through the filter of their own personal politics and belief system. The readers will eventually be able to perceive which way a writer leans on this issue or that issue; or in their overall politics. I’m one of those who believes that journalists shouldn’t leave the guess-work up to readers and continue the masquerade and pretense of objectivity. I’m sure some are honestly trying to report the straight news objectively. However, bias still comes through. It comes through in what’s omitted and what’s focused upon. There is such a thing as bias by omission. It comes subtly in the form of what word is chosen. Does the writer use “kill” or “murder”? Word choice colors the story. This is why you can read two reporters on the same exact story, but maybe come away with entirely different impressions of what the situation is.
Yes. We naturally want to gravitate toward confirmation bias. 🙂 That which makes us feel good and confirms the worldview as we wish it and as we see it. We want to believe in the perspective that we agree with. It takes constant diligence and vigilance to keep ourselves honest.
I again highly recommend Bernard Goldberg’s book, “Aggression”. He points out how the bias in the NYTimes evolved over time. Love the paper. It reports some important stories. But I don’t understand how anyone can see it as anything but left of center.
@Rich+Wheeler:
To my experience so far, I have yet to find a news organization that consistently exhibits such complete neutrality on all issues. This is not to say that such does not exist, but only that I haven’t found one yet that remains completely neutral. The AP (Associated Press) often has bias built into it’s offerings, so it can not be considered an impartial news provider. I have found that often the best report on a particular subject can be found in examining news agencies that have no axe to grind or anything to gain in biasing their reports. For example: I will often go to the UPI (United Press International), European news agencies such as Reuters as well as Israeli sources and look at their take on an internal US news story that does not involve the news agencies host nation. The UPI tends to be better than most, but it too is not perfect as it’s contributors sometimes do sometimes appear to slant some of their reports with a particular bias. On state issues, I’ve found it to be best to look at the take on that’s state’s issues, as reported on from other states (with the exception of California, New York, Washington DC, Florida and Washington state, whose news agencies rarely report unspun news). From looking at a variety of such reports you can generally glean the actual news.
@Wordsmith:
To believe that, you have to totally discount the many journalists that were on the Journal-List.
How out-of-date are you?
MacNeil retired from his nightly appearances on October 20, 1995.
The daily news program he co-founded continues today as the PBS NewsHour……and it is nowadays pretty darn leftist.
@Nanny: You calling the show leftist confirms what I said. I’ve noted your preference for Fox.
I know MacNeil has been gone 20 years BUT at 83 he’s sharp as ever and I’ll bet he has a continuing major influence on this greatest (IMO) of news shows. I use to watch it with my dad.
Much of what could be considered media bias is what is NOT said as opposed to what is said. Oh, the left wing MSM will edit tape to remove context or completely alter the message, but their primary tactic is not simply lying.
They will bury stories they don’t want people to know about. Oh, look; here’s one now:
Media ignores Hillary saying those who create jobs don’t create jobs
http://www.mrc.org/biasalerts/big-three-sunday-political-shows-ignore-hillary-claiming-businesses-dont-create-jobs