Media Bias
From Zanecorpwiki
"Media bias" is a cultural phenomenon. It's not "one of those things", it is the thing for which there is no evidence, but everyone believes because it's been repeated so often. The one actual study I've ever read (TODO: link) concluded that there was a clear "left bias", but the the study data didn't actually support it at all and even a cursory review found that the professor simply told a story that fit his own pre-existing bias, regardless of the underlying facts.[notes 1]
The Times is often held up as the "arch" leftist paper, yet on 2010-05-18, they ran a story discrediting Richard Blumenthal, running for Dodd's Connecticut Senate seat, and putting into jeopardy Democratic control of the Senate and what was going to be an easy win.
Notes
- ↑ As I recall, the study was based on what think tanks and other institutions were cited in written media. Each institution was categorized according to their self-proclaimed left/right categorization. It was found that left-leaning institutions were cited with much greater frequency. However, the data also showed that federal representatives from both parties tended to cite left leaning institutions more often than not as well. Combining this with a closer look at the institutions made it clear that the left leaning institutions tended to be more researched based and objective whereas the right leaning institutions formulated policy but not research. Since citations are correlated with referencing source for facts and the left leaning institutions in the study generated more facts than the right leaning ones, the claim that the media is more biased simply doesn't hold up. I do have a copy of the things somewhere and will update. TODO
