News

New study: only 7% of journalists are Republicans

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Story in the left-wing Washington Post.

Excerpt:

A majority of American journalists identify themselves as political independents although among those who choose a side Democrats outnumber Republicans four to one, according to a new study of the media conducted by two Indiana University professors.

Write Lars Wilnat and David Weaver, professors of journalism at Indiana, of their findings:

Compared with 2002, the percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who claim to be Democrats has dropped 8 percentage points in 2013 to about 28 percent, moving this figure closer to the overall population percentage of 30 percent, according to a December 12-15, 2013, ABC News/Washington Post national poll of 1,005 adults. This is the lowest percentage of journalists saying they are Democrats since 1971. An even larger drop was observed among journalists who said they were Republicans in 2013 (7.1 percent) than in 2002 (18 percent), but the 2013 figure is still notably lower than the percentage of U.S. adults who identified with the Republican Party (24 percent according to the poll mentioned above).

Over the last several decades, three things have happened: 1) The number of Democratic-identifying reporters increased steadily prior to a significant drop in the latest survey 2) The number of Republicans has steadily shrunk with that number dipping into single digits for the first time ever in the new survey c) more and more reporters are identifying as independents.  What seems to be happening — at least in the last decade – -is that journalists are leaving both parties, finding themselves more comfortable as unaffiliateds.

I wonder if people really realize how left-wing the mainstream media is – it’s really just an extension of the Democrat party. And this study isn’t an outlier, either.

Let’s take a look at some other peer-reviewed studies on media bias.

Peer-reviewed academic studies of media bias

Let’s take a look at peer-reviewed academic studies of media bias, and see if they confirm or falsify what Pew Research found.

Here’s a UCLA study on media bias.

Excerpt:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were a close second and third.

“Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill,” Groseclose said. “If these newscasters weren’t centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators.”

The fourth most centrist outlet was “Special Report With Brit Hume” on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “Nightly News” to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

“If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox’s ‘Special Report’ as ABC’s ‘World News’ and NBC’s ‘Nightly News,’ then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news,” said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.”

Here’s a Harvard University study on media bias.

Excerpt:

The programming studied on Fox News offered a somewhat more positive picture… of Republicans and more negative one of Democrats compared with other media outlets. Fox News stories about a Republican candidate were most likely to be neutral (47%), with the remainder more positive than negative (32% vs. 21% negative). The bulk of that positive coverage went to Giuliani (44% positive), while McCain still suffered from unflattering coverage (20% positive vs. 35% negative).

When it came to Democratic candidates, the picture was more negative. Again, neutral stories had a slight edge (39%), followed by 37% negative and 24% positive. And, in marked contrast from the rest of the media, coverage of Obama was twice as negative as positive: 32% negative vs. 16% positive and 52% neutral.

But any sense here that the news channel was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data.”

And more from a study reported by NBC News.

Excerpt:

MSNBC.com 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.

The donors include CNN’s Guy Raz, now covering the Pentagon for NPR, who gave to Kerry the same month he was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq; New Yorker war correspondent George Packer; a producer for Bill O’Reilly at Fox; MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough; political writers at Vanity Fair; the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s weekend edition; local TV anchors in Washington, Minneapolis, Memphis and Wichita; the ethics columnist at The New York Times; and even MTV’s former presidential campaign correspondent.

Those are the facts.

News

Father arrested for challenging public school on assigned book containing graphic sex

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Story from the Blaze.

Excerpt:

A New Hampshire parent was arrested at a Monday night school board meeting after he voiced outrage his ninth grade daughter was assigned a book that contains a page detailing a graphic sexual encounter.

Gilford school officials claim the book, “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult, contains important themes about a school shooting. But some parents believe a scene described in the book is inappropriate for their children.

According to WCVB-TV, the book contains a graphic description of rough sex between two teenagers, which parents were unaware of until the book had already been distributed to their kids.

“I was shocked when I read the passage and not much shocks me anymore,” William Baer told EAG News. “My wife was stunned by the increasingly graphic nature of the sexual content of the scene and the imagery it evoked.”

He went to the school board meeting to express his objections.

“It’s absurd,” he told the school board.

“Sir, would you please be respectful of the other people?” a school board member responded.

“Like you’re respectful of my daughter, right? And my children?” he countered.

A police officer then arrived at the scene, instructing Baer to leave with him.

“You are going to arrest me because I violated the two-minute rule?” the father said. “I guess you are going to have to arrest me.”

Moments later, Baer was escorted outside and placed in handcuffs. According to WMUR-TV, he was charged with disorderly conduct because he did not immediately leave when asked by an officer.

When it comes to public schools indoctrinating your children, parents are the enemy. The teachers have a leftist agenda, and parents just get in the way.

Commentary

Pastor Matt: Christian apologists should care about the loss of religious liberty

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From Pastor Matt Rawlings‘ blog. First he summarizes a couple of religious liberty cases – Brendan Eich and Elane Photography.

Excerpt:

[…][F]ew seemed to pause and ask about the ramifications of a nation incrementally losing the religious freedom it has long enjoyed. I would argue this is an issue that committed Christian thinkers should take very seriously.

First of all, the loss of religious freedom (along with the growth of centralized government) is historically dangerous for all people.  The loss of one freedom often serves as the domino for the loss of others.  We are a people called to love our neighbors (Matt. 22:37-40) and standing by while persecution may be inching toward many certainly does not count.

Second, some have argued that if we lose our freedom it will help the church grow or at least “separate the men from the boys.” This is a romantic notion that persecution is good for the church but it too is a failure to love our neighbors and is not entirely accurate.  For example, see Acts 9:31, which reads, “Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.”  Moreover, great revivals like the First and Second Great Awakening and the immediate post World War II boom took place in times of religious freedom.

Third, true rational discourse in true marketplace of ideas depends on true religious freedom. One cannot arbitrarily exclude certain ideas from public debate because it strikes certain segments of the culture as offensive. If any person believes that open dialogue is a key to truth then that person should fight for any voice to have his or her say.

I’ll skip to his conclusion:

So, we need to graciously and intelligently contend for our freedom by supporting Christian legal groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and, of course praying for God’s continued grace.  We also need to train ourselves in public and practical apologetics including why it is that traditional marriage is good for a country (and it is).  In the meantime, be sure to go to Speak Up Church and gather resources on how to help protect your church from the current attacks on religious freedom.

Read the whole thing. This is a great post, and one you ought to click through and read.

Now before my remarks, I wanted to produce the biography of one of the ADF lawyers I heard in a recent podcast.

Douglas Napier bio:

Douglas H. Napier serves as Senior Vice-President-Legal for Alliance Defending Freedom at its headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he leads a litigation team of approximately 40 attorneys and legal support staff at offices in District of Colombia, Arizona, Kansas, California, Georgia, and Tennessee. Before joining Alliance Defending Freedom in 2007, Napier practiced civil trial law in Iowa for 16 years. He earned his J.D. from the University of Iowa College, with distinction, and is a fellow of the Iowa Academy of Trial Lawyers. Napier is admitted to the bar in Iowa, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, and the U.S. Supreme Court, and has been admitted pro hac vice to several federal courts across the nation.

I’m glad that some Christians are making the plans to get these law degrees that allow them to do something about threats like this.

My thoughts

When I posted this on Facebook earlier on Monday, I was surprised to see a bunch of people posting Bible verses and talking about how persecution might not be such a bad thing. And this always annoys me, because I wonder if these people really understand what persecution looks like, in different times and places. It looks like murder, torture, imprisonment, fines, trials, sickness, disease, loneliness and despair. It’s not something you wish for. It’s certainly not something you want for others. We have a threat to religious liberty. That threat should be met with law degrees from prestigious universities – and life plans that allow you to get those degrees. We need to be making life plans to either get the degrees that can counter the threat, or to support those (financially) who are getting them or who already have them. I’m in the latter group.