Tag Archives: Poll

Commentary

Liberal media bias: what the studies and surveys tell us

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In the wake of the Family Research Council shooting, I thought it was important to review the evidence we have about media bias in the mainstream media.

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.”

From the Washington Examiner, a study of the political contributions made by the mainstream media.

Excerpt:

Senior executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, writers and other self-identifying employees of ABC, CBS and NBC contributed more than $1 million to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in 2008, according to an analysis by The Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks, with an average contribution of $880.

By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign committees, for a total of $142,863. The average Republican contribution was $744.

[…]The data on contributions by broadcast network employees was compiled by CRP at the request of The Examiner and included all 2008 contributions by individuals who identified their employer as one of the three networks or subsidiaries. The data does not include contributions by employees of the three networks who did not identify their employer.

The CRP is the organization behind OpenSecrets.org, the web site that for more than a decade has put campaign finance data within reach of anybody with an Internet connection.

President Obama received 710 such contributions worth a total of $461,898, for an average contribution of $651 from the network employees. Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain received only 39 contributions totaling $26,926, for an average donation of $709.

And more from a study done by the radically leftist MSNBC.

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.

And here’s a bit from that same article about The New Yorker:

The last bulwark against bias’s slipping into The New Yorker is the copy department, whose chief editor, Ann Goldstein, gave $500 in October to MoveOn.org, which campaigns for Democrats and against President Bush. “That’s just me as a private citizen,” she said. As for whether donations are allowed, Goldstein said she hadn’t considered it. “I’ve never thought of myself as working for a news organization.”

Those are the facts.

So what?

Now consider this column from Brent Bozell, which explains the difference media bias makes to political intelligence.

Excerpt:

The Republican presidential contest is picking up steam. Obama is consistently polling under 50 percent. This one’s a toss-up, and in the thick of it is the Fox News Channel. It’s not just their role in hosting and vetting the candidates. It’s their role as the chief villain in the eyes of liberal Democrats struggling to push their version of the “truth” about Obama.

Jon Stewart rhetorically asked Chris Wallace about Fox on “Fox News Sunday, because he thought he knew the answer: “Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.”

In the real world – outside Stewart’s smug bubble – this is garbage. A 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center asked media consumers three questions: which party was in control of Congress (Democrats), who was the secretary of state (Condi Rice) and who was the prime minister of Britain (Gordon Brown).

Let’s document how the viewers of “Hannity &Colmes” were better informed than Stewart’s “Daily Show”  gigglers on basic political facts. Hannity viewers beat Stewart’s on the Democratic majority (84 percent to 65 percent correct answers), Condi Rice (a dramatic 73 percent to 48 percent gap) and Gordon Brown (49 percent to 36). Overall, as a percentage getting all three questions right, Hannity won 42-30.

Just keep that in mind when you are watching the mainstream media news shows. A very good site to bookmark and read is Newsbusters, which documents mainstream media bias daily. I even have an RSS feed of their latest stories on the front page on this blog.

UPDATE: New York Times cites abortion advocates as neutral sources.

News

Why did the pollster poll 9% more Democrats than Republicans?

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From National Review, a transcript of an interaction on the Hugh Hewitt show about a new poll by Democrat pollster Quinnipiac:

HH: Do you expect Democrats, this is a different question, do you, Peter Brown, expect Democrats to have a nine point registration advantage when the polls close on November 6th in Florida?
PB: Well, first, you don’t mean registration.
HH: I mean, yeah, turnout.
PB: Do I think…I think it is probably unlikely.
HH: And so what value is this poll if in fact it doesn’t weight for the turnout that’s going to be approximated?
PB: Well, you’ll have to judge that. I mean, you know, our record is very good. You know, we do independent polling. We use random digit dial. We use human beings to make our calls. We call cell phones as well as land lines. We follow the protocol that is the professional standard.
HH: As we say, that might be the case, but I don’t know it’s responsive to my question. My question is, should we trust this as an accurate predictor of what will happen? You’ve already told me there…
PB: It’s an accurate predictor of what would happen is the election were today.
HH: But that’s, again, I don’t believe that, because today, Democrats wouldn’t turn out by a nine point advantage. I don’t think anyone believes today, if you held the election today, do you think Democrats would turn out nine percentage points higher than Republicans?
PB: If the election were today, yeah. What we found is obviously a large Democratic advantage.
HH: I mean, you really think that’s true? I mean, as a professional, you believe that Democrats have a nine point turnout advantage in Florida?
PB: Our record has been very good. You know, Hugh, I…
HH: That’s not responsive. It’s just a question. Do you personally, Peter, believe that Democrats enjoy a nine point turnout advantage right now?
PB: What I believe is what we found.
HH: Geez, I just, and an eight point in Ohio? I’m from Ohio. Democrats haven’t had an eight point advantage in Ohio since before the Civil War. I mean, that just never happens, but Peter, I appreciate your coming on. I’m not persuaded that Quinnipiac Polls haven’t hurt themselves today, but I appreciate your willingness to come on and talk about it.

I will stick with the Rasmussen Reports polls, thanks.

 

News

David Cameron’s fixation on gay marriage cripples the UK Conservative Party

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From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

When he became Tory leader seven years ago, the youthful and telegenic David Cameron pledged to transform the blue-rinse image of his party and boost its membership by attracting thousands of young, ethnic and gay members.

In doing so, he would destroy forever the Tories’ reputation as the ‘nasty party’ as these new ‘inclusive’ members joined the 300,000 activists whose average age was 64

‘I was elected Leader of the Conservative Party on a mandate to change and modernise the party,’ he said. ‘I want to increase membership. I want to see a broader  base. I want to see a significant increase  in the number of members from all communities.’

[…]But the bitter and ineluctable truth is that, far from increasing numbers, Mr Cameron has presided over the sharpest decline in membership in the Conservative  party’s history.

Today, I can reveal that the number of Tory party members has fallen below 130,000, a drop of around 60 per cent since he took over in 2005.

[…]The uncompromising language deployed by Mr Cameron who, in another sop to the Lib Dems, has cynically dumped his repeated promise to reward  traditional marriage through the tax system, enraged Tory MPs and activists alike. 

[…]In a tense meeting in Downing Street last month between Mr Cameron and 20 of the party’s most senior members, he was given a stark warning that membership will plunge below the psychologically crucial 100,000 mark if there were no change of heart on same-sex marriage.

[…]The damage done by the gay marriage proposals is not confined to within the party. Potential Tory voters don’t like them.

A national poll by ComRes on the likely effects of allowing gay marriage — which, incidentally, was not in any of the parties’ manifestos — revealed the Conservatives could lose 1.1 million votes and 30 parliamentary seats in an election because so many supporters would stay at home or switch to UKIP.

A ComRes poll also revealed that 56 per cent of Mr Cameron’s constituents who voted for him at the election oppose his plans to make redefining marriage a priority.

Andrew Hawkins, the chairman of ComRes, said: ‘It’s the way it has been handled that has done so much damage. The Government has a consultation, but says it is pressing ahead whether people like it  or not.

‘One of the scariest things for the Tories is that three in four of those people who voted for Cameron in 2010, but say they won’t again, cite gay marriage as the reason.

[…]One senior party official said: ‘Gay marriage is the final straw. In London, Bristol, Birmingham and other major cities, there are dozens of constituencies with no party organisation at all.

‘The voluntary party is virtually extinct in Scotland and in parts of Wales.

We are relying on a dwindling band of volunteers, the majority of whom are in their 70s. It’s the most desperate situation the party has ever faced.’ 

The UK Telegraph notes that Cameron has angered American Republicans with his “unprecedented” embrace of Barack Obama – despite the Falklands betrayal, the leaking the name of a British agent to the press, and other gaffes by Obama.

In other UK news, I note that nearly two-thirds of Scots oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage, but the liberal Scottish National Party is going forward with plans to legalize it. But nothing is set in stone yet, and things could still go the other way. (H/T Dina)