Welcome to Illiberal Conservative Media (ICM)

(Of course, that's not the only spin point he offers in the post. He also conveniently refers to the other hacktacular spin point about reporters' biases). But, for now, let's focus on the spin point of public opinion on liberal media bias.

The Polling Report's page is a good source for such opinion polls. Here is an example:

The Gallup Poll. Sept. 13-15, 2004. N=1,022 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

...

"Now thinking for a moment about the news media: In general, do you think the news media is too liberal, just about right, or too conservative?" Options rotated

.

Too
Liberal About
Right Too Con-
servative No
Opinion
.

% % % %
.

9/04 48 33 15 4
.

9/03 45 39 14 2
.

2/03 45 36 15 4
.

9/02 47 37 13 3
.

9/01 45 40 11 4

What can we learn from these numbers, assuming they are accurate? Quite a bit.

First, if you take the numbers literally (ignoring MoE for the moment, considering conservatives themselves usually cite the raw numbers without MoE), on average < 50% of the public believes the media is biased "liberal". On average, just over 50% of the public believes that the media is either conservative or "about right" in its balance. So, if you take these numbers seriously, we can conclude that:

Usually, the majority of the public does not actually buy the argument that the media is liberal
The claim that "the public" tends to believe that the media is "liberal" is yet another favorite, conservative spin point (which focuses usually on comparing "liberal bias" and "conservative bias", leaving out those who don't see a specific bias)
This is the kind of insidious spin that allows the Right's meme-pushers to keep propagating misleading "liberal bias" claims into "news" and opinions, which in turn misinform the public about what the public itself believes

In fact, if you look at this 2004 "special report" by the right-wing Media Research Center (MRC) - famous for making a living by misleading or lying to the public - you see gratuitous spin and misleading statements using similar opinion poll results. Here are some extracts from this "special report" with my comments in red font:

The Public Recognizes the Media’s Liberal Bias

[eRiposte: The title of the section itself reflects a mastery over spin, as you'll see from the rest of the text below]
...

In March 1997, two-thirds of the public (67 percent) felt that “in dealing with political and social issues” news organizations “tend to favor one side.” That was up 14 points from the 53 percent who gave that answer in 1985. In an indication that media liberalism was to blame, conservatives were most likely to detect favoritism. [eRiposte: Note how conservatives' views are being used to conclude that "liberalism" is the problem, while ignoring the fact that the majority of independents and Democrats may not necessarily agree that "liberalism" is the problem!]. According to the poll, Republican voters were “more likely to say news organizations favor one side than are Democrats or independents (77 percent vs. 58 percent and 69 percent, respectively).”

...

Three in Four See Bias: Pew’s pessimistic findings were matched by a 1996 Harris poll of more than 3,000 adults conducted for the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). According to CMPA’s analysis, “nearly two-thirds (63 percent) believe one side is favored in presentation of the news; an even larger majority of 77 percent thinks that there is at least a fair amount of political bias in the news they see.”

     “This bias is described as liberal by a plurality (43 percent) of all adults,” the report continued [eRiposte emphasis], while 19 percent described a conservative bias. CMPA discovered that “nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of all Republicans believe that the news media favor one side in their reporting...compared with only two of five (40 percent) Democrats.”

     Interestingly, CMPA’s analysis concluded that while “complaints about bias used to come mainly from political conservatives, our survey indicates that this limitation no longer exists....Even self-described liberals agree: 41 percent see the media as liberal, compared to only 22 percent who find the news to be conservative. Among self-designated conservatives, of course, the spread is even greater: 57 percent say the media are liberal and 19 percent see them as conservative.”
[eRiposte: Note how, according to this poll, a MINORITY of the public (43%) believed that there was liberal bias, despite which the results are being spun "liberally" to mislead the public. It's useful to remember that CMPA is another master of spin for the Right.]

...

Three Times More See Liberal Bias than Conservative Tilt: A Gallup poll conducted in February 2003 asked whether, “In general, do you think the news media are — too liberal, just about right, or too conservative?” As the other polls had discovered, far more respondents identified liberal bias as the problem (45 percent) as worried about a conservative tilt (15 percent), while just 36 percent said coverage was about right.
[eRiposte: Again, look at the amazing spin! According to the very numbers cited by MRC, 51% of the public actually thought the media was "about right" or "conservative". In other words, according to their own numbers, the majority of the public rejected the notion that the media is biased "liberal"!]

    • Plurality of Democrats See Liberal Bias: In a July 2003 survey, Pew found that twice as many Americans (51 percent) believed news organizations have a liberal bias than a conservative bias (26 percent). Not only did a majority of Republicans and independents hold this view, but a plurality of Democrats (41 percent) thought the media had a liberal bias, compared with 33 percent of Democrats who saw a conservative bias. [eRiposte: This is the only set of numbers they cite where the majority is claimed to believe "liberal bias", but this is one data point among many. Gallup polls taken in 2003 indicated that those who believed the media was "liberal" were a minority.]

     The public is not wrong: news organizations are, in fact, disproportionately liberal, and far too many reporters approach their stories with a liberal mindset. Every study of the past 25 years has proved this point. The only question is when will the media elite recognize that a liberal bias erodes their credibility with mainstream and conservative audiences, and make ideological diversity in their newsrooms a goal?

[eRiposte: See how, 2 out of 3 studies showing that a minority of Americans believe there is a "liberal bias" in the media is being spun to make a case for a pervasive problem of "liberal bias"? There is a reason why such hacks are successful: the ICM. (I'm actually being generous to MRC by dropping a fourth example they have listed, that indirectly shows pro-liberal-bias support below 50%)]

[Now, I agree that when you start adding MoE to some of these numbers, we get very close to the 50-50 mark (liberal/not-liberal), but the arguments by conservatives (such as MRC above) are not based on including MoE. So my criticisms of the MRCs of the world are still valid.]

Second, let's talk about the argument that the media must be liberal-biased because the public thinks it is. This claim is probably the most laughable claim of all in the media bias debate. The Right, after all, believes that the media is too liberal and therefore tends to skew their reporting and misinform the public. If they believe that the media's reporting can skew public opinion, it would be hypocritical not to consider the possibility that the public thinks the media is liberal because it is being told repeatedly that the media is liberal, even if it were not that liberal in reality. (Indeed, the MRC "special report" discussed above is a living, breathing example of this kind of garbage being fed to Americans.)

But this is not a problem just with the MRCs of the world. Everyone knows this spoon-feeding is also facilitated by the mainstream media (MSM), i.e., the ICM. As Stanford University's Geoffrey Nunberg pointed out in the American Prospect (bold text is my emphasis):

....none of the critics took on the single most extraordinary result in the data I looked at -- this one involving, not labeling, but the way the press talks about the bias story itself. In the newspapers I looked at, the word "media" appears within seven words of "liberal bias" 469 times and within seven words of "conservative bias" just 17 times -- a twenty-seven-fold discrepancy. (As it happens, the disproportion is about the same in the database that Boyd looked at -- 72 to 3).
Now there's a difference that truly deserves to be called staggering. But how should we explain it? Certainly critics on the left haven't been silent about what they take to be conservative bias in the media, whether in the pages of political reviews or in dozens of recent books. But the press has given their charges virtually no attention, while giving huge play to complaints from the right about liberal bias. That's hardly what you'd expect from a press that really did have a decided liberal bias, and in fact the discrepancy is far greater than anything you could explain by supposing that reporters were merely bending over backwards to be fair -- in that case, after all, you'd expect them to give at least a polite nod to the other side, as well.

David Brock mentioned this very aspect in his seminal book The Republican Noise Machine:

[p 113] When challenged during his TV appearances, Goldberg invariably replied that since so many Americans believe the claim that the media is liberal, he couldn't be wrong. But as Nunberg pointed out, this logic has a circular quality to it. "In newspaper articles published since 1992, the word 'media' appears within seven words of 'liberal bias' 469 times and within seven words of 'conservative bias' just 17 times," he wrote. "If people are disposed to believe that the media have a liberal bias, it's because that's what the media have been telling them all along."

In the end, this silly argument for "liberal media" (using public opinion polls) does show one thing. People who argue "liberal bias" based on such polls (rather than the actual content/accuracy of news reports) show how deeply spin-loving, unserious and wrong they are about this issue - which is at the core of a democracy.

Having said that, there is no doubt that Progressives in the country do face a problem. A substantial percentage of the country believes that the media is biased "liberal" because of the Republican Misinformation Machine (RMM) and the ICM. If we look at the Gallup poll results, even in 2002 and early 2003, a plurality (but not a majority) felt that the media was "too liberal", despite the fact that conservatives and mainstream media outlets have themselves acknowledged what we independently know from their "news" coverage in that time period - namely, that the media went soft on George Bush after 9/11 and before the Iraq invasion, thereby acting as an uncritical carrier of misleading and false Bush administration claims prior to the Iraq war. This, in itself, tells you how the portion of the public that believes there is a "liberal media" has been misled about the media's tilt.

We need to fix that.

2.11B REPORTS CLAIMING NPR IS "LIBERAL" BIASED

Max Blumenthal (The Nation):

"I frankly feel at PBS headquarters there is a tone deafness to issues of tone and balance," Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said in May. Since he was appointed to his position by President Bush, he has set about to change the "tone" and rectify the "balance." For example, he helped secure $4 million to fund Wall Street Journal Report, a round-table discussion featuring the newspaper's right-wing editorial board; no liberals or Democrats need apply. Next he collaborated with Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, to kill a legislative proposal that would have required appointments with local broadcasting experience to the CPB board. Last year, to justify his campaign for balance, Tomlinson commissioned a secret study to prove that certain programs aired on PBS radio and television are contaminated with liberal bias.

To carry out this delicate task, Tomlinson selected Fred Mann, a conservative activist with no credentials as an expert on journalism, broadcasting or media issues, who was obscure even within right-wing circles. Mann was paid $14,700 in taxpayer money to monitor a sampling of PBS shows and file a report to Tomlinson on the political partisanship of their content. Tomlinson seems to have planned for Mann's report to become a seminal conservative document. Republicans would wave it during House appropriations committee hearings as they argued for defunding PBS and realigning its programming. Right-wing talk jocks would blare talking points based on Mann's disturbing findings, which would at last provide definitive proof of a liberal media tilt. Meanwhile, insidious liberal activists boring from within public broadcasting studios would cower in humiliation from the exposure.

While Mann diligently went about his work listening to the radio and watching TV, monitoring episodes of PBS's NOW With Bill Moyers, The Diane Rehm Show and The Tavis Smiley Show, Tomlinson concealed his activities from CPB's board. When Mann filed his detailed report, Tomlinson hid it from the CPB board. Only an internal investigation by CPB's inspector general in mid May revealed the existence of the Mann report. And only when journalists at NPR managed to secure a copy were its contents reported. Reading the study, it is clear why Tomlinson tried to keep it a state secret.

The Mann report reads as if dictated by Cookie Monster while chewing on a mouthful of lead paint chips. Names of famous political figures and celebrities are chronically misspelled. PBS guests are categorized by labels--"anti-DeLay," "neutral," "x"--for often bewildering reasons. Mann appears to have spent endless hours monitoring programs with no political content, gathering such insights as that Ray Charles was blind.

Mann begins each of his PBS program summaries with a chart showing guests' ideological leanings. An "L" denotes guests he judges to be liberal; "C" beside conservatives; "N" beside those who are neutral. Among those Mann designated as conservative is the ex-rapper and actor Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg, best known for his role as a well-endowed porn star in the film Boogie Nights. While Wahlberg used his June 2, 2004, appearance on The Tavis Smiley Show to promote juvenile justice programs--a liberal hallmark--he also said in passing, according to Mann, that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ "was a good thing." Another Tavis Smiley guest, Everlast, the rock-rapper who once fronted the Irish-American rap trio House of Pain, was dubbed a "C" for his opinion that some rap music is "sending a bad message to youth." And Henry Rollins, the former singer for the legendary hardcore-punk band Black Flag, was labeled conservative for stating, in Mann's words, that "people who have problems with the war should support the troops." Apparently, feeling sympathy for American servicemen and women is strictly "C."

Mann's liberals are an equally curious bunch. Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, garnered his "L" after speaking glowingly of Ronald Reagan in a discussion with Tavis Smiley. Hagel is, of course, that comsymp who earned a 100 percent rating from the Christian Coalition last year. Another Rehm guest, Washington Post reporter Robin Wright, earned her "L" by articulating an analytical point Mann apparently had not heard expressed before. "Ms. Wright's viewpoint was that U.S. intelligence was geared to fight the Cold War and did not adapt to the new threat of terrorism," Mann writes, describing why he put the "L" word beside her name. For investigating three of Tom DeLay's associates for illegal fundraising in Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who was interviewed on NOW, was dubbed "anti-DeLay." Dr. Arthur Bodette was slapped with an "L" after discussing on Diane Rehm's show "the unlimited possibilities of new advances in DNA chips to screen for birth defects, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation."

Another unintentionally hilarious aspect of the Mann report is its sloppy typos. Apparently Tomlinson's budget didn't include a proofreader. Former Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr appears as "Ken Staff," former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim as "Doug Zukheim" and former Congressman Newt Gingrich as "Next Gingrich."

There are also curious asides and digressions. In a description of the March 29, 2004, episode of NOW, Mann notes that 9/11 widow Kristin Breitweiser filled in for Bill Moyers as host. What did he make of this? He doesn't say. In his summary of former CIA operative Robert Baer's interview with Diane Rehm, Mann writes, "Mr. Baer's viewpoint was that [Ahmad] Chalabi leaked secret classified information to Iran regarding U.S. cracking Iran's codes. As to how Chalabi new [sic] this information, Baer speculated, it was probably a drunken operative." Reporting on Gen. Anthony Zinni's appearance on Rehm's show, Mann observes, "His viewpoint was that...Saddam was not a treat [sic]." Yes, and Nixon was not a cook.

Besides scrutinizing political PBS guests, Mann was paid to watch countless hours of nonpolitical programming and report back to Tomlinson with his insights. Thus Tomlinson was secretly informed that during one Diane Rehm episode, "Carole King talked about her career.... James Taylor inspired her." Or that, during The Tavis Smiley Show, actor Jamie Foxx "discussed the career of the late Ray Charles and the obstacles (blind and black) that he had to overcome to achieve success." Next to Foxx's name Mann affixed a lowercase "x," which, because Mann labeled neutral guests with an "N," may mean that Foxx's politics are beyond neutral. Either that or he's become a secret black Muslim.

Who is Fred Mann? For all we know, he could be a werewolf with supersensitive hearing that detects liberal bias inaudible to the average human's ear. But since he and Tomlinson have not provided the same level of accountability they are demanding from others, it is impossible to know. Reporters who have attempted to locate him, including NPR, have all failed. Perhaps only Van Helsing could uncover Mann's tracks. What is known is that in 1980, Mann worked on the senatorial campaign of Dan Quayle. Then, during Reagan's second term, Mann went to work at the Virginia-based National Journalism Center as its job bank and alumni director until he retired last year. The National Journalism Center is directed by M. Stanton Evans, a former editor of the conservative Indianapolis News, and a founder in 1960 of the right-wing youth group Young Americans for Freedom. Through the center, Evans nurtured movement activists like Mann and trained aspiring young media players, including Ann Coulter and Maggie Gallagher, the conservative Catholic columnist who took federal money from the Bush Administration to promote its policies.

Media Matters has a slew of articles debunking claims about NPR's liberal bias.

2.11C MRC "STUDIES" CLAIMING TO SHOW "LIBERAL BIAS"

Media Matters:

Two recent "studies" by the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group, shine a bright light on the questionable techniques and absurd assumptions that guide the MRC's attempts to "prove" its claim that "liberal bias" is rampant in the U.S. news media. Looking through a funhouse mirror that renders everything -- even the facts themselves -- as manifestations of insidious bias, the MRC had no trouble finding what it was looking for.

MRC research director Rich Noyes summarized a May 9 "study," titled "Extreme Conservatives vs. Unlabeled Liberals," as follows:

In the six months since November's elections, network reporters have zeroed in on "conservatives" -- especially "religious conservatives" -- as an energized and unwelcome force in American politics. As TV told it, George W. Bush won re-election because of strong support from "social conservatives" and would pack the courts with "conservative" judges. It was "conservatives" who pushed Terri Schiavo's right-to-life case, and "conservatives" like Tom DeLay and John Bolton were embroiled in controversy.

It's true conservatives have been making a lot of headlines, but even as the networks painted the right side of the spectrum as ideological, and even a tad fanatical, reporters rarely used ideological terms to define liberals. Since Election Day, network reporters branded politicians or groups as "conservative" 395 times, compared to 59 "liberal" labels, a greater than six-to-one disparity.

The basic premise of this "study" -- that if there are more mentions of the word "conservative" than the word "liberal" in a given period, then the news must be "biased" against conservatives -- is so ridiculous that a fourth-grader could pierce its logic.

If precisely the same number of actual conservatives and liberals had been discussed in the news, and conservatives had been identified as such while liberals hadn't, the MRC might have a legitimate gripe (though even this criticism would presume, as the MRC seems to, that "conservative" and "liberal" are inherently derogatory terms). But the real reason there are more mentions of "conservatives" than "liberals" is obvious: there has been more news about conservatives. In the wake of the Republican electoral victories, conservatives both in and out of government are wielding influence and getting more attention. One can't help suspecting that if the results of the MRC's Nexis searches had turned out the opposite of what they did, the MRC would be alleging that the greater repetitions of the word "liberal" showed that conservatives were outnumbered in the media.

Indeed, as Media Matters for America has documented, the news media have granted conservatives more opportunities than liberals to speak in a wide variety of network news forums. On NBC, Meet the Press consistently features imbalanced panels that favor conservatives; interviews on the Today show in April featured three times as many conservatives as liberals; and 19 Chris Matthews Show panels skewed right in 2004, while only 7 skewed left. In the 15 weeks following the 2004 presidential election, the CBS Evening News featured 65 clips of Democratic officials or commentators representing progressive organizations and 83 clips of Republican officials or commentators representing conservative organizations, not including President Bush; and on January 19, CBS anchor Bob Schieffer acknowledged that CBS' Face the Nation hosted more Republican than Democrat guests since the presidential election. Media Matters has noted imbalances in cable news coverage of political events as well, including the 2004 presidential debates and the inauguration.

The MRC highlighted a few examples of imbalanced labeling, presumably those that it considered most egregious, but even these examples show how faulty its logic is. To demonstrate the "imbalanced approach," Noyes wrote: "On the April 26 Today, Katie Couric introduced a debate segment by branding just one side: 'Dee Dee Myers was President Clinton's first White House press secretary, and Tucker Carlson is a conservative commentator and host for MSNBC.' Were we supposed to believe Myers is non-ideological?" Apparently, the MRC believes that by labeling Myers by her affiliation with the Clinton administration, NBC was trying to keep Myers's ideology a secret. Of course, former officials of both Republican and Democratic administrations appear on television all the time, and are nearly always identified with the administration they served in, not as "conservatives" or "liberals."

The MRC was also angry that the lobbying group USA Next was identified as conservative, while the AARP was not identified as liberal. As Media Matters has noted, USA Next is little more than a Republican front group funded by the pharmaceutical industry to attack Democrats and press Republican causes. The AARP, on the other hand, represents tens of millions of seniors on a wide variety of issues, in addition to offering services like health and life insurance. Its CEO worked on President Nixon's re-election campaign, and the organization endorsed the Bush Medicare prescription drug plan; calling the AARP a "liberal" group would hardly be accurate.

If it's not Republican spin, it must be liberal bias

The MRC's April 27 "study" on coverage of the Social Security debate, "Biased Accounts: Networks Guarantee Liberal View of Social Security" -- under the auspices of the MRC's Free Market Project, whose mission is "devoted solely to analyzing and exposing the anti-free enterprise culture of the media" -- shows the same pattern one usually finds in MRC's attempts to document its endless claims of liberal bias. No matter what the facts are, the MRC can design a study with the scales weighted to show "liberal bias":

This study of 125 news stories on Social Security between Nov. 15, 2004, and March 15, 2005, found four out of the five major networks biased toward liberal talking points. CBS and CNN had almost three times as many liberal stories as conservative. Overall, liberal talking points outweighed conservative ones by a margin of 2 to 1. Reporters favored extreme examples that made liberal points, while failing to explain key economic terms and concepts that would inform the debate.

A look at the supporting evidence shows the presumption that drives this "study" is the same that underlies virtually all of the MRC's work: Any news story not dominated by unadulterated Republican spin is, by definition, a case of "liberal bias."

If this is your starting point, it is not hard to find examples that support your pre-determined conclusion. If its "study" of Social Security coverage is any indication, the MRC apparently believes that even any fact that does not coincide with Republican spin constitutes a "liberal talking point" and proof of "bias."

For instance, in the study, MRC coded any mention of the transition costs of President Bush's plan for private investment accounts as a "liberal talking point." The flip side of this contention is that, according to the MRC, when a news organization fails to report Republican spin as fact, it has shown bias. For instance, the report cited the following as an alleged example of bias: "On Feb. 12's 'Evening News,' CBS's Russ Mitchell said, 'Mr. Bush said he's open to any good idea to fix a system he claims is heading for bankruptcy' (emphasis added)." CBS' attribution of the bankruptcy argument as a claim of Bush's and not as simple fact, according to the MRC, shows CBS' bias. Of course, the idea that Social Security will be "bankrupt" is not merely a point of contention, it is highly misleading -- even under the pessimistic projections of the Social Security trustees, the system will not go broke (it will be able to pay, at a minimum, between 70 and 80 percent of promised benefits, even if nothing is done to change it). Anything less than uncritical Republican spin, even when that spin is clearly misleading, constitutes "liberal bias" as far as the MRC is concerned.

The MRC looked for conservative arguments in favor of Social Security privatization, then claimed that the absence of those arguments from news reports constitutes bias. The study quoted conservative activist Stephen Moore, an advocate of privatization, to contend that "personal accounts would reduce the burden on the government and eventually create surpluses rather than more debt. But in unbalanced stories, this point was absent." In fact, even the Bush administration has declined to endorse this claim; the administration has admitted that private accounts will do nothing to address Social Security's long-term solvency. Moore is apparently assuming spectacular future stock market gains to make his prediction. But even if you agree with Moore, his is a highly contested, speculative argument. The MRC's claim that not including it in a news report makes that report "unbalanced" exposes the assumptions that make its "study" so absurd.

The MRC has not posted complete data for the Social Security "study" on its website, so it's impossible to know what criteria the group used to classify statements in news stories it examined to arrive at its conclusions. Nor does it provide a list of guests, sources, institutions, or ideas that were unfairly labeled "conservative," or a similar list of guests, sources, institutions, or ideas that ought to have been labeled "liberal" but were not.

But the absence of data has not prevented conservative media from citing MRC "research" as though it said anything meaningful. Free Market Project chairman Herman Cain summarized the Social Security coverage "study" in a May 10 National Review Online article. And on the "Political Grapevine" segment of the May 10 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Fox News Washington managing editor Hume reported the "results" of MRC's "study" of the number of times media labeled conservatives versus liberals.

The MRC is certainly free to cry "liberal bias" at every news report it sees. But when it labels something a "study," it is presenting its analysis as more objective, and should thus be held to a higher standard. Using coding rules that people who disagree with the MRC would accept as objective, and publicly releasing the data on which it bases its conclusions, would be two good places to start. But again and again, the MRC comes back to the same point: Any fact, observation, or argument that does not precisely coincide with the Republican viewpoint constitutes "liberal bias."