I’ve complained of the City Paper’s op-ed bias for years. Oh sure, occasionally they run an Arianna Huffington column, but most of the time it’s a steady stream of Jonah Goldberg, Michael Reagan, Cokie Roberts, and even the occasional Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter.

And Media Matters isn’t biased, right?

I’d like to see the methodology on this. I imagine its including many local papers with small circulation, who have almost exclusively right wing op ed pages. And we all know that those guys don’t really have a voice in shaping the news.

The biggest bias in the media, democrats and other leftists don’t seem to understand, is not the op eds, or the talk radio shows, or the O Reilly type shows. People know what they are getting there when they tune in. Even Sean Shammity will say on the air that he’s a commentator, not a journalist.

The problem is supposedly unbiased journalists, who shape the stories that are presented as fact. These journalists and editors, that Bernard Goldberg points out are almost exclusively democrat or left leaning, they are the ones picking what stories are told, and what angle the story comes from.

And we all know that, no matter how hard we try, our biases will come through when we tell a story. Its ignorant to say otherwise.

Isn’t Media Matters “a web-based, not-for-profit, progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media”?

This is like the National Pork Council telling me that bacon cures cancer.

they are the ones picking what stories are told, and what angle the story comes from.

No, they report on what they’re told to report on. Told by their corporate offices who are predominately right-leaning.

This doesn’t really mean a lot to me…everyone knows that columnists are writing about their opinions. What bothers me is the bias of network news where opinion is smuggled in on the reporting of news stories. Just give me the information and leave your opinion (whether it leans left or right) out of it.

Until we acheive a state of non-human reporting, there will always be bias. We poor imperfect creatures.

You guys are so dang funny. Media Matters? Heh heh!
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Kevin is right, you can’t take bias out of reporting. People can’t help being biased. The vast majority of reporters are liberals. That is a fact. They can’t help the way they see and report the world, no more than a conservative can. The bias of columnists is not what we are talking about when we discuss bias. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT REGULAR NEWS REPORTING. It is not that they try to be biased, it is who they are.
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Oh my.

Some of us are poorer than others.

Justin nailed it with the small newspaper angle.

A more damning stat is looking at journalist contributions to politicians. I can’t find the link now, but journalists overwhelmingly give their money to Democrats rather than Republicans.

Journalists also strongly self-identify as liberal. (Link via Michael Silence, who was more on the Media Matters study.)

Mmmmm…pie.

aren’t these sweeping generalizations nifty ways to abandon thought?

folks say “Reporter” as if “Reporters” were being molded and spit out of a widget machine. local, state, national and international news is crafted on so many levels, in print and on TV. A medium-sized paper has reporters who cover sports, business, crime, lifestyle sections and entertainment sections in addition to government and political reporters. is there some nefarious liberal/conservative bias in reports on sports? on business development? maybe in that wedding write-up or school science project story? is the concert or movie review marred by political opinion?

in local television, how many reports full of bias are made by employees of that station? is your local meteorologist a party shill? how many canned, network or PR pieces are aired?

how handy to lump the press into derivative notions of “drive-by media”, which is absent all meaning save disdain. click the brain off and repeat the mantra instead.

and do political donations from all reporters (yeah, they have such massive salaries) have anywhere near the level of influence on politics that lobbyists provide?

many, many local publications rely on pre-fab national columnists who opine on their political views. and how many readers are incapable of discerning that such pieces are opinion and not fact?

…bacon cures cancer.

cool. I ought to be set. So small towns are righties and big cities are lefties? Wow, who knew? Next thing you know, Fox will lean to the right and Dan Rather will try to sabotage Bush.

Oh, wait… ;D

This is the most flawed study I have read in a long time, and I know how to read social science studies.

I’ve conducted the most thorough analysis on the entire Internet of this study.

You can read it below.

Media Matters Spouts its Own Flawed Study as Fact: How They Did It, In Great Detail

http://copiousdissent.blogspot.com/2007/09/media-matters-spouts-its-own-flawed.html

Pretty funny. The good ole vast right wing conspiracy.

Hell, I’m reading the study wondering why it took so long and what the hell the conservatives that are whining about it are smoking.

It has always been this way historically. While reporters may vote Democratic more often, their editors and publishers (You know, those people who actually have the final say on what goes to print) have always tilted the only pages where opinion is expressed openly to the right.

The problem is not that reporters are injecting their opinions into articles. It’s that the facts in those articles do not match up to the existing opinions of the right wing reader. And there’s one reason for it: While you are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts.

Rick, Media Matters, and their right-leaning counterpart the Media Research Center, are in the business of drawing bullseyes around the arrows. The outrage is that those who are breathlessly reporting this story do not acknowledge that. (Not Hutch, per se, but they should at least do better at VV - for all anyone knows when reading his link, they are a non-partisan group)

Slart, in this case, are they not drawing the bullseye around the arrows (Great phrase, BTW) simply because everyone with the ability to process information already knows this?

The op/ed pages leaning to the right is something that has always been with us. You can argue over the methodology all day long, but the biggest flaw of this study is simply that it states the obvious. Seven out of every ten op/ed pieces in my own hometown paper are from jerkoffs like Cal Thomas, with a Paul Krugman piece thrown in about once a month for a head fake towards balance. And my paper is certainly not atypical.

[…] studies media bias among syndicated columnists and found a 60:40 divide.  Outside the Beltway and Music City Bloggers weigh in by analyzing the report. Media Matters earlier study about the right leaning coverage of […]

“What bothers me is the bias of network news where opinion is smuggled in on the reporting of news stories.”

My sentiments exactly GMAN. Don’t try to pass off op-ed as hard news coverage. IMO, it is very unethical to do so, but I hear and read it everyday of the week.

Justin nailed it with the small newspaper angle.

I don’t see how. In a lot of small town papers, the local op-ed is written by the editor and I’d bet you’d find those are overwhelmingly conservative. I know I can’t read the fishwrap weekly from the tiny town in KY my husband is from; the editor’s columns are usually cribbed Focus On The Family e-mails; he’s even published e-mail hoaxes debunked by Snopes.

I think outside the big cities your “all reporters are liberal” assumption doesn’t hold up. And in the big papers, if anything the “liberal” bent leads to an over-compensation. I mean, how else do you explain Judy Miller at the New York Times?

[…] On a day when we here at MCB are discussing the issue of media bias, I thought it might be interesting to note that the New York Times obviously believed […]

My sentiments exactly GMAN. Don’t try to pass off op-ed as hard news coverage. IMO, it is very unethical to do so, but I hear and read it everyday of the week.

If I had a penny for every time some rightwinger has tried to use an op/ed from some rightwing rag as “evidence”…

You guys LOVE those op/ed pages. Because when there’s actual fact checking involved in a story, it just doesn’t add up in your favor.