Liberal Media Bias, Part One

My good friend Chris, aka the Red Hog, and I have been going back and forth over the last few weeks over at His Blog, www.redhogdiary.com, over bias in the media. We both agree that there is bias in the media, it’s just that Chris thinks there is a conservative bias, and I know there is a liberal bias. So today, I start a short series on bias in the media.

But before I get into that, I have something else I want to shine a spotlight on. My hometown paper, The Tribune, recently reported that the pictures of local men and women serving in the Iraq War were recently removed from the Paso Robles, CA post office. These photos of local servicemen and women have been up there for years. But last week, ONE individual complained, stating the display was “Pro-War”, so down came the pictures.

Why is this one persons opinion more important than other’s. Again, let me remind you that these pictures have been posted for years, and this was the first complaint. And what happened to the whole “I don’t support the war, but I support our troops” that the left keeps trotting out? I guess we’re not even pretending to support the troops anymore.

Let me calm down….. Okay, lets move on. Like I stated in my opening paragraph, my friend Chris and I have been discussing bias in the media. Over the next few days I will be giving you specific examples that will show that the media is left leaning, but today I want to set the stage by discussing a recent Gallup survey. And I would like to thank my friends at Hillary Clintons “Media Matters” for bringing this to my attention.

The poll shows a wide gap between how Republicans and Democrats view the mass media. Nearly 3 in 4 Republicans say the media is "too liberal."

[Gallup director Frank] Newport explains: "Republicans in America today remain deeply distrustful of the national news media -- in sharp contrast to Democrats, who have a great deal more trust in the media's accuracy." Exactly twice as many Democrats (66%) express some faith in the media compared with Republicans (33%).

More than twice as many Americans say the news media are too liberal (45%) rather than too conservative (18%). But Newport adds: "Americans' views of the bias in news media are highly related -- as would be expected -- to underlying political orientation."

Some 22% of Democrats find the media "too conservative," but this is a much lower number than the Republican assertion [that the media are too liberal] (77%).

Now here’s what I take from this poll. Lets assume that the country is roughly 50/50 between left and right. That means that, if the media wasn’t bias at all you should see a roughly similar number on both sides saying that there is bias. I do agree with Newport when he says "Americans' views of the bias in news media are highly related to underlying political orientation."

But the mere fact that twice as many Democrats (66%) express faith in the media shows a liberal slant. Do you think that if, as my friend Chris believes, the medias slant was conservative, that the left would express twice the faith in it. Only if they were idiots, and I don’t think they are.

I want to wrap up this initial discussion of media bias by first of all explaining what I mean by “media”. What I am talking about here is what is often referred to as the “Mainstream Media” (MM). This includes network news (ABC, CBS, NBC) as well as national newspapers such as the New York Times, The L.A. Times, and the like. No one is denying that Fox News has a conservative bend to it, just as CNN and MSNBC have a liberal slant. And we’re not talking about alternative sources of news and content, such as right-wing radio, left-wing radio, Media Matters, The Drudge Report, or any other sources. What we are talking about here are the supposed “non-bias” news outlets.

Also, I am not saying that there is never right-wing bias in the mainstream media. What I am saying is that most of the reporting by the MM is non-bias, but that when the MM does show bias, it is almost always for the left.

Tomorrow, I’ll have some examples.