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"Pew Center Study finds media IS liberal"
PagongRatEater 12996 desperate attention whore postings
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05-24-04, 10:16 AM (EST)
 
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"Pew Center Study finds media IS liberal" |
OK, so I like provocative articles. The highlights are mine. I think that it is very interesting to note how disimilar the media's political leanings and personal values contrast so starkly with the rest of Americs. I would hazard a guess that the many of the so-called moderates are left-leaning and only "moderate" in the context of the media. Much more telling is how few of the media is conservative(and they all work at FOX  ). Draw your own conclusions and most importantly, keep it civil peeps!
Pew Survey Finds Moderates, Liberals Dominate News Outlets
Aya Kawano
By E&P Staff
Published: May 23, 2004 4:00 PM EST NEW YORK Those convinced that liberals make up a disproportionate share of newsroom workers have long relied on Pew Research Center surveys to confirm this view, and they will not be disappointed by the results of Pew's latest study released today. While most of the journalists, like many Americans, describe themselves as "moderate," a far higher number are "liberal" than in the general population. At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets: 23% liberal, 12% conservative. At Web sites: 27% call themselves liberals, 13% conservatives. This contrasts with the self-assessment of the general public: 20% liberal, 33% conservative. The survey of 547 media professionals, completed this spring, is part of an important study released today by The Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Committee of Concerned Journalists, which mainly concerns more general issues related to newsrooms (an E&P summary will appear Monday). While it's important to remember that most journalists in this survey continue to call themselves moderate, the ranks of self-described liberals have grown in recent years, according to Pew. For example, since 1995, Pew found at national outlets that the liberal segment has climbed from 22% to 34% while conservatives have only inched up from 5% to 7%. The survey also revealed what some are sure to label a "values" gap. According to Pew, about 60% of the general public believes it is necessary to believe in God to be a truly moral person. The new survey finds that less than 15% of those who work at news outlets believe that. About half the general public believes homosexuality should be accepted by society -- but about 80% of journalists feel that way. When the question of which news organizations actually tilted left or right, there was one clear candidate: Fox News. Fully 69% of national journalists, and 42% of those at the local level, called Fox News "especially conservative." Next up was The New York Times, which about one in five labeled "especially liberal." Not surprisingly, views of how the press has treated President Bush break down along partisan lines. More than two out of three liberals feel the press has not been tough enough on Bush, while half the conservatives feel the media has been too tough. Still, a little over half of national journalists (53%) give national media coverage of the administration an A or B rating. While the sample of 547 interviewees is not large, Pew says that this selection represents "a cross-section of news organizations and of the people working at all levels of those organizations." Newspapers were identified and circulation ranked using the 2003 Editor & Publisher International Year Book. In an essay accompanying the survey, the directors of the sponsoring groups -- Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell --declare that broad conclusions about the political findings should be tempered by analyzing some of the details in the findings. For example, they identify strong "libertarian" leanings among journalists, including doubts about the role of "big government."
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cqvenus 9765 desperate attention whore postings
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05-24-04, 10:43 AM (EST)
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5. "*applause*" |
what poho said.especially: Maybe some conservatives could take one for the team and be willing to work for peanuts for the majority of their career and fix the bias? ~ cq 
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dabo 26942 desperate attention whore postings
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05-24-04, 11:38 AM (EST)
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13. "RE: also" |
Someone must be hoping they'll do a spread for Now Legal For Porn.
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Devious Weasel 18756 desperate attention whore postings
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05-24-04, 11:37 AM (EST)
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12. "Some Thoughts" |
I’m going to ignore all the problems with asking people to self-assess their political position. Considering that there may be as many definitions of liberal, moderate, and conservative as there are people, asking people to self-assess without giving a context for that self-assessment seems foolish. (For example, the two questions they give with a context, belief in God and acceptance of homosexuality, would seem to indicate that the number of people who are actually liberal is probably higher than the number of people who self-assess as liberal.] But I digress. There's some interesting things if you go to the report, then go to the poll numbers and look at the breakout. In addition to the distinctions between local and national outlets, there is a sharp difference between beliefs in the print media and the broadcast media. At the national level, 42% of respondents in the print media self-assess as liberal and only 23% of the respondents in the broadcast media self-assess as liberal. (This 23% is within the usual margin of error* of the number of people in the general public {20%} who self-assess as liberal.) At the local level, 30% of respondents in the print media self-assess as liberal and only 14% of the respondents in the broadcast media self-assess as liberal. (Although lower than the 20% of the general public, this is within the combined usual margin of error of the two figures {i.e. the usual margin of error on the 20% of the general public and the usual margin of error on the local broadcast media}.) In other words, broadcast journalists, the source of the news for most people, are about as liberal, if not less liberal, than the general public. There’s another distinction in the numbers. As several posters have commented, if you look at executives, the people who sign the checks, only 16% at the national level and 11% at the local level self-assess as liberal. The national level number is within the combined usual margin of error with the general public number. However, the local level number is outside the usual margin of error, meaning that if the survey is valid, local level journalism executives are less liberal than the general public. (Unfortunately, they don’t break the executive marks out by print and broadcast. I imagine the distinction mentioned above would be at least the same here, meaning that more print executives self-assess as liberal than broadcast executives.) While I agree that your inherent beliefs impact the work you do, I also don’t think it can be argued that the beliefs of your boss also impact the work you do. I’d go so far to say that this impact is probably far greater than the impact of your beliefs.
 I couldn't find the actual margin of error on this study, so I used the usual margin of error on most polls these days of plus or minus 3%.
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PagongRatEater 12996 desperate attention whore postings
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05-24-04, 12:06 PM (EST)
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17. "RE: Some Thoughts" |
LAST EDITED ON 05-24-04 AT 12:07 PM (EST)Some interesting points, I agree that the "self-assesment" is definitely misleading and would certainly be heavily weighted toward moderate as most journalists would like to at least believe that they are non-biased. I also agree that local media tends to be more conservative than national media (to reflect the tastes of their audience more accurately). Print media is far more liberal than television media as shown by their beliefs on religion and homosexuality - which in all demographics and at all levels of the study are far outside of the beliefs of the general public. However, I think that the implication (here and above) that the owners and executives are conservative is not borne out by the poll numbers. While 33% of Americans consider themselves conservative only 19% of Execs and 4% of Senior Execs consider themselves conseravtive. This is a whopping 11% on the local level. So no matter how you slice it, conservative viewpoints are underrepresented in the media. Perhaps there are some areas where it is less stark, but it is still not "fair and balanced". I agree though that the biggest problem with this survey is the self-assesment of the media. I think that the individual issues point to a much more liberal media than the study seems to indicate. It would be VERY interesting if they had asked about political affiliations, electoral preferences and some other issue-based lines of questioning. Thanks for the thoughtful response.
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So, ya gonna watch Dubya's address tonight? 
