The Liberal Media Bias is Real

Imagine the following scenario.

A poll of people in the American media shows that 90 percent of them are conservative based on their own statements about their voting records and political views.

Imagine the outrage in Liberal Land. “You’re unfair,” liberal politicians will scream. “We lose elections because you ignore stories that prove our policies work and you portray conservatives as smarter, more empathetic, and more patriotic than us.”

Imagine the conservative journalists and politicians responding “that’s nonsense. The media is fair and unbiased. Even if journalists are personally biased, their views have ZERO impact on their work.”

The above scenario will never happen because the media has a pro-liberal bias, not a pro-conservative bias, but it shows how ridiculous liberal journalists and politicians are.

The liberals — and the rest of America — would laugh if conservatives claimed that a pro-conservative media bias in their personal lives didn’t affect their work, but they expect others to take their claims on this topic seriously.

Liberals DO laugh when conservatives blame their electoral defeats, in part on the media prioritizing pro-liberal stories and ignoring pro-conservative stories but they sometimes make similar claims.

Here’s the difference between liberals’ claims about a pro-conservative media bias and conservatives’ claims about a pro-liberal media bias — liberals have ZERO evidence for their claims and conservatives have DECADES of proof that their claims are correct.

Here are 12 facts about “What Journalists Think” as reported by “Media Bias 101,” a 48-page report published by the Media Research Center in 2014:

1. A 1996 survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) of 1,037 reporters who worked for 61 newspapers found that 62 percent of the reporters were Democrats or liberal, 24 percent were independent, and 15 percent were Republicans or conservative.

2. The disparity between liberals and conservatives is even greater at newspapers with a circulation of at least 50,000. At these larger newspapers, 65 percent of reporters were Democrats or liberal and 12 percent were Republicans or conservative.

3. An astonishing 89 percent of 139 Washington, D.C.-based bureau chiefs and correspondents surveyed by the Freedom Forum in 1996 voted for Bill Clinton for president in 1992. President George Bush Sr. received 7 percent of the respondents’ vote and 2 percent voted for Ross Perot. Reporters favored the Democrat almost 13:1.

4. A 1995 poll of 28 White House correspondents from the largest television networks and newspapers — the people whose reports are seen and read by hundreds of millions of Americans — found that the correspondents voted for Democratic presidential candidates over Republicans by a ratio of 7:1 in five elections.

5. Journalists are incredibly liberal on the abortion issue, according to a 1992 survey of 1,410 journalists by two Indiana University professors. Fifty-one percent of the respondents said abortion should be “legal under any circumstances” while only 4 percent said abortion should be “illegal in all circumstances.” Among Americans, the legal/illegal divide was 33 to 14 percent.

6. Business reporters, a group you might think would be more conservative than political reporters, were very pro-Democratic. A 1988 survey of 151 business reporters by the Journalist and Financial Reporting newsletter found that 54 percent were registered Democrats and only 9 percent were registered Republicans.

7. Ninety-seven percent of the “media elite” are pro-abortion, 75 percent support government working to reduce the income disparity between rich and poor people, and 71 percent support the government working to “ensure that everyone has a job,” according to a 1995 survey of 240 reporters and editors.

8. Journalists’ views on issues are dramatically different than the American public’s, reported a 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation poll. The 301 media professionals were 4 x’s more likely to be liberal than conservative while the public was nearly twice as likely to be conservative. A 2004 survey of 547 journalists by the Pew Research Center had similar results.

9. Journalists’ liberal bias is reflected in their thoughts about their colleagues’ news coverage. Fifty-five percent of the journalists surveyed by Pew said the media wasn’t critical enough of President George W. Bush, while only 8 percent said their colleagues were too critical. In a similar Pew survey in 1995, journalists said by a 48 percent margin that their colleagues were too critical of President Bill Clinton.

10. Journalists who covered the 2004 presidential campaign and worked in Washington, D.C. favored John Kerry over George W. Bush by a 12:1 ratio, according to a survey of 153 journalists by The New York Times. Journalists who covered the campaign outside the Beltway favored Kerry by a 3:1 ratio.

11. Journalists strongly favor all of the Bill of Rights except one — the Second Amendment. A 2005 Univ. of Connecticut survey of 300 journalists revealed that 97 percent of the respondents believed the right to a fair trial was “essential” while 96 percent, 95 percent, and 92 percent felt the same way about a free press, freedom of religion, and free speech respectively.

However, only 25 percent felt that way about the right to bear arms. Incredibly, 80 percent of the respondents deemed the right to privacy essential although there is no such thing in the Bill of Rights.

12. In 2008, 96 percent of the 57 staffers who worked for Slate magazine supported Barack Obama in that year’s presidential contest. That’s 55 votes for Obama and one each for John McCain and Libertarian Bob Barr. Obama received “only” 84 percent of staffers’ votes in 2012 with Mitt Romney tying Libertarian Gary Johnson with two votes each.

The Public Distrust of the Media

Given the above findings, isn’t it any wonder that the American public distrusts the media?

The Media Research Center report includes data from several surveys of the American public. The results are striking.

“By a nearly three-to-one margin, those who see political bias believe the media bend their stories to favor liberals,” the report says. “By a nearly eight-to-one margin, voters recognized the media as promoting Barack Obama’s candidacy in 2008. These polls document a crisis for the news media. Years of skewed reporting has squandered the public’s trust.”

Besides the 2013 Gallup poll that concluded 46 percent of the public believes the media is too liberal while only 15 percent believe it is too conservative and the 2008 Pew Research Center survey that concluded that Americans believed the media favored Obama over McCain by an 8:1 ratio, the Media Research Center report also said that:

* Only 11 percent of the public believes that journalists’ political views don’t affect their coverage.

* About 85 percent of the public believes that the media is biased.

* Only 37 percent of Americans believe that journalists get their facts straight.

* Only 27 percent of Americans believe that journalists are fair to “all sides.”

And, to refresh your memory, this Media Research Center was published in 2014 and contains data from surveys that were published long before 2014.

Has the media become more biased during the 2016 presidential campaign than in previous campaigns? The data on that probably won’t be available for a while, but the “Media Bias 101” emphasizes repeatedly that the media — despite the public’s complaints — has become MORE biased over the years and decades.

The signs that the media will be fair now that the two political conventions are over are not good. Does anyone remember the now infamous CNBC debate that was held on Oct. 28, 2015 among 10 candidates for the GOP presidential nomination?

An analysis by the Media Research Center found that 65 percent of the questions asked by the three moderators included ad hominem attacks, negative spin, or personal insults, reported Townhall in an article entitled “Mainstream Media’s Bias.”

The bias also was reflected in factual errors, according to an analysis in the Washington Examiner entitled “Yes, liberal media bias is real, and here’s how it affected the CNBC debate.”

More significantly, the media virtually ignored the U.S. Justice Department’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of her private e-mail service to send classified e-mails. A June 22 NewsBusters article said that ABC, CBS, and NBC had devoted 432 minutes to controversies involving Trump and only 105 minutes on “Hillary Clinton’s controversies including the big email investigation.”

It’s clear the media bias will continue regardless of who is the next president because journalists will still try to help liberal causes and hurt conservative causes.

A study by the Media Research Center showed that coverage of the Orlando terrorist attack by ABC, CBS, and NBC gave anti-gun control views less than three minutes each of airtime while giving gun control supporters about eight times as many minutes.

It’s also clear that the media bias has had a detrimental effect on American democracy. The “Media Bias 101” report said that Democrats and liberals have become more apt to read and watch liberal newspapers and television news programs in recent years while Republicans and conservatives are becoming more apt to consumer conservative media like Fox News.

“The data presented here tell the story of how journalists have devolved from respected professionals to resented partisans, and have lost the esteem of their audience in the process,” the report says.


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1 thought on “The Liberal Media Bias is Real”

  1. Why aren’t there truth in Media laws? A case could be made that the media is violating Truth In Advertising laws by using bylines that are false and misleading, furthermore, promoting false statements of “fact”. Why hasn’t anyone challenged the media or enacted TRUTH IN MEDIA laws?

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