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Media bias study

From dKosopedia

This report is touted as showing the Drudge Report as a moderate news source, and the rest of the media as having a liberal bias (other than Fox News). This is sheer spin based on the false assumption that the median Congressperson is in the political center, but the data is otherwise good. What the data really shows is that Drudge is politically comparable to moderate Republicans, that Fox is comparable to ordinary Republicans, and that most media outlets are to the left of the Republican Party and to the right of the Democratic Party.

The data first rates think tanks as liberal to conservative based on the members of Congress who cite them and the member's political leanings as ranked by ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) based on their votes in Congress. Then, media outlets are rated from liberal to conservative based upon their mix of citations to various think tanks.

On the ADA scale (1 conservative, 100 liberal), the average House Republican rates 11.4, the average Senate Republican rates 11, the average House Democrat rates 76.5 and the average Senate Democrat rates 71.7. The average in the House is 44.5 and in the Senate is 40.0 because both chambers are Republican controlled. The public, of course, is extremely closely balanced between Republicans (and parties to thier right) and Democrats (and parties to their left) as shown by the 2000 Presidential race popular vote. Moderates in Congress were ranked as follows by the ADA:

Basically, Democrats generally are 65 or higher, and Republicans are generally 45 of lower, with a handful of moderate Republicans and Democrats in the intermediate range. Most Democrats and Republicans are far from these thresholds.

Twenty think tanks were rated based on the ADA scores of the Congress members who cited them (the ACLU was then dropped as it scored in the 30s with campaign finance included and the 70s, without campaign finance included). These ranks are as follows:

This produced the following media ratings:

Thus, most mainstream media is between the Republican Party members of Congress and Democratic Party members of Congress in content, Drudge is in the moderate Republican party zone, and Fox is in the solidly Republican zone. None of the media establishments listed were solidly in the Democratic column.

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This page was last modified 13:51, 30 October 2008 by dKosopedia user Centerfielder. Based on work by Totally Awsome, Chad Lupkes and Andrew Oh-Willeke. Content is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.


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