Wednesday's Biased Item - May 14, 2008
Four Times More Journalists Identify as Liberal Than Conservative
Directions
Read the excerpt below (from Brent Baker's report posted at NewsBusters.org). Read "Types of Media Bias" in the right column. Then answer the questions.
Questions
Do you think that the disproportionate number of liberal journalists, as documented in the PEW report, has had an affect on the way the news is reported? Explain your answer.
Excerpt
A survey conducted late last year and released in March by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press confirmed...that compared to the views of the public, conservatives are under-represented in national journalism while liberals are over-represented. Jennifer Harper of the Washington Times discovered the [information] buried deep in the annual "State of the Media" report from Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism and FNC's Brit Hume...highlighted the findings from the survey of 222 journalists and news executives at national outlets:
Only 6 percent said they considered themselves conservatives and only 2 percent said they were very conservative. This compares with 36 percent of the overall population that describes itself as conservative. Most journalists, 53 percent, said they're moderate. 24 percent said they were liberal and 8 percent very liberal.
Only 19 percent of the public consider themselves liberal. And it's not much of a leap to presume many of the 53 percent who describe themselves as "moderate" are really quite liberal.
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Read the complete report at NewsBusters.org.
Read the PEW's "State of the Media" report here. (NOTE: In PDF format. See the bottom of page 18 for the statistics on journalists' ideology.)
Visit the PEW website at people-press.org.
To accurately identify different types of bias, you should be aware of the issues of the day, and the liberal and conservative perspectives on each issue. (See our chart “Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs”)
Types of Media Bias:
Omission – leaving one side out of an article or a series of articles over a period of time... (read more)
Selection of Sources – including more sources that support one view over another... (read more)
Story Selection – a pattern of highlighting news stories that support one side of an issue over another... (read more)
Placement – the location in the paper or article where a story or event is printed; a pattern of placing news stories so as to downplay information supportive of one side... (read more)
Labeling – comes in two forms: 1. Tagging of person from one party or group with extreme labels while leaving the other side unlabeled or with more mild labels. 2. A reporter not only fails to identify a liberal or conservative as such, but also describes the person or group with positive labels, such as “an expert” or “independent consumer group”... (read more)
Spin – occurs when the story has only one interpretation of an event or policy, to the exclusion of the other. Spin involves tone- a reporter’s subjective comments about objective facts... (read more)
Previous Biased Items
- The Great Media Depression
June 4, 2008 - The AP Maligns Our Soldiers On Memorial Day Weekend
May 28, 2008 - Media Make Economic Storms Out of Silver Linings
May 21, 2008 - Four Times More Journalists Identify as Liberal Than Conservative
May 14, 2008 - Global Warming Censored
May 7, 2008