Media Bias

A UCLA professor has quantified bias in the media, and it's definitely a leftward slant. His book stating this was recently released, and he defended its conclusions in a column about a month ago:

It is a well-told story that the mainstream media - at least to a small degree - have a liberal bias. It’s surprising, then, that few people have examined, or even asked, a potentially more important question: Does the bias matter? If the media reports the news with a certain slant, how does it affect those who take in the content?

For the past several years, I have researched this question, trying to solve the following thought experiment: What if media bias were suddenly to disappear? In such a world, how would America look and act politically?

The answer is, approximately like Texas.

His findings won't please the NPR crowd, which doesn't detect any leftward bias anywhere and, in fact, sees Fox News as the only biased source:

- All mainstream news outlets in the United States have a liberal bias.

- The Drudge Report is the most fair, balanced and centrist news outlet in the United States.

- Fox News' "Special Report," which is usually characterized as conservative, is not biased as far right as typical mainstream outlets are biased to the left.

Here's a link to his site, where you can calculate your own "political quotient" by answering a 40 question survey. I've gotten more conservative over time, although my social conservatism (not measured in this survey) has waned.