The media bias - right or left?

Liberals say that the 'big corporate media' is biased against them, conservatives say the that the tree hugging hippy lovin journalists are biased against them.

So, who is right?

May I present to you two different studies done after the elections. The Institute for Journalism Excellence and the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

The first question that needs to be asked is who are these groups?

CMPA's President is Dr. S Robert Litcher:
S. Robert Lichter is President of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization in Washington, D.C., which conducts scientific studies of the news and entertainment media.

PEJ:
The Project for Excellence in Journalism is a research organization that is part of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. It is underwritten by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The project is run by journalists, and its goal is to use research rather than merely criticism to clarify and raise the standards of American journalism.

Both are fairly non partisan organizations dedicated to improving their fields of study rather than pushing through any form of political agenda.

The CMPA's report is here complete with graphs an examples, here are it's summary findings:

...Evaluations were only 38% positive towards Kerry and 29% positive towards Bush, compared to 48% positive of Gore and 33% positive of Bush in 2000.

....All three networks gave Kerry gave Kerry 38% positive evaluations, but ABC gave Bush only 20% positive, compared to NBC 30% positive and 35% positive at CBS.

.....Foxnews "Special Report" was 31% positive of Bush compared to 21% for Kerry. Their panelists favored Bush 50% compared to Kerry 13%

...In "Special Report" news segments the coverage was balanced 27% positive Bush and 24% Kerry. Fox was also more balanced its issue coverage 30% Bush vs 28% Kerry compared to the networks 41% positive for Kerry compared to 23% for Bush.

In other words, all three networks were biased towards Kerry in every way, while the Foxnews commentators were certainly biased towards Bush, their actual news was the most balanced.

The PEJ came up with similar findings, but their report is less detailed:

In the closing weeks of the 2004 presidential race, the period dominated by the debates, President George W. Bush has suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry, according to a new study released today by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
More than half of all Bush stories studied were decidedly negative in tone (1). By contrast, only a quarter of all Kerry stories were clearly negative.

Judging by these two independent studies, there is a clear bias in the American media towards the left, with Foxnews being more positive about Bush in opinion but more balanced in news reports.

The next question is why is there this bias? My personal opinion on the matter is that journalism as a profession tends to attract more people from the left than the right, just as the military tends to attract more people from the right.
People in the media industries are usually very creative and hence very idealistic. Journalists strike me as also being quite anti-establishment, searching for the "truth" and all that.

The biggest problem I see in journalism today is after Watergate and Tet journalism found power. It had power over the President and it had the power to win or lose wars.
This has made many journalists lose sight of the facts and understanding that good news is allowed to be reported too, instead they are all searching for that silver bullet, that 'gotcha' moment that will make them the next Bob Woodward or Walter Cronkite.

This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed - because in a large democracy you need a fair and balanced media to give you both the good and the bad. Anything else is just unhealthy to a democracy. Outrageous headlines and constant bad news gives people a skewered perspective of what is happening in the world, and their decisions will reflect that (There is no way Kerry would have gotten 48% of the vote if the news was more balanced).

Enter the blogsphere - the savior of Democracy. While blogs are hardly fair and balanced, they are definitely much more diverse than the media and much more easily accessible. I can't access Foxnews on the TV here in New Zealand but I can certainly access right wing blogs [and left wing] from across the world.