http://www.mrc.org/biasbasics/welcome.asp#editors
Most Recent Data: Five Times More Journalists
Are Liberal Than Conservative
OVERVIEW
In May 2004, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press surveyed 547 journalists and media executives, including 247 at national-level media outlets. The poll was similar to one conducted by the same group (then known as the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press) in 1995. The actual polling was done by the Princeton Survey Research Associates and the report was released May 23, 2004.
KEY FINDINGS
* Five times more national outlet journalists identify themselves as “liberal” (34 percent) than “conservative” (just 7 percent). Just over half of the journalists (54 percent) say they are “moderate.”
* The percentage of national reporters saying they are liberal has increased, from 22 percent in 1995 to 34 percent in 2004. The percentage of self-identified conservatives remains low, rising from a meager 4 percent in 1995 to a still-paltry 7 percent in 2004.
* Local reporters are also more liberal than conservative. Pew found that 23 percent of the local journalists they questioned say they are liberals, while about half as many (12 percent) call themselves conservative.
* Most national journalists (55 percent) say the media are “not critical enough” of President Bush, compared with only eight percent who believe the press has been “too critical.” In 1995, the poll found just two percent thought journalists had given “too much” coverage to then-President Clinton’s accomplishments, compared to 48 percent who complained of “too little” coverage of Clinton’s achievements.
* Reporters struggled to name a liberal news organization. According to Pew, “The New York Times was most often mentioned as the national daily news organization that takes a decidedly liberal point of view, but only by 20% of the national sample.” Only two percent of reporters suggested CNN, ABC, CBS, or NPR were liberal; just one percent named NBC.
* Journalists did see ideology at one outlet: “The single news outlet that strikes most journalists as taking a particular ideological stance — either liberal or conservative — is Fox News Channel,” Pew reported. More than two-thirds of national journalists (69 percent) tagged FNC as a conservative news organization, followed by The Washington Times (9 percent) and The Wall Street Journal (8 percent).
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IN THEIR OWN WORDS:
WHAT MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA SAY ABOUT LIBERAL BIAS
Admissions of Liberal Bias
* "I thought he [former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg] made some very good points. There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I'm consistently liberal in my opinions. And I think some of the, I think Dan [Rather] is transparently liberal. Now, he may not like to hear me say that. I always agree with him, too, but I think he should be more careful."
-- CBS's 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney on Goldberg's book, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, on CNN's Larry King Live, June 5, 2002
* "Most of the time I really think responsible journalists, of which I hope I'm counted as one, leave our bias at the side of the table. Now it is true, historically in the media, it has been more of a liberal persuasion for many years. It has taken us a long time, too long in my view, to have vigorous conservative voices heard as widely in the media as they now are. And so I think yes, on occasion, there is a liberal instinct in the media which we need to keep our eye on, if you will."
-- ABC anchor Peter Jennings appearing on CNN's Larry King Live, April 10, 2002
* "[Journalists] have a certain worldview based on being in Manhattan...that isn’t per se liberal, but if you look at people there, they lean’ in that direction." — Columbia Journalism Review publisher David Laventhol, as reported in "Leaning on the Media" by Mark Jurkowitz, The Boston Globe, January 17, 2002.
* "There is a liberal bias. It’s demonstrable. You look at some statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic, they have for a long time. There is a, particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias. There is a liberal bias at Newsweek, the magazine I work for —- most of the people who work at Newsweek live on the upper West Side in New York and they have a liberal bias....[ABC White House reporter] Brit Hume’s bosses are liberal and they’re always quietly denouncing him as being a right-wing nut." — Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas in an admission on Inside Washington, May 12, 1996.
* "Everybody knows that there's a liberal, that there's a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents.....Anybody who has to live with the people, who covers police stations, covers county courts, brought up that way, has to have a degree of humanity that people who do not have that exposure don't have, and some people interpret that to be liberal. It's not a liberal, it's humanitarian and that's a vastly different thing." –- Walter Cronkite, March 21, 1996 Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner.
* "There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news, and one of them, I’m more convinced than ever, is that our viewers simply don’t trust us. And for good reason. The old argument that the networks and other `media elites’ have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it’s hardly worth discussing anymore. No, we don’t sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we’re going to slant the news. We don’t have to. It comes naturally to most reporters.....Mr. Engberg’s report set new standards for bias....Can you imagine, in your wildest dreams, a network news reporter calling Hillary Clinton’s health care plan 'wacky?’...
"‘Reality Check’ suggests the viewers are going to get the facts. And then they can make up their mind. As Mr. Engberg might put it: `Time Out!’ You’d have a better chance of getting the facts someplace else -- like Albania." — CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg on an anti-flat tax story by CBS reporter Eric Engberg, February 13, 1996 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
* "I think this is another reflection of the overwhelming journalistic tilt towards liberalism and those programs. Now the question is whether that’s bad or not, and that’s another debate. But the idea that many of us, and my colleagues deny that there is this kind of bias is nuts, because there is in our world. I forget what the surveys show but most of us are Democratic and probably most of us line up in the fairly liberal world." — Time Washington contributing editor Hugh Sidey responding to a caller who asked if journalists are in favor of affirmative action, July 21, 1995 C-SPAN Washington Journal.
* "As much as we try to think otherwise, when you’re covering some- one like yourself, and your position in life is insecure, she’s your mascot. Something in you roots for her. You’re rooting for your team. I try to get that bias out, but for many of us it’s there." — Time Senior Writer Margaret Carlson quoted in The Washington Post, March 7, 1994.
*
"I think liberalism lives — the notion that we don’t have to stay where we are as a society, we have promises to keep, and it is liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country? It was people who wanted to change things for the better." — Charles Kuralt talking with Morley Safer on the CBS special, One for the Road with Charles Kuralt, May 5, 1994.
*
"I won't make any pretense that the American Agenda is totally neutral. We do take a position. And I think the public wants us now to take a position. If you give both sides and 'Well, on the one hand this and on the other that'--I think people kind of really want you to help direct their thinking on some issues." — ABC News reporter Carole Simpson on CNBC's Equal Time, August 9, 1994.
* "I think we are aware, as everybody who works in the media is, that the old stereotype of the liberal bent happens to be true, and we’re making a concerted effort to really look for more from the other, without being ponderous or lecturing or trying to convert people to another way of thinking." — ABC World News Tonight Executive Producer Emily Rooney, September 27, 1993 Electronic Media.
* "The group of people I’ll call The Press — by which I mean several dozen political journalists of my acquaintance, many of whom the Buchanan administration may someday round up on suspicion of having Democratic or even liberal sympathies — was of one mind as the season’s first primary campaign shuddered toward its finish. I asked each of them, one after another, this question: If you were a New Hampshire Democrat, whom would you vote for? The answer was always the same; and the answer was always Clinton. In this group, in my experience, such unanimity is unprecedented....
"Almost none is due to calculations about Clinton being ‘electable’...and none at all is due to belief in Clinton’s denials in the Flowers business, because no one believes these denials. No, the real reason members of The Press like Clinton is simple, and surprisingly uncynical: they think he would make a very good, perhaps a great, President. Several told me they were convinced that Clinton is the most talented presidential candidate they have ever encountered, JFK included." — New Republic Senior Editor Hendrik Hertzberg, March 9, 1992 issue.
* "We’re unpopular because the press tends to be liberal, and I don’t think we can run away from that. And I think we’re unpopular with a lot of conservatives and Republicans this time because the White House press corps by and large detested George Bush, probably for good and sufficient reason, they certainly can cite chapter and verse. But their real contempt for him showed through in their reporting in a way that I think got up the nose of the American people." — Time writer William A. Henry III on the PBS November 4, 1992 election-night special The Finish Line.
* "Indeed, coverage of the campaign vindicated exactly what conservatives have been saying for years about liberal bias in the media. In their defense, journalists say that though they may have their personal opinions, as professionals they are able to correct for them when they write. Sounds nice, but I’m not buying any." — Former Newsweek reporter Jacob Weisberg in The New Republic, November 23, 1992 issue.
* "There is no such thing as objective reporting...I've become even more crafty about finding the voices to say the things I think are true. That's my subversive mission." — Boston Globe environmental reporter Dianne Dumanoski at an Utne Reader symposium May 17-20, 1990. Quoted by Micah Morrison in the July 1990 American Spectator.
* "I do have an axe to grind...I want to be the little subversive person in television."
— Barbara Pyle, CNN Environmental Editor and Turner Broadcasting Vice President for Environmental Policy, as quotedby David Brooks in the July 1990 American Spectator.
* "I'm not sure it's useful to include every single point of view simply in order to cover every base because you can come up with a program that's virtually impossible for the audience to sort out." — PBS Senior Producer Linda Harrar commenting on PBS's ten-part series, Race to Save The Planet, to MRC and reported in the December 1990 MediaWatch.
* "As the science editor at Time I would freely admit that on this issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy." — Time Science Editor Charles Alexander at a September 16, 1989 global warming conference at the Smithsonian Institution as quoted by David Brooks in an October 5, 1989 Wall Street Journal Journal column.
* "Clearly the networks have made that decision now, where you'd have to call it [global warming stories] advocacy." — NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Andrea Mitchell at a September 16, 1989 global warming conference at the Smithsonian Institution as quoted by David Brooks in an October 5, 1989 Wall Street Journal Journal column.
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The American Journalist in the 21st Century
OVERVIEW
The decennial survey, The American Journalist in the 21st Century by David Weaver, Randal Beam, Bonnie Brownlee, G. Cleveland Wilhoit and Paul Voakes in collaboration with the Indiana University School of Journalism and sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, surveyed 1,149 print, radio and television journalists in the fall of 2002. The book, The American Journalist in the 21st Century, is not expected to be available until the summer of 2004, but some key findings have already been reported.
KEY FINDINGS
* In American newsrooms, Democrats outnumber Republicans by two-to-one (37.1 percent to18.6 percent).
* One third claim to be Independents.
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Major Newspaper Reporters
OVERVIEW
In 1982, scholars at the California State University at Los Angeles asked reporters from the fifty largest U.S. newspapers for whom they voted in 1980. In that election,Republican Ronald Reagan won with 50% of the vote, compared with 41% for Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter and 8% for liberal Republican-turned-independent Jon Anderson.
KEY FINDINGS
* 51 percent of big city reporters cast a ballot for Democratic President Jimmy Carter, 24 percent for liberal independent candidate John Anderson, and 25 percent for the Republican winner, Ronald Reagan.
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WORLDS APART:
MEDIA AND PUBLIC BELIEFS
Massive Majority of Media Hold Strong Liberal Beliefs
OVERVIEW
In 1985, the Los Angeles Times conducted one of the most extensive surveys of journalists in history. Using the same questionnaire they had used to poll the public, the Times polled 2,700 journalists at 621 newspapers across the country. The survey asked 16 questions involving foreign affairs, social and economic issues. On 15 of 16 questions, the journalists gave answers to the left of those given by the public.
KEY FINDINGS
* Self-identified liberals outnumbered conservatives in the newsroom by more than three-to-one, 55 to 17 percent. This compares to only one-fourth of the public (23 percent) that identified themselves as liberal.
* 82 percent of reporters and editors favored allowing women to have abortions; 81 percent backed affirmative action; and 78 percent wanted stricter gun control.
* By a margin of two-to-one, reporters had a negative view of then-President Ronald Reagan and voted, by the same margin, for Walter Mondale in 1984.
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JOURNALISTS VIEW COLLEAGUES,
SELVES AS BIASED
Newspaper Editors Concede Liberal Bias
OVERVIEW
Two recent national surveys on media bias have yielded surprising results. A large percentage of newspaper editors admit there is liberal bias in their own backyards — newspapers — and even more find bias in television and radio stations.
First, in September 1992, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) commissioned a poll of 94 editors, 89 publishers and 22 executives carrying both titles, asking "Do you believe there's bias in the general media's political coverage?" Highlights of the NAA survey were featured in the MRC's June 1993 MediaWatch.
KEY FINDINGS
* 51.7 of respondents believed there was a bias in the general media’s political coverage. When they were then asked "toward which agenda, conservative or liberal?" 70.8 percent said liberal, just 7.5 percent conservative.
* However, when asked, "Do you believe there’s a bias in newspapers’ political coverage?" 59.5 percent responded no and only 37.1 percent said yes. Of those who said yes, 61.8 percent saw a liberal slant, 25 percent said bias went against both agendas and 13.2 percent claimed the bias favored the conservative agenda.
The second surprising survey was conducted by Editor & Publisher, the preeminent newspaper trade magazine, and published in January 1998. The poll surveyed 167 newspaper editors across the country. Investor’s Business Daily reporter Matthew Robinson obtained full poll results, highlights of which were featured in the MRC's February 1998 MediaWatch.
KEY FINDINGS
* Asked how they think the public perceives newspapers, 89 percent of newspaper editors said "liberal" compared to a measly 1.2 percent who responded "conservative." Another 4.3 percent said moderate.
* Many editors were willing to concede the slant, with more than three times as many describing American dailies as liberal over conservative: 25.1 percent to 7.8 percent with 62.9 percent tagging papers as moderate.
*
"How often do journalists’ opinions influence coverage?" While only 14 percent said "often," a solid majority of 57 percent conceded it "sometimes" happens, meaning 71 percent acknowledge the connection between personal views and coverage.
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