Monday, December 19, 2005

Can This Be True?

Shockingly, this UCLA study finds that 90% of the major news outlets lean to the left. Did we really need a study to tell us that? via Pajamas Media

39 Comments:

Blogger DRJ said...

Nope.

7:55 PM, December 19, 2005  
Blogger Assistant Village Idiot said...

The numbers within the numbers were instructive. In round numbers, the average American was set at 50, and the average Democrat was over 80, (0-100, most conservative to most liberal). Media outlets came in a bit over 60.

This is certainly to the left of the American people, but because it is to the right of the average Democrat, it allows the MSM to perceive themselves as centrist, and thus, unbiased. Of course, the 10+ point move means that an average conservative will be 40 points away from the MSM's perceived "center" and look like an extremist, because 40 points in the other direction would be out in the Neverland of leftist craziness. A ten-point misperception of where the center is is a lot.

This is about what we see in practice. The MSM does find some things too far left and treats it with the same archness it uses on conservatives. But those "some things" are few in number, and way out there.

8:12 PM, December 19, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you! Or not.

If you find yourself without anything constructive to do for a couple of hours, take a look at the graduate faculty of the "top" journalism schools - Columbia for example. Credentials are replete with the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, PBS (Bill Moyers mentioned specifically) etc. This experience is obviously valued in the academic community, and so we get the revolving door syndrome - graduate from [modern] liberal journalism school, work in liberal media, teach in liberal journalism school. It's difficult to see when or how this particular recurring phenomenon is likely to change for the better.

10:10 PM, December 19, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

The authors of this study freely conflate bias with citation. It may well be true that the media's citations are, on average, to the left of the American political center. But that does not prove bias, in the dictionary sense of an "inclination that inhibits impartial judgment". Who you cite is not the same as who you are. And, more importantly, just because you are to the left or the right of the American political center, does that make you biased? Is it a reasonable axiom that the American public isn't biased? After all, Americans are clearly to the right of Canadians on average; they can't both be unbiased.

Or is the thesis that all news is supposed to be "balanced" for its own audience? That journalists are not supposed to influence public opinion? Would Southerners have ever decided that racial segregation is wrong if their news was always "balanced" to fit their prior views?

Consider applying the methodology of this study to a college biology class. The American public is about evenly split between believing creationism (or "intelligent design") and believing evolution. The typical college biology class presents evolution as established scientific fact and has zero sources in support of creationism. So by the metric of UCLA political scientists, biology classes are "biased" and "unbalanced". They "lean to the left". In fact, if you think that there are too few Republicans in the Columbia School of Journalism, try surveying the religious views of the Columbia biology department. You will find an overwhelming atheist "bias".

The reality, of course, is that some American Christians are continuing an unnecessary fight with mainstream biologists. Any endorsement of anti-evolutionary religious doctrine in a biology class would be the real bias.

1:23 AM, December 20, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Media is so far to the left that the contrast makes the "median" media seem as if it's gone off the scale to the right ...

10:15 AM, December 20, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So our intrepid pal Kuperberg sounds off, full of academese. As he tries to explain away media bias, he realizes that he is sounding like a pompous and out of touch academic. So he shifts to creation science arguments---which have nothing to with media bias, other than as a straw man argument.

So...if the media is not biased, friends, why was Sandy Berger given a pass by the media, but we still haven't heard the end of the Valerie Plame story? Remember, we have never heard precisely what Berger stuffed down his pants, except that they were top secret, and he "didn't mean to do it." Nor have we heard anything mroe about the documents.

Whether or not K. agrees or not isn't the issue. The truth is that the media is biased leftwards. They like leftist philosophies, and so they defend them in both their reporting and their choice of stories.

Creation science and intelligent design are topics for another day...

10:31 AM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

Creationism has everything to do with media "bias". When reporting on creationism and evolution, the media clearly "leans to the left" of the American public. The public is evenly split between creationism and evolution. But the media isn't; it plainly favors evolution.

Why would the media be "biased" on this issue? As another commenter pointed out, journalists are trained in the academic environment. My point was that mainstream academia is even more "biased" on evolution vs creationism than the mainstream media is. I happen to agree with the mainstream media on this one, but what does that count for?

Media "bias" is about much more than Sandy Berger.

12:06 PM, December 20, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Troll, troll, troll...

The subject is NOT your straw man. I started to write a reply, that the issue is the *perception* of fairness (and the asinine way that the poll questions are phrased), rather than antiscience or pro-religious idealism...but it falls right into the Kuperberg Trap.

Please stick to the topic.

1:04 PM, December 20, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Greg - the problem is not that they are biased... as annoying as that can be when they are reporting a story. The problem is that they claim to be "unbiased" or they have been for as long as I have been listening to them. It's only in the last year or so that I've been hearing actual statements from these very people that "maybe we are a bit biased"... ya think?

Years ago newspapers were certainly biased in one direction or the other - when you bought the paper you knew what kind of bias you were reading. Then some time in the late 60's the news people started to proclaim themselves as completely neutral... a bigger load of horse manure was never unloaded on the public. Geeze.

As for a study to tell us about the bias. Well as Julian notes above... the numbers provide concrete proof that there is a bias - that it's not just people listening or reading news and providing their own anecdotal evidence to support their own theory. If the study itself was carefully done - then the numbers have meaning and do show that the perception is accurate and has substance.

1:12 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

Teresa: Before discussing any problem of bias, you have to explain what does and does not count as bias. Then we can talk about whether it is or isn't annoying. The authors of this particular study define "bias" as deviation from American public opinion. My point is that if that's what you mean by "bias", then you are opening the door to a host of unwelcome examples: Is evolution established scientific fact? Is abortion murder? How many of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi? The media is hopelessly "biased" on all of these questions by the UCLA definition of "bias". But if that's what counts as "bias", then not only is it not annoying, newspapers would have to blatantly and systematically lie to avoid "bias".

I agree with you that any news desk that constantly proclaims itself to be neutral, unbiased, or "fair and balanced" has an attitude problem. When it is actually true, it is a problem. However, I have read the New York Times on most days for the past 15 years and I do not know of even one instance where it told me that it isn't biased. Maybe it escaped my notice — the Times does after all publish more than a million words a month. If you were right, then you should be able to find at least one example a week in the Times specifically. Can you give an example?

The only major news desk that I know of that really does repeatedly claim to be balanced is Fox News. (Although, since I have no television, there may be other examples on TV.) Not only does Fox claim this, it systematically weaves it into its editorials, and it also casts aspersions onto its competitors on the same point. I agree with you that that's a problem.

2:14 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Bill Dalasio said...

By and large, media bias is pretty well unavoidable. The bulk of news significant enough to pass on to the national market comes from roughly four or five major markets. Those markets tend to be much more liberal than the country as a whole. That said, I think technology is working to overcome this problem. The blogosphere is giving virtually anyone with a modem and an e-mail account the ability to bypass the media's role as gatekeepers. Widespread proliferation of new media has made it harder for the legacy media to define itself as the mainstream of acceptable thinking.

2:27 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Bill Dalasio said...

Mr. Kuperberg,

You may want to take a glance at the the mast head of your precious Times. "All the News That's Fit to Print" seems a pretty clear statement of unbiasedness where I'm sitting.

2:34 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

Bill Dalasio: It's nothing of the sort. First of all it's a 100-year-old sales slogan and not an editorial position. It didn't suddenly reveal itself "in the late 60s". It goes back to the days when, as Teresa said, all newspapers were openly biased.

Even as just a sales slogan, all that it suggests is that the Times is comprehensive, not that it isn't biased. In fact it is a fairly comprehensive newspaper.

Frankly the real reason that for this false accusation against the Times is the fact, regardless of what the Times says about itself, that it has influence. That's what really bugs people.

2:50 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Bill Dalasio said...

Greg Kuperberg,

Um...if you actually watch Fox, the "Fair and Balanced" tagline is just as much a sales slogan as "All the News Thats Fit to Print" . The statement doesn't come up much in their editorial positions, simply their advertising. Moreover, the the Times' tagline implies comprehensive coverage of any given story, including any information that undermines the paper's editorial positions. Otherwise, of course, they aren't printing all the news, unless you somehow believe that only left-of-center story details are "fit to print". Unfortunately, the Times often fails to provide information that proves inconvenient for its editorial stance. Quite clearly, it fails to meet its promise on this ground. So, since you seem perfectly okay with the Times use of its tagline, your criticisms of Fox News' tagline must be in jest.

3:17 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

There is another interesting direction to take Teresa's position that the real problem with the mainstream media is how it describes itself. What about the way that two very different sources of news and opinion describe each other? I will make the deliberately provocative comparison of The New York Times vs The Instapundit.

You can search for "Instapundit" or "Glenn H. Reynolds" (also without the "H") at the New York Times and you will get about a dozen relevant hits. (There is also a banker named Glenn Reynolds, no apparent relation.) Every one of these references shows basic respect, often outright praise. The only real criticism comes from a single reference by Paul Krugman, who derides Glenn's comparison between Mississippi and Sweden. But even Krugman clearly attacks the ball and not the man.

You can also search for the New York Times at Instapundit.com. Many of these references are accusatory. Some of them are downright rude. "And people wonder why The New York Times has credibility issues?", reads one typical subject line.

If you folks want the "pajamas media" to be a useful complement or alternative to the "mainstream media", then I agree that there are many ways that the blogosphere could help. I'll even say that Instapundit in particular has some real influence. But it is not enough not to falsely claim that you are neutral. Rude, chronic criticism of the other side is another bad way to puff yourself up.

3:30 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

Bill Dalasio: I agree completely that "Fair and Balanced" is a Fox News sales slogan. But you're wrong that it's only in the advertising. For example, here is John Gibson opening a segment of his own show on Fox: "Then, we'll get fair and balanced reaction from Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and Terry McAuliffe, former DNC chairman." They don't just put a box around this theme and stash it in the corner, as the Times does with its slogan. They weave it into the broadcasts with many variations. And they routinely throw around the accusation that their competitors fall short of their standard.

For that matter Fox, and in fact most TV news desks, badly blur the line between content and promotion. It's hard to say what is or isn't the advertising; sometimes the whole show seems like advertising.

As for the New York Times, you are reading a great deal into seven words framed in a box in the corner. You could just as well argue that "All the news that's fit print" really means "We have a direct line from God and everything we say is infallible", and then turn around and slam them for claiming it. The truth is that they aren't responsible for your creative interpretations.

3:46 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

All right, I did a search and I'm not completely right about the Times' own interpretation of their slogan, "All the news that's fit to print". They explained what they meant in 1996 when they held a contest to find another slogan for their web site. They said, "In 1896, ... Adolph S. Ochs sought a way to epitomize the paper's goal of providing fair, accurate and thorough news coverage." So they don't just mean that the news should be comprehensive; they also want it to be fair.

But there is a crucial extra word here, the word goal. It's completely unreasonable for a news desk to pronounce that it's fair. It's completely reasonable for take that as a goal.

Besides, we weren't talking about fairness, we were talking about bias. I stand by my original point that the UCLA definition of bias — catering to the existing American political spectrum — is actually completely unfair. Americans would never change their minds about anything if the media always "balanced" the news to match what they already believe.

4:05 PM, December 20, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My old Grandpappy used to say, "Never argue with a fool. It only lends credibility to his argument." (OK, maybe it wasn't my Grandpappy.)

I feel better now. The voices have stopped...

4:18 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Bill Dalasio said...

Greg Kuperberg,

I'm really reading no more into "All the News That's Fit to Print" than you are into Fox News' "Fair and Balanced". There really isn't much of a difference and that's my entire point. Neither is a reliable source of objective truth and both make claim to be. Really, your claim amounts to the fact that Fox News is a little more loose in throwing its taglines around - that they're better advertisers. Finally, I hope for your credibility that you're not trying to claim with a straight face that the Times doesn't disparage other sources of news.

4:33 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

Bill Dalasio: I wouldn't say that the Times never disparages other sources of news. I can see that it has never disparaged Instapundit, but it does sometimes disparage Fox News, for example. Just not very often.

Actually one of the biggest targets of the New York Times' criticism is the New York Times. They pay a public editor who usually criticizes the newspaper in his biweekly column. That's a reasonable rule to live by: Criticize your competitors no more than you criticize yourself.

I don't know that any TV news channel lives by that rule. Certainly not Fox News. Maybe PBS does. It's one of the many reasons that I don't own a television.

4:56 PM, December 20, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

We all notice that lacking a television does not stop you from pontificating on the subject, sir.

Perhaps you should think on that.

7:36 PM, December 20, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sigh.

Folks, please remember that Our Professor Kuperberg likes to argue for its own sake, and has a history of darting and weaving when his own inconsistencies and misstatements are pointed out.

At the same time, I like to see debate---I often find things I can learn. But when (as someone said a while back) it sounds like "The Argument Room" from a Monty Python sketch, I don't see the point.

Personally, I don't care to argue with the gentleman, who seems to have a great deal of spare time in academics I do not enjoy.

I just hate to see debate become argument.

"Eric Blair"

7:51 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Assistant Village Idiot said...

greg, I salute you for trying to tackle the whole program here. Here is my disagreement.

Bias can be measured by any number of proxies, but it is difficult to measure directly on a consistent basis. It can be measured at the level of the single event, as one reads an article and picks apart emotion-laden or slanted words, or compares similar events reported differently, as with Sandy Berger. But when one tries to define what is being measured, to repeat the experiment, it is difficult to pin down. Proxies are intelligent way to try and get at a tendency.

Other proxies used to measure political leanings have been party registration, use of high-impact words such as "extremist," counting up negative versus positive stories on a subject or individual, comparing the prominence and length of similar stories about different parties, questionnaires revealing journalist values, and how consistently one side's views are illustrated with graphs versus the others.

Not one of these methods gives you an infallible "aha! bias of 12.37%!" answer, especially in a single study. Each of the methods touches down somewhere in the attitude/bias/expression cluster. The salient point, to my mind, is that each of these proxies has yielded the same result. I have a bookmark folder of media bias studies online that contains 30 entries, and I don't even go looking for them by reading the bias measuring sites. I just pop 'em in when I run across 'em.

Whatever measurement you try, the MSM leans left, and it leaks into the writing and context. If you don't like citation as a proxy, the others yield the same result.

A journalist could lean one way on an issue and still do a fair story. Some do. From what I read, it seems that Tim Russert does that. But when an entire industry leans one way politically, the likelihood that all of them will be consistently unbiased drops to zero. Journalists could be opinionated but fair. They aren't.

Conservatives and libertarians have long had the subjective opinion that the standard news outlets slant stories against them. We have found that making the individual comparisons between stories, or fisking each article, has not been persuasive, even when the evidence is compelling. There always seems to be some excuse -- sometimes a reasonable one -- why the compared stories are not equivalent. These proxy methods are an attempt to quantify what we see as obvious.

8:23 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Assistant Village Idiot said...

Second point, greg.

You are correct that whatever the center of American opinion is is not a hard center of anything concrete. It moves daily, it differs from state to state and country to country. It is a convenient starting point. I will give you an even better example than your creation-evolution axis. If you show a blank world map to people on the street and ask "Where is Afghanistan, anyway?" they will point to stuff all over the map. A significant minority will point to Australia, and the geographic average would locate that country in SE Asia. That does not mean that Afghanistan is in fact in SE Asia.

Other "centers" have been attempted with attitudes on specific issues like abortion, taxation, or the Bill of Rights. There are problems with this as well. For you, there are even greater problems, as it would locate the center even farther to the right. Good opinion writing tries to take the whole question of "center" out of the picture. People attempt to demonstrate not that their view is not average, but that it is in fact, correct. Statistics and counterstatistics are cited in an attempt to reveal what is really happening, or alternatively, historical parallels are drawn to project likely consequences.

This is certainly more useful than knowing where the center is. And this is also where the alternative media is absolutely crushing the MSM. The economic analysis of the major outlets is regularly torn apart as misleading -- and always in the same direction.

As to politeness and criticism between the MSM and the alternative media, I think you are correct. The alternative media goes after, and is more critical of the MSM than vice versa. But the proxy you use isn't very helpful. The MSM does not deign to mention its new competition, because they rightly recognise that it gives it free advertising. Their current strategy is to ignore. See what problems there are in finding a good proxy?

So if I were to be devious, I could ask you to give evidence that the alternative media is less polite or more biased, then just knock down every proxy you put forth.

8:43 PM, December 20, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Since AVI (since you are not an idiot, I will just make your name into an acronym, okay?) brings it up instead of just our favorite verbal pugilist, Our Professor Kuperberg, let me say a couple of words about the Evolution-Creationism debate, as a biologist (since that is what I do for a living).

We never get to see the polling questions, folks. Or seldom. Let me overlay something that all American seem to love: the perception of fairness. I don't find many Europeans championing that concept, but most Americans aspire to the label of being fair.

So anything that states that it is providing "equal time" looks great to Americans. Even if it isn't. The "ideal" seems attractive.

Let's turn the creationism debate around a little. If you were to ask Americans if they wanted the Southern Baptist view of creation by God taught in the science classes of every school, what do you think the same cohort previously polled in favor of "equal time" would say?

"NO!" of course.

Now let's add the sad state of science education in this country....both in terms of curriculum and in terms of teacher preparation to understand and transmit the molecular underpinnings of biology. Evolution is NOT easy to understand and explain, truthfully.

Incidentally, I mean no disrespect to high school science teachers---it is among the toughest, least appreciated, underpaid, and yet most important jobs in America.

Top all this off with the strong anti-religious bias shown by most of my scientific colleagues. I will admit I don't understand atheism, which requires a leap of faith as large as any snake handler....but I do understand the various flavors of agnosticism.

Still...look through a microscope, or a telescope, and no one can be easily arrogant.

Yet Richard Dawkins and his friends out and out call people of faith "stupid." Repeatedly, and in print. Yep, THAT sure helps the debate.

And it continues to feed into this concept of fairness that Americans do and should treasure.

So I get very unhappy when I read arrogant rants about how ignorant Americans are for being religious, and even angrier when the true nature of the debate is hidden by the press and by pundits.

Do I want creationism taught in schools? Of course not. Creationism has no hypothesis testing. Intelligent Design is another form of creationism...at least right now.

And evolution, despite what Dawkins and company insist, does NOT preclude a deity. Ask the Jesuits.

Nope, we are dealing with an arrogant group of intelligentsia who buy into that Red State/Blue State nonsense.

Anyway, that is far afield of where I started. The point is that most Americans don't really want religion in the classroom. They understand the real crux of that question: which religion??!! What they are responding to is a mixture of hubristic arrogance and media trouble makers (call them "mediots") who like distilling complicated ideas down into bumper stickers.

Sorry to rant on. But I am sick and tired of hearing how "most Americans in the Red States" think because of some slanted polling data.

Americans are smarter, fairer, and more decent than that.

"Eric Blair"

10:46 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

AVI: It certainly isn't true that every study concludes that there is a liberal media bias. I have seen studies with the opposite conclusion, but it would really be beside the point to expand on that, for two reasons. First, because I think that these studies are generally a crock and I don't care have many such studies have been conducted. Second, because if you want to believe in a liberal media bias, you could immediately dismiss any study that found a conservative bias to itself have an extreme liberal bias.

The crucial point is the one that you acknowledged: There is a difference between the political center and the truth. There is no such thing as being both fair and balanced, at least not balanced relative to the American political spectrum, because American political thinking often isn't fair. So what does this UCLA study, in fact these studies generally, look at? They generally measure what they can measure, namely whether the media coverage is to the left or right of center. They don't look at whether coverage is truthful or fair.

Probably the single thing that sticks in people's craws the most is the media's coverage of the war in Iraq. No public in any country has ever wanted to hear that they are losing a war. They have always blamed the media. Sometimes the media has been wrong about this; usually it hasn't. I don't think that the media is wrong this time. I think that Bush will continue to get the money that he wants for this war until the end of his term, but that public opinion will continue to chase the media on a downward slope.

Neither the mainstream media nor the blogosphere is a monolith and I'm not in a position to take a broad survey as to who is polite and who is rude. So I will restrict the discussion to two flagship examples, The New York Times and Instapundit. It is just not true that the Times has ignored Instapundit (or other blogs). On the contrary, it congratulated him in 1300 words. The Instapundit has not usually responded with comparable respect. (He did once, but that charity is long forgotten.) The Times is clever enough or mature enough to turn the other cheek.

11:07 PM, December 20, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

Eric Blair: It really seems to bother you that more Americans believe in Biblical creation than in unguided evolution. According to the most recent Gallup poll, 45% believe in the former and only 38% in the latter. To help you out, here is a description of the poll, complete with the exact wording of the question.

Nor can this poll be called a liberal media conspiracy. George Gallup Jr. (and before that his dad, George Gallup Sr.) wants these polls simply because he has equal faith in Jesus and in American public opinion. He has asked the same question in five other polls going back to 1982. For that matter, the poll results are only consistent with what President Bush said, that he wants alternatives to evolution taught in biology class.

You and I may believe that there are no alternatives to evolution to teach in biology class. But, according to the UCLA definition of bias, you and I have a secular liberal "bias".

Do creationists complain about liberal media bias on their issue? Yes. Again, according to the UCLA definition of bias, they have a strong case.

What I think is interesting is the way that some people ascribe every political frustration to a liberal ambush. If Bush and 45% of Americans are anti-evolution, it's not because the American Christian establishment picked an unnecessary fight with biologists. Rather, it's because the liberal media wants to make American Christians look bad.

By the same token, suppose that you are a staunchly libertarian psychologist with genuine compassion for the friendless and potentially dangerous mentally ill. Why are they out the streets? It's not because angry taxpayers resent the expense of public mental health care. Rather, it's because a prominent liberal who was assassinated 37 years ago did not realize how America would interpret his advice.

12:04 AM, December 21, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr. Blair: please don't feed the troll. Notice the assumptions K. makes about you, then changes the subject in veering ways.

I read your post and your point was clear enough to me: there is a difference between being religious and teaching religion in the classroom. And MOST Americans would not want religion taught in the classroom, because of religious diversity issues and the concept you rightly bring up of fairness.

The rest of the K. business is a sign of a fellow with too much time on his hands.

I appreciate your input, anyway.

10:49 AM, December 21, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dr. Kuperberg

Could you name for us one major recent story with
a partisan aspect for
which the reporting by the old major media
(ABC, CBS, NY TImes, Newsweek etc) was not biased
to the left?

I'd be surprised if you could.

3:35 PM, December 21, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

Richard Brown: As I've been saying, it all depends on what you mean by "bias". If you just wanted a major story whose coverage isn't unfair to Republicans, then I could give you lots of examples. But I have the feeling that that kind of neutral ground won't satisfy you. So I will take a much narrower definition of "not biased to the left", namely stories that are outright biased against Democrats. Not just bad for Democrats, but outright wrong-minded.

I would compare the coverage of Democratic Representative Gary Condit to the coverage of Republican Representative Bill Janklow. Gary Condit talked to the police about his affair with Chandra Levy, who was murdered in Central Park, but he was never accused of any crime. Bill Janklow killed a man and it was completely his own fault. He was an extreme and chronic reckless driver and he often even pulled rank when he was stopped by police. He was convicted of manslaughter by a jury. He did not repent enough to either plead guilty or resign from office before the verdit. Nonetheless the media had colossally more coverage for Condit's situation than for Janklow's case. Even the New York Times devoted more space to Condit.

Remember, you only asked for one example. I could discuss other cases, but you can't fairly grouch that I only gave you what you asked for.

4:21 PM, December 21, 2005  
Blogger Assistant Village Idiot said...

I guess I was wrong. As you did not answer my original objections, greg, but answered some other things you liked better instead, I have to conclude that reasoning with you was not the proper approach.

6:55 PM, December 21, 2005  
Blogger Greg Kuperberg said...

AVI: Your posts were pretty long. I you stated some complicated objections and I didn't know exactly what you wanted me to address. I still don't.

7:11 PM, December 21, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

AVI:

The Big K. is only interested in playing word games and inflaming others. I think it is great that you are trying to engage him so that you can learn from him, and vice versa....but....

Someone drew the parallel between discussing issues with K. and wrestling with a pig: it wastes your time, gets you all muddy, and the pig likes it.

There are lots of people---lurkers like me and others---who enjoy your posts and learn from them, especially when your point of view differs from our own.

Don't get discouraged or angry by the verbal posturing of you know who.

10:08 PM, December 21, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't agree that the coverage of Democratic Representative Gary Condit is biased relative to the coverage of Republican Representative Bill Janklow. For example, how often was Condit called "liberal" or "left wing" in the stories covering him? Compare with how often Janklow was called "conservative" or "right-wing". A better comparision might be the treatment of Janlow by the press as compared to another politician that killed a third person - Edward Kennedy.

But even if this was an example, I asked you for a "recent story" of press bias towards republicans. You had to go back four years to find an example, weak as it is.

7:02 PM, December 22, 2005  
Blogger Assistant Village Idiot said...

Ah, they were long. That explains it then.

Greg, you raise good points. Then you refuse to discuss them. We await the coming of another.

7:38 PM, December 22, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The authors of this particular study define "bias" as deviation from American public opinion."

Not exactly. The authors of this particular study define bias as deviation from the opinion of your average American member of Congress. They, therefore, assume that Congress' political spectrum matches the American public's political spectrum, in breadth and intensity.

I think this is a very specious assumption. In fact, I would submit (without evidence, yes, I apologize) that the average member of our current Congress is more conservative than the average American. Further, I would submit that a very large percentage of the American left is completely unrepresented in Congress. By any member.

--Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA (A Green Party member, "represented" in Congress by Jane Harman, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee).

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10:09 PM, June 07, 2009  

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