Liberal bias

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Liberal bias is partisan support for liberal positions or policies. This bias infects encyclopedias, periodicals and broadcast media, and is pervasive on the Internet. It is expressed by reporters and other journalists in mainstream media and by teachers in public school and in many private schools. It includes techniques such as placement bias and photo bias.

Although some prominent liberal journalists and teachers deny being biased - or indeed that liberal bias exists at all in the media - many have freely admitted it (e.g., Andy Rooney). For example, New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. has denied the the New York Times has a liberal viewpoint and has stated the New York Times has a "urban" viewpoint.[1] However, in the summer of 2004, the newspaper's then public editor (ombudsman), Daniel Okrent, published a piece on the Times' liberal bias and cited the example of their coverage of homosexual marriage.[2][3] In regards to the Western World, although the New York Times has a particularly heavy bias when it comes to the homosexuality issue, the New York Times is not unusual in regards to the media having a liberal bias when it comes to the subject of homosexuality. John Stossel is an author, consumer reporter, and a co-anchor for the ABC News show 20/20. Cybercast News Service states the following regarding regarding the influence of the New York Times and Washington Post:

While the newspapers reach only a fraction of people compared to the television networks, he said radio and television producers rely heavily on their contents.

"The reason the Times, and to a lesser extent the Post, are so important, and they are, is because the TV and radio - all of the media - copy it sycophantically," he [John Stossel] said. "That's how bias at the Times becomes bias in other media."[4]

Liberal Bias.png

The following persons, organizations, television programs or media outlets have well known liberal bias:

CBS News

CBS insider Bernard Goldberg wrote the definitive book on liberal bias in the media, simply entitled Bias.

  • He asserts that an "inability to see liberal views as liberal views ... is at the heart of the entire problem."
  • He wrote: "Pauline Kael, for years the brilliant film critic at the New Yorker, was completely baffled about how Richard Nixon could have beaten George McGovern in 1972: 'Nobody I know voted for Nixon.' Never mind that Nixon carried 49 states. She wasn't kidding." [8]

Goldberg also suggested liberals don't even see their liberal values as "liberal":

  • "Their views on all the big social issues ... aren't liberal views at all. They're simply reasonable views, shared by all the reasonable people the media elites mingle with ..." [9]

During the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union was the principal ally of Communist North Vietnam, providing weapons and training in what was a major conflict of the Cold War that took 58,000 American lives. CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite regularly carried news reports from its Moscow Bureau Chief, Bernard Redmont. When peace negotiations commenced with North Vietnam in Paris, Redmont became CBS News Paris Bureau Chief. What Redmont never reported during the ten year conflict was, Redmont had been a KGB operative since the 1930s, and member of the notorious Silvermaster group. [10] Redmont was the only journalist to whom his fellow Comintern party member, and North Vietnamese chief negotiator, Mai Van Bo, granted an interview to bring the Communist point of view into American living rooms in what has been called, "the living room war."

New York Times

Peter D. Feaver of the Boston Globe noted on the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that MoveOn.org ran a full-page advertisement in the New York Times accussing General David Petraeus of activities befitting a traitor. The advertisement alleges, without evidence, that Petraeus would not give an honest, professional assessment of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Feaver noted, "The MoveOn.org ad is vicious ... a deliberate attack on the senior Army commander, in a major daily newspaper, with the intention of destroying as much of his credibility as possible...part of an elaborate effort to undermine public support for the Iraq war, and was foreshadowed by an unnamed Democratic senator who told a reporter, "No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV . . . The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us." The effort is funded by powerful special interests, and has all the trappings of a major political campaign.[11] Within a day it was discovered the New York Times gave MoveOn.org a “hefty discount” for its ad questioning Petraeus’ integrity. According to the director of public relations for the New York Times, “the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692.” A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed that the liberal activist group paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.[12]

Media Bias

A 2005 report[13] by Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo political scientists at UCLA concluded that, based on estimated ideological scores, all of the news outlets they examined, except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times, showed a strong liberal bias (scores to the left of the average member of Congress). Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal. Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are." [14]

Vision of the anointed

Economist Thomas Sowell in his book published in 1996, The Vision of the Anointed, discusses the anointed vision of liberals and liberalism to promote their agenda, and control the writing of history and the national consciousness.

Desperate evasions of discordant evidence, and the denigration and even demonizing of those presenting such evidence, are indicative of the high stakes in contemporary culture wars, which are not about alternative policies but alternative worlds and of alternative roles of liberals in these worlds. Opponents must be shown to be not merely mistaken but morally lacking. This approach replaces the intellectual discussion of arguments by the moral extermination of persons. This denigration or demonizing of those opposed to their views not only has the desired effect of discrediting the opposition but also has the unintended effect of cutting off the path of retreat from positions which become progressively less tenable with the passage of time and the accumulation of discordant evidence. The very thought that those dismissed as simplistic or maligned might have been right–even if only on a single issue–is at best galling and potentially devastating. Their last refuge in this situation are their good intentions.

For liberals, it is desperately important to win because their whole sense of themselves is at stake. Given the high stakes, it is not hard to understand the all-out attacks of liberals on those who differ from them and their attempts to stifle alternative sources of values and beliefs, with campus speech codes and ‘political correctness’ being prime examples of a spreading pattern of taboos. Here they are not content to squelch contemporary voices, they must also silence history and traditions–the national memory–as well. This too is a larger danger than the dangers flowing from particular policies.

History is the memory of a nation–and that memory is being erased by historians enthralled by liberalism. Open disdain for mere facts has been accompanied by adventurous reinterpretations known as ‘revisionist’ history. This is all yet another expression of the notion that reality is optional.

A very similar development in the law treats the Constitution as meaning not what those who wrote it meant, but what one small segment of the public today wants it to mean. This is the ‘living constitution’ of ‘evolving standards,’ reflecting what ‘thinking people’ believe. The law itself has been prostituted to the service of ideological crusades. The social cohesion that makes civilized life possible has been loosened by the systematic undermining of families and of commonly shared values and a common culture. [15]

Template:Examples of liberal bias

External links

See Also

  • http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/weekinreview/25bott.html?ei=5088&en=452926dcb11511a3&ex=1248667200&pagewanted=all&position=
  • http://www.cnsnews.com/facts/2007/facts2007914.asp
  • http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/weekinreview/25bott.html?ei=5088&en=452926dcb11511a3&ex=1248667200&pagewanted=all&position=
  • http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200401/CUL20040128a.html
  • Reporters and editors today are overwhelmingly liberal politically, as studies of the attitudes of key members of the press have repeatedly shown. Should you doubt these findings, recall the statement of Daniel Okrent, then the public editor at the New York Times. Under the headline, "Is the New York times a Liberal Newspaper?," Mr. Okrent's first sentence was, "Of course it is." [1]
  • Townhall.com, Enabling media bias, Marvin Olasky, December 4, 2001.
  • During a phone conversation, Bernard Goldberg asked him, "What do you consider the New York Times? Rather answered, "Middle of the road." (Bias, page 221)
  • (Bias (book), page 222-223)
  • (Bias (book), page 222)
  • KGB file 43173 vol. 2 (v) pp. 46-55, Alexander Vassiliev, Notes on A. Gorsky’s Report to Savchenko S.R., 23 December 1949. Original document from KGB Archives [2].
  • MoveOn's McCarthy moment, By Peter D. Feaver, Boston Globe, September 11, 2007.
  • Time Gives Lefties a Hefty Discount for "Betray us" Ad, Charles Hurt, New York Post, September 13, 2007.
  • A MEASURE OF MEDIA BIAS
  • http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664
  • Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed, New York: Basic Books, 1996.