Liberal bias

Liberal bias is partisan support for liberal positions or policies expressed by reporters and other journalists in mainstream media. Although some prominent liberal journalists deny being biased - or indeed that liberal bias exists at all in the media, many have freely admitted it (e.g., Andy Rooney).

The following persons, television programs or media outlets are frequently accused of having liberal bias.

• The New York Times
• ABC, CBS
• Dan Rather
• CNN
• LA Times
• Michael Moore
• The Daily Show
• Real Time with Bill Maher
• The United Nations
• Washington Post
• MSNBC

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."

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 ..."

Media Bias

A 2005 report 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."

Vision of the anointed

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

Desperate evasions of discordant evidence, and the denigration and even demonizing of those presenting such evidence, are indicative of the high stakes in contemporary cultural 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.

=External links

• Media Bias Basics - Admissions of Liberal Bias

See Also

• Conservative bias