Sidebar: On Media Bias--Guest Blog (1)

By Andrew Gelman of The Monkey Cage (July 29, 2011)

Respected political scientist Tim Groseclose just came out with a book, “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” I was familiar with Groseclose’s article (with Jeffrey Milyo) on media bias that came out several years ago—it was an interesting study but I was not convinced by its central claim that they were measuring an absolute level of bias—and then recently heard about this new book in the context of some intemperate things Groseclose said in a interview on the conservative Fox TV network.

Groseclose’s big conclusion is that in the absence of media bias, the average American voter would be positioned at around 25 on a 0-100 scale, where 0 is a right-wing Republican and 100 is a left-wing Democrat. (Seeing as the number line is conventionally drawn from left to right, I think it would make more sense for 0 to represent the left and 100 to be on the right, but I guess it’s too late for him to change now.) Groseclose places the average voter now at around 50, so, by his assessment, media bias is a huge deal.

After some further blog discussion, I became curious enough to head over to the local Barnes & Noble and take a look at the book.

Before I get to the details, let me again link to Brendan Nyhan’s thorough methodological discussion of the Groseclose and Milyo article from 2004.

Journalism as one of many institutions that affect politics

Stepping away from the data for a moment, it makes sense that the news media would generally fall on the left side of the political spectrum. Whether this is good or bad is another question, but newspapers generally seem to position themselves on the side of the underdog. Consider, for example, the slogan that a newspaper should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Another way to think about media bias is to think about the communication industry as a whole. I imagine that “journalism,” taken as a whole, leans left, while “public relations,” taken as a whole, leans right.

And if most of the news media in a country moved from journalism to public relations (as in Berlusconi’s Italy), I could imagine it could make a difference in the country’s politics.

The question, “What would public opinion be like if journalists expressed views comparable to the average American?”, while interesting, could perhaps be combined with similar questions such as, What would U.S. politics be like if there were no public relations industry? Or, What would U.S. politics be like if campaign contributions were given equally to the left and the right? Or even, What would U.S. politics be like if religious leaders were, on average, in the political center?