As reported in the National Review Online liberal media bias is alive and well.

A new study by the Media Research Center’s Free Market Project finds that the evening-news shows delivered liberal talking points on the Social Security debate more than twice as often as points from the conservative side advocating restructuring Social Security.

The study looked at the evening news programs on CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, and Fox between Nov. 15, 2004, and March 15, 2005. This time frame covered a period from shortly after Bush’s reelection to the launch of his “60 stops in 60 days” campaign. The study examined the use of liberal and conservative talking points in Social Security stories as part of an ongoing analysis of media coverage of this debate.

CNN and CBS battled it out for the honor of being the most biased. Fifty-six percent of the CBS stories had a liberal leaning, compared with just 20 percent conservative. Over at CNN, it was 61 percent liberal and 22 percent conservative. Although the tally was close, CBS won by undermining conservative positions whenever possible.

CNN and CBS have two possible defenses. The first is that the study is itself biased. Fine, then they should review the data and show where its conclusions were incorrect. That will not likely get them anywhere.

The second defense is that while they might have skewed toward presenting the liberal side three times as much as presenting conservative viewpoints, they only did this because the liberal viewpoints were correct more often than the conservative viewpoints. This is certainly what they believe.

There is no doubt that the people work in the ivory towers of CBS News feel that as educated, intelligent news gatherers they know more than the average dolt who watches TV to get their news. This is a common paradox with many liberal thinkers. They believe in democracy but not in people’s ability to exercise it.

No doubt CBS feels like are doing us all a favor. Instead of giving people two sides of the argument, they are skipping that stage and jumping to the right answer. This both saves time and avoids the possibility (God forbid!) that people will make the wrong decision. I don’t have to go into details with the flaws and danger of this thinking.

[Click here to read about White Trash Animals: a Liberal Perspective.]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 at 7:53 am by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.