Summary
I lost my television debate virginity to Tom Braden, the old curmudgeon liberal counterpart to Pat Buchanan, on the original CNN "Crossfire" series. His first question was a haymaker: "Who the hell do you think you are passing judgment on journalists?" he snarled. Little did I know this was the official Denial Excuse No. 12 in an endless litany of media denials of what everyone knows, but only they continue to deny: The "news" media are drowning in a liberal political bias. Enter into the fray UCLA professor Tim Groseclose with "Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind," with a new methodology to measure that bias.
I confess that at the outset I wasn't too keen about doing this review. The Media Research Center, which I head, has conducted more studies on this subject than any other institution on the planet over the past quarter-century, so I turned to the "Left Turn" index out of curiosity to see which ones were chosen for citation. (Clear throat here: Ahem.) Not a one. Worse, where the index cites the MRC, in one instance it misidentifies the group; and in the other, allegedly over three pages, it's a phantom citation - the MRC isn't there at all. But I had agreed to review this book, so I read it. On the whole, I liked it.See the full content of this document
Extract
Can Math Prove Media Bias?
Mr. Groseclose argues that one can measure liberal media bias through objective and quantitative statistical analysis, that "every [emphasis his] mainstream national news outlet in the United States has a liberal bias," that out of more than 100 major news ou...
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