[extropy-chat] UCLA study on media bias

[gts]

Very interesting, Hal. I agree with you however that something might be  
wrong with this study.

> For reference, the average ADA score for Congressional Democrats is 84.3.
...
> 20      Wall Street Journal                     85.1

The WSJ is more liberal than the average Congressional Democrat? I think  
not.

> I personally think that Jim Lehrer's show does a remarkably good job of
> balancing its coverage, and Lehrer is somewhat famous for refusing to
> discuss his political views or even make them guessable.  His score of
> 55.8 is probably not far from where the "unbiased" position should be.
> If we used that as the central point then Fox would be the 5th most
> biased instead of the 5th least biased, which might make more sense
> (although I haven't watched Brit Hume specifically).

Your idea here makes sense to me. I can't be certain that my own  
assessment is not biased, but to me it seems obvious that Fox is very  
biased.

Some other possible confounding factors:

1. Think tanks may be more likely to be liberal than conservative.
2. Liberals may be more likely than conservatives to cite think tanks in  
their arguments.
3. News commentators sometimes cite think tanks only for purposes of  
attacking them.

I have not read the study in detail but I wonder if the researchers  
controlled for these possibilities.

-gts