Debunking the Myth of a "Liberal Media"

One of the central problems for scholars seeking to study ideological bias in the media is the lack of agreed-upon data. Natural scientists and even most social scientists can run experiments where their variables are to a considerable extent controlled. But this is simply impossible in the coverage of politics. An impeachment scandal over a fib about extramarital sex is simply not comparable to misleading the nation into war -- no matter what one might think of either example. Ironically, right-wingers who spend so much time vilifying genuine academic knowledge are more than happy to embrace it when it serves their purpose, no matter how fundamentally flawed it might be. We've seen this tendency for more than a decade with the frequent flying of the flag of a nearly useless study, such as that of the voting habits of Washington reporters done for the 1992 election -- discussed at length in my book, "What Liberal Media?" -- and we're seeing it again today with a recently published study by two conservative media critics currently ensconced in academia.

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