Psyche, Science, and Society

Media Matters for America: Critique of new claim of media liberal bias

December 23rd, 2005

A new detailed post by Media Matters for America, Former fellows at conservative think tanks issued flawed UCLA-led study on media’s “liberal bias”, provides a nice critique of a new study of supposed liberal bias of the media. The study involves a coding scheme in which the ACLU is a conservative organization, the National Rifle Association is barely conservative, and the Rand Corporation and the Council on Foreign relations are liberal organizations. In addition to showing the ridiculousness of this study – finding, for example, that the Wall Street Journal is more liberal than the New York Times – the article is a nice example of a research critique. Perhaps tellingly, the study will appear in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, where it likely was reviewed by those more wowed by the quantitative methodology than concerned about the validity of the findings.

Entry Filed under: Research Methods, Social Issues