I have regularly been puzzled when I hear ?liberals, leftists, Democrats? (pick the least offensive term) say they think the media is biased against their position. Perhaps someone has developed an objective measure: Robert Barro in the December 13, 2004 issue of The Weekly Standard describes an ongoing study entitled ?A Measure of Media Bias,? by professors Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeffrey Milyo of the University of Missouri. The study takes the well known rating system issued by the ADA, Americans for Democratic Action and develops a ?clever statistical technique? to measure conservative or liberal bias in the news coverage of major U.S. television and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and the internet. Groseclose and Milyo looked at News Reporting only and not at editorials. They determined that their system had validity because they used it to rate congress during the 1995-99 period and came out with the following results. All Members 50.1 Democrats 84.3 Republicans 16.1 You will recall that the ADA gives higher scores to those who agree with their (Liberal? Leftist? Democrat?) Position. Note that when congress is averaged out, the score is 50.1 which is close to what the nation?s voters usual average. Here are the scores for the Media Outlets: Wall Street Journal 85.1 New York Times 73.7 CBS Evening News 73.7 LA Times 70.0 CBS Early Show 66.6 Washington Post 66.6 Newsweek 66.3 NPR Morning Edition 66.3 US News and World Report 65.8 Time Magazine 65.4 USA Today 63.4 NBC Nightly News 61.6 ABC World News Tonight 61.0 Drudge Report 60.4 ABC Good Morning America 56.1 CNN News Night with Aaron Brown 56.0 News Hour with Jim Lehrer 55.8 Fox News with Brit Hume 39.7 Washington Times 35.4 Barro concludes his article with the following ?The bottom line from the Groseclose-Milyo study is that the political slant of most of the mainstream media is far to the left of the typical member of Congress. Thus, if the political opinions of viewers, listeners, and readers are similar to those of their elected representatives, the political leanings of most of the media are far to the left of those of most of their customers. This mismatch suggests profit opportunities for conservative-oriented, or at least balanced, media outlets. Fox News is probably only the beginning. Maybe the next conservative entrant will be a recreated CBS News.? Unfortunately Barro doesn?t give us the details of Groseclose & Milyo?s ?clever statistical technique.? Lawrence Helm San Jacinto --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.809 / Virus Database: 551 - Release Date: 12/9/2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html