Conservative Viewpoints Dominate Media

In a valiant effort to keep us aware of how the Sunday morning political talk shows distort the national debate on important issues, every week our fearless leader Creature devotes his Sunday morning to watching political hacks spin straw into gold and reports back on what he sees. Thanks to his efforts regular readers of this site are well aware that the mainstream media slants heavily to the right, not the left.

Creature is not alone in his efforts. Yesterday Media Matters released a study debunking the myth of liberal bias in the media including these findings:

• Right-wing writers were far more likely than progressive writers to be invited during both the Clinton and Bush administrations. In Clinton's second term, 61% of the ideologically identifiable writers were right-wing and in Bush's first term that figure rose to 69%.
• During 2003 and 2004, in the run-up to the presidential election, there were approximately four conservative writers on the Sunday shows for every progressive one.
• In every year examined by the study, more panels tilted right (a greater number of Republicans/conservatives than Democrats/progressives) than tilted left. In some years, there were two, three, or even four times as many right-tilted panels as left-tilted panels—a drastic imbalance.
• The pairing of right-wing writers and neutral reporters from the mass media suggests some media producers have internalized the decades-old "liberal bias" attack from conservatives (which this study shows is false). As a consequence of this imbalance, right-wing writers and publications are granted a status in political discourse not accorded to progressives.

Read the study, then use the MoveOn.org letter to the editor facilitator to make your concerns heard.

Update: Eric Alterman writing for The Nation has a great piece discussing the Media Matters report. I highly recommend it. -Creature