Timothy Birdnow

Recently Dana Mathewson and David Dickinson had an e-mail exchange about the seemingly leftward drift of the Wall Street Journal, and I decided to wade in with a few observations of my own.

The Wall Street Journal is quite liberal in it's news stories; it has a conservative editorial board, but the news page itself is more liberal than the New York Times, according to researchers.

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-biased-is-your-media/

Here is a list of news sources graded by keyword searches. Note that most conservative is zero (a bias by the researchers themselves) and most liberal is 100:

ABC Good Morning America 56.1
ABC World News Tonight 61.0
CBS Early Show 66.6
CBS Evening News 73.7
CNN NewsNight with Aaron Brown 56.0
Drudge Report 60.4
Fox News Spec. Rept. w/ Brit Hume 39.7
Los Angeles Times 70.0
NBC Nightly News 61.6
NBC Today Show 64.0
New York Times 73.7
Newshour with Jim Lehrer 55.8
Newsweek 66.3
NPR Morning Edition 66.3
Time Magazine 65.4
U.S. News and World Report 65.8
USA Today 63.4
Wall Street Journal 85.1
Washington Post 66.6
Washington Times 35.4

This study was conducted by Tim Groseclose and Jeff Mily, first in a 2004 paper then in Groselose's book Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias distorts the America Mind.

Please note that the entry on Fox News is only for Brit Hume's Special Report, not the entire Fox news. If you subtract the editorials you will probably find Fox just about at center. It has been my observation that Fox News stories make the same assumptions and use the same terminology as the other mainstream outlets. For example, after the first Qualitative Easing the media reported an uptick of stock prices as good news - despite the fact that the government was cannibalizing the market to create an image of prosperity at the expense of real investors. Fox joined in the chorus of hallelujahs.

Another point to ponder here; some of the most liberal outlets are those offering light news and entertainment. In other words, they go after those who don't really pay attention, attempting to subvert their attitudes. It's an insidious thing. In many ways Good Morning America is far more dangerous than The new York Times because it goes after the weaker-minded individuals and seeks to influence them at a more subliminal level.

Another point; U.S. News was for sale a while back and no conservative group wanted to buy it. Why would we? The old media is just that, and it would be a bad investment from a long term perspective. But that's why the Right keeps losing; we let the Left keep control of news outlets. Even if a conservative buys it he generally doesn't rebuild the outlet, but keeps the same lying liberals in control. That has to change.

Anyone paying any attention these days knows the media is promoting its own agenda, and overtly so these days. The endless attack on Donald Trump from every imaginable angle is proof positive the media thinks itself the keepers of America's minds and hearts. In a recent editorial Dana Milbank crowed that Trump "brought it on himself" by not kowtowing to the media. But is the media to be kowtowed to? Funny; I thought they were supposed to report the news and not make it up. Their prejudices and petty grudges are not supposed to enter into the reporting of the news. At best the American media is acting like a bunch of spoiled brats who didn't get the pony they wanted for Christmas.

Meanwhile they ignore real news stories, as they did for the eight years that Obama occupied the Oval Office. It has become like Pravda in the old Soviet days; you can figure out the true news by reading between the lines, but you will be completely in the dark if you accept the news as it is presented. There was no "Russian hacking" of the election (contrary to what 55% of Democrats seem to believe; at worst there were hackers - probably not government agents, as their methods were quite sloppy - who perhaps hacked the DNC server and found some embarrassing things. There is no evidence the hacks had anything to do with Hillary's loss. Furthermore, nobody from the FBI or any other U.S. agency examined the DNC servers, but rather the "Intel" comes entirely from a private firm - Crowdstrike - which was paid by the Democratic Party. Oh, and John Podesta's hacked e-mails were a result of the mans own stupidity; he clicked on a phishing link.

Meanwhile we STILL don't know what happened to 33,000 Hillary e-mails, which may have contained very sensitive information. We STILL don't know who ordered the Benghazi cover-up. We STILL don't have any answers on the abuse of power by Lois Lerner in her oppression of conservative groups by the IRS. We STILL don't have any answers on why Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton just prior to James Comey shutting down the investigation of Hillary. We STILL don't have any information on the Hillary Pay for Play, including HER close links to the Russians. The media couldn't care less about any of this. All they care about is a non-story about Russia somehow "stealing the election" from her highness and giving it to that SOB Donald J. Trump.

Media bias? Frankly, every word uttered by the media (and I include Fox and the WSJ) is a lie, including but, and, and the.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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