The conservative blogosphere is delirious over the recent screed by right-wing pseudo-scholar Tim Groseclose, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. Groseclose claims to use statistical methods to prove that the American media is biased towards the left. He even claims that if the U.S. had a truly “fair and balanced” media, it would feel, sound (and smell?) like the sweaty semi-literate simians at a NASCAR rally.
In a devious bit of agitprop arithmetic, Groseclose uses the political scale developed by a liberal pressure group, the hypergeriatric Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), to describe the “political quotient” (PQ) of politicians on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being conservative (appropriately) and 100 being liberal. He then derives a similar measure to describe media bias: the “slant quotient” (SQ), using think tank citations as data points.
Groseclose–who does not bother to hide his right wing bias–arrives at the convenient conclusion that 18 out of 20 major media sources are biased to the left. Only Fox News Special Report and the Washington Times are conservative, i.e. have SQ scores below 50; the rest are all above the allegedly centrist 50. Meanwhile, Groseclose claims, the average American’s has a PQ of about 25–like Ben Stein. Bill O’Reilly, or Dennis Miller.
Then, in a petulant fit of anti-progressive pique, Groseclose takes on Eric Alterman of Media Matters. Alterman’s claim that Groseclose is a slave to right-wing plutocrats–a claim he repeated at the Center for American Progress–must have hit close to home. Alterman doesn’t answer Groseclose’s factual criticisms; he doesn’t need to, because Groseclose has published at Powerline, that bastion of “right-wing know-nothingism.”
Groseclose thinks he has proven Alterman wrong by showing that left wing media bias is real. But he is betrayed by his own data. If “liberal” is 100, and the New York Times is only a 73.7, then in fact the New York Times is not as liberal as it ought to be. Likewise, the bias of the so-called liberal media ought to be 100, not 62.6. In fact, all Groseclose has done is show that those slouches at Media Matters aren’t doing their job properly!
But there’s a deeper flaw in Groseclose’s study. Americans for Democratic Action was founded in 1947 as an explicitly anti-communist group. The ADA may call itself “liberal,” but it is certainly not “left.” If a score of 100 on the ADA scale is the anti-communist norm, then it marks the center, at best, of a true political spectrum. It is inadequate to today’s politics; most czars in the Obama administration would score at least 200.
The fact that every single American media outlet has a score of less than 100 is proof that not one of them is actually left wing. Quite the opposite: they are all conservative hacks, controlled by corporate interests, maintaining a crypto-fascist, neo-imperial political status quo. That is shown by Groseclose’s own data, which indicates that the news section of the Wall Street Journal is the most “liberal” major media outlet of all, with an SQ of 85.1.
Comrades! The petty differences among American journalists are designed to hide what they share: a hatred of the oppressed and a fear of social justice! In a moment of crisis, they will unite against the true progressives–witness their universal agreement that the president lost the debt ceiling debate! The transparent lies of bourgeois technocrats like Groseclose cannot escape their own contradictions! Forward to a true left-wing media!
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