Comments on: Zogby Poll: Media Tilts, And It Tilts Left

By: mikebdot

mikebdot — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:05:59 +0000

Aaron: You say people are taught to believe in the Bible. Fargus says people are taught to believe in liberal bias. How have you refuted his argument?

By: too many steves

too many steves — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 12:45:57 +0000

Opinion polls prove only that people believe certain things, not necessarily that those things are true. But as my statistics professor used to say: correlation doesn’t prove causation but sometimes the statistics are overwhelming.

At the very least I would expect the “media” to take the perception problem seriously. 83% is a pretty serious perception problem.

That 11%? Those are the folks we usually find in the “undecided” category. I’m willing to bet most in that group don’t read newspapers or watch television news. Lest you accuse me of snobbishness or elitism, I will self-identify that I do not watch television news shows. I do read newspapers – these are my regulars: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, NY Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, and the WSJ – and share the view that all are biased in their reporting (not referring to opeds).

By: Scrapiron

Scrapiron — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 05:00:48 +0000

What facility for the criminally insane did they find the 11 percenters in?

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:50:20 +0000

More intelligent debate! Thanks, Fargus!

By: Fargus

Fargus — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:35:42 +0000

Thank you for your enormously condescending response. I now realize that I’m but a child and need to bask in the glory of your overarching knowledge of everything in the world. Teach me, Aaron. Teach me that I might live in the light.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:17:19 +0000

It is very irrelevant, because as Mark explained (I’m sure you didn’t even read his post — even though that’s never kept you from responding to something before), the basis of belief is completely different.

I’ll explain it for you again, though I’m sure that you won’t even be reading this post before responding to it either: People believe the Bible because they have been taught to believe it. After all, there is no way that one could directly observe the composition of the Bible to determine if it was actually inspired by God. I’m not even sure that if someone were to witness another person writing with the inspiration of God that it would even be physically recogizable as such.

However, if someone watches news programs on television, reads the newspaper, etc. then one can observe directly if the newsmedia is, in general, to the right, to the left, or exactly the same as what they believe is the middle. Of course, liberal, conservative, and moderate are subjective terms, but I would assume that most people who are conservative would consider themselves to be such — same for moderates and liberals.

So if, 30-40% found that the media was left-leaning, then you could just say that those are the conservatives who find the media is to the left of their views (ie possibly moderate or liberal). But it is not 30-40%. It is over 80%. That means that either (A) there are only 17% of Americans who are as far to the left as much of the media or (B) even liberals (about half) concede that the media is liberal — just as I acknowledge both that I am a conservative and FNC is right-leaning.

Your anecdotal evidence — that your mother believes that NPR is liberal mouthpiece based upon third parties — is only that. It may be true of her, but that is all you have proven.

By: Fargus

Fargus — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 23:53:06 +0000

The comparison is far from irrelevant, Aaron. For instance, there are moderates I have talked to who have heard enough that one network or another is liberally biased that they’ve just absorbed it, without actually looking or listening for themselves. My mother never listens to NPR because they’re too liberal. Read: She has never listened to NPR because they were too liberal. The day after she told me that, I heard an unrebutted editorial by Dinesh D’Souza on my way to work. Hardly a liberal mouthpiece, but my mother would say that they lean to the left because even though she herself is a moderate, her whole family is uber-religious, uber-right.

I put far more trust in studies that examine the actual content of the news, rather than people’s perception of it. There’s a lot of people who don’t know a hell of a lot of things, and the “liberal media” meme has been floating around for a damn long time.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 23:33:16 +0000

Well, Fargus, when faced with a poll result we don’t believe, we can either ignore it outright, or try to determine why folks believe the way they do. To use your example, perhaps thousands of years of tradition can explain the large number of people who believe in the Bible in the most literal sense.

To use my example, perhaps 83% believe this way because they have reason (Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, Katie Couric) to believe that most prominent journalists have traditionally leaned left (i.e., they have directly observed the bias firsthand).

What it shows is that, even at a time when Republican esteem and party identification is at a low, the public still thinks the media leans left. That seems pretty significant to me, and I doubt it’s a belief they just pulled out of their posteriors…

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 23:02:15 +0000

Any more irrelevant comparisons you’d like to make, Fargus?

By: randomtroll

randomtroll — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 20:30:50 +0000

i think you forgot another .

on a side note, good blog.