Study: "A Measure of Media Bias"

Drudge links because the report cites Drudge as being more center than the other media outlets. But, there are significant conclusions drawn by the authors, Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Stanford (Go Bruins!) and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago:

Our results show a very significant liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News' Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABC's World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives. One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News' Special Report is the most centrist. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets.

Wow. These guys went out and performed a study that seems to count the citations within articles made by conservative or liberal think tanks from January 1993 to December 2002 (10 years). Their methodology appears to be pretty sound to me, down to ensuring that the research assistants were from across the liberal and conservative spectrum.

Other key grafs:

One of the most curious and surprising statistics in all of American politics is that an overwhelming number of journalists are liberal. For instance, Elaine Povich (1996) reports that only seven percent of all Washington correspondents voted for George Bush in 1992, compared to 37 percent of the American public.
...
These statistics suggest that journalists, as a group, are more liberal than almost any congressional district in the country. For instance, in the Ninth California district, which includes Berkeley, twelve percent voted for Bush, nearly double the rate of journalists.

Get that? BERKELEY'S congressional district is more conservative than the media. Did that sink in? (It hasn't quite registered with me yet) Say it again with me:

BERKELEY's congressional district is more conservative than the media.

They conclude by calling Franken. . .frankly. . .a liar:

The mainstream media does not have a liberal bias. . . . ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and the rest -- at least try to be fair."

--Al Franken. (2003, xx) Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

The main conclusion of our paper is that our results simply reject such claims.