A solid majority of so-called mainstream journalists are liberals, if by liberals we mean they usually vote for Democrats, support abortion rights, opposed the Iraq war before the majority of the country did, favor more progressive taxation than conservatives, etc.
This is in some respects an inconvenient truth, at least for mainstream journalists fighting a rear-guard action to prop up the credibility of “objective” news reporting.
But it isn’t really useful — especially not for our craft which is supposed to be about finding facts and stating them clearly and bravely — to cavil and pettifog about a fact that anyone who has eyes and ears and who has spent many years in newsrooms knows is true.
I estimate the split at about 80 percent liberal to 20 percent conservative (pushing the leaners one way or the other, acknowledging that there are degrees of liberalism and conservatism, and admitting that categorizing individuals with a single ideological label oversimplifies their many complex and changing views). The gap isn’t much less than 80-20 and is quite possibly greater.
And the proportions certainly don’t reflect the division of the country as a whole (not even at the current moment, with conservatism at a low ebb).
I have never become personally convinced of an explanation for this, although I have heard many and have written about them. If you think you know the reason, please advise. But it is nonetheless a fact.
Eric Black :: Question: Are Most Journalists Liberal? Answer: Yes.
Every once in awhile, some data comes out that evinces this fact rather clearly. The latest instance broke Thursday in a long piece by MSNBC investigative reporter Bill Dedman, who analyzed Federal Election Commission records and was able to identify 144 journalists who made political contributions over the past three years and found that:
125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
The numbers are impressive but no more so than a 1996 survey indicating that 89 percent of reporters who either cover Congress or head a Washington bureau had voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 (compared with 43 percent of Americans) while 7 percent of the Washington journalists had voted for the first George Bush (compared with 37 percent).
In a long piece back then, I wrote:
The fact that journalists are disproportionately liberal doesn’t settle the question of whether liberal candidates or liberal ideas get favorable treatment. Journalists are told to keep their personal opinions out of their stories and are taught various techniques to do so. The question is how well they succeed at that task, and the answer is heavily influenced by the eye of the beholder.
I would say the same now. During my 900-plus years of being accused of smuggling into my work various biases (both left and right, but more often left) I found that bias critics were often among the most biased people I encountered. For example, such critics often focus on a fact in a story that is bad for their side, take it to be incontrovertible evidence of bias, and fail to notice, or at least to credit or remark upon, another fact that is good for their side in the same story.
Selective perception is a powerful and unhelpful force in human nature. Liberal reporters perceive the world differently than conservative reporters do. This is bound to come across in their work in some way. But they try to rise above their biases and they generally make considerable progress - generally a heckuva lot more than is selectively perceived by their critics, who often make no effort to rise above their biases.
I have a theory, but I have to admit its not yet well formed. It has to do with Liberal Arts vs. Liberalism. I suspect that people exposed to a liberal arts education are thusly exposed to different ways of thinking, different cultures and different perspectives. I think that people who pursue the study of such things, or who perhaps are exposed to such curriculum in pursuit of a journalism degree, are likely to gravitate towards political liberalism, in that it tends to value diversity more than conservatism. Conservatism, by way of comparison, seems to stem from - no not stem from - but be related to a lack of diversity in thinking, culture, perspective or values. I suppose conservatives will disagree. The point I’m trying to make is that a mindset that would gravitate for liberalsim is the same mindset that gravitates towards finding out the whole story. At this point I wish to remind the reader that I warned them at the outset that the idea is half-baked.
My first degree was in Liberal Arts, and I was indeed exposed to “different ways of thinking, different cultures and different perspectives.” The cultural atmosphere of the liberal arts college certainly does encourage consideration of many topics, but usually from the viewpoint of the professors who seem predominantly ivory tower liberal in their political leanings.
It seems to me, however, that the saying “Anyone under 30 who is not a liberal doesn’t have a heart; and anyone over 40 who is not a conservative doesn’t have a brain” might be a bit more relevant — though not precisely accurate. It speaks to the change in thinking that happens as the amount one has to lose from change increases, though. And the impact of life experiences upon the eternal and healthy optimism of youth.
It also seems to me that one’s early choice of friends or work partners might play a role, as we tend to adopt the thinking of the group with which we most often associate.
And one can never underestimate the impact of early family influences, and the need to be accepted in this most basic of social institutions. My father was an immigrant, and pretty much a dyed in the wool Democrat because of the difference FDR made in his life. My mother’s father, a descendent of New Englanders who fought in the Revolutionary and Civil War, would probably have voted for a blackbird if it was nominated by the Republicans. (My mother was silent on her preferences, but she did vote.) In the end, I got to pick and choose my way, unlike many others I know. Our family now is split across the political spectrum.
But in the end, I believe the leanings of each individual are a construct of individual reactions to each issue as it comes along, with those reactions being influenced by one’s own life experience, what one thinks of the proponent, and the tissue of one’s own past reactions. One wakes up one day to find, on reflection, that one is conservative mostly, liberal mostly, or just ambivalently in between. And the process continues until hardening of the mental arteries stops consideration of each issue and leaves knee-jerk reactions.
Bsimon, just a data point for you. Living in the Twin Cities, there have been dozens of times that I’ve been the first real live conservative that people have ever met. They are always surprised that I don’t fit the cartoonish vision that they had in mind. These are not people that are exposed to more variety of viewpoints.
Getting to Eric’s point, I saw an article months ago that suggested that most of the time people see bias it’s because of the context that an article does or doesn’t include. There is always a part of the story that the paper doesn’t have room for and the question becomes what elements to leave in and what to leave out. (Eric, I’m curious if that jibes with your experience too.)
The problem that conservatives (maybe all non-liberals) have with an overwhelmingly liberal media is that the context swings too consistently one way. The context that’s presented leans one way and shortchanges the other. The tricks of the trade that Eric mentions can help the problem but I don’t think they can fix it.
[…] familiar with my previous writing on the issue know that I’m not a liberal bias denier. But the hyper-simplified way that Limbaugh and his […]