What Liberal Media

Argues that the nature of economic power has changed and that the U.S. must develop the will and the flexibility to regain its international leadership role.

A leading political science professor provides scientific proof of media bias in this sure-to-be-controversial book Dr. Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slant of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news, as a way to measure the PQ, or "political quotient" of voters and politicians. Among his conclusions are: (i) all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias; and (ii) while some supposedly conservative outlets—such the Washington Times or Fox News' Special Report—do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most mainstream outlets. Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American, and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah. With Left Turn readers can easily calculate their own PQ—to decide for themselves if the bias exists. This timely, much-needed study brings fact to this often overheated debate.

For the better part of 30 years, liberal bias has dominated mainstream media. But author and political journalist Brian Anderson reveals in his new book that the era of liberal dominance is going the way of the dodo bird.

The “media” used to mean television, radio, newspapers, and magazines; but today it largely involves social media, which has swallowed up all of these other forms and is now controlled by a small group of Silicon Valley titans who decide what billions of people are able to see and hear online. The convergence of old technology and new has centralized unimaginable power into the hands of a few gigantic corporations that now dictate how we communicate with each other and perceive the outside world. Media analyst Mark Dice details how the rise of social media that tipped the balance of power regarding the production and distribution of information has also resulted in a massive backslash from those conspiring to regain the influence they once held. Now conservatives are experiencing widespread censorship as the tech giants scramble to put the genie back in the bottle. The liberal media has launched an information war against President Trump and his supporters, and are using their monopolies to manipulate public opinion in order to further their aims of a socialist revolution.

Refuting the claim that mainstream media has a liberal slant, the author exposes the fallacy of a left-wing conspiracy, arguing that it is corporate news structure that determines what the public sees and hears in broadcast or print media.

This book examines the challenges and pressures liberal journalists face in Putin's Russia. It presents the findings of an in-depth qualitative study, which included ethnographic observations of editorial meetings during the conflict in Ukraine. It also provides a theoretical framework for evaluating the Russian media system and a historical overview of the development of liberal media in the country. The book focuses on some of Russia’s most influential liberal national news outlets: "the deadliest" newspaper Novaya Gazeta, "Russia’s last independent radio station" Radio Echo of Moscow (Ekho Moskvy) and US Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The fieldwork included ethnographic observations of editorial meetings, long interviews with editors and journalists as well as documentary analysis. The monograph makes theoretical contributions to three main areas: 1. Media systems and terms of reference. 2. Journalism: cultures, role conceptions, and relationship with power, culture and society. 3. Mediatisation of conflict and nationhood.

Could Al Franken and his left-wing cronies possibly be right? Is liberal media bias just a myth propagated by conservatives, and have the mainstream media actually swung to the right? Absolutely not. In the new book Weapons of Mass Distortion, L. Brent Bozell III—founder and president of the Media Research Center, America’s largest and most respected media watchdog organization—presents the definitive account of how liberal bias in the news industry is alive and well. But here’s the thing: The liberal media are headed for a downfall. Bozell demonstrates how their monopoly on information is at last coming to an end, in large part because journalists continue to deny the bias that infects their news coverage. His unrivaled expertise allows him to show readers exactly how the media landscape is changing—and to expose the even bigger changes that are coming. Marshaling an astonishing amount of evidence, Bozell documents exactly how the news media deliberately attempt to set the national agenda through their slanted coverage. In the process he destroys the arguments that Franken and many other left-wing commentators have put forward regarding media bias. Weapons of Mass Distortion also reveals: • How the liberal media’s slanted coverage of President George W. Bush will play a huge role in the 2004 elections • Why liberals’ claims about the influence of Fox News and the “conservative media” are wrong—and deliberately misleading • How the mainstream press has waged war on the war on terrorism • Never-before-told stories of how leading journalists, behind the scenes, betray the liberal bias they so forcefully deny in public—incidents that Bozell has witnessed firsthand • How the same journalists who condemn the Right for “hate speech” regularly launch (and get away with) vicious personal attacks on conservatives • Clear evidence that the major news outlets are hemorrhaging viewers, readers, and listeners precisely because of their liberal bias By dominating the news media for so long, liberals have been able to control what we see and hear. But as Bozell makes clear, the Left will lose that control soon enough.

In the 1960s and 70s the American press forged a new set of values. Threatened with obsolescence by the proliferation of new competitors, pressured to rectify their treatment of minorities and women, denounced as biased by both the left and the right, the country's leading news organizations made fundamental changes. They shifted from simply reporting the news to analyzing it. They adopted a more adversarial approach to those in power. They continued to strive for objectivity, but they did so in a way that left many outside their newsrooms (and many on the inside) deeply dissatisfied. In many ways they became more liberal. Powerful institutions like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times--the two newspapers this book scrutinizes--transformed themselves, with major ramifications for the rest of the news media and for the country as a whole. On Press shows how these changes occurred, why they persisted for three decades after the 1970s, and why the media is reassessing long-held values once again in the Trump era.--

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.