Does the Media Have a Liberal Bias? Is There Any Evidence? Yes, According to a New Book and Study

Political Quotients of Some Politicians (click to enlarge)

Does the mainstream media have a liberal bias?  Yes, according to the empirical evidence that Tim Groseclose, UCLA political scientist and economist, presents in his new book "Left Turn: How Liberal Media Distorts the American Mind."  From Tim's website:

"Dr. Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slants of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news and converting that content into an SQ, or “slant quotient,” of the outlet.  To determine bias, he compares SQs of news outlets to the PQs, or “political quotients,” of voters and politicians.
 

Among his conclusions are: 1) all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias, and 2) while some supposedly conservative outlets—such as 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: 1) the current political views of the average American and 2) 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 over-heated debate."

MP: To determine your PQ, take this 40-question quiz.  At the end of the quiz, you'll see a list of politicians who have PQs similar to yours.  The chart above (click to enlarge) shows a sample of PQs for politicians ranging from Michele Bachmann and Jim DeMint on the far conservative end to Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi on the far liberal end of the scale.  

Here's a five-part video series of Tim being interviewed about his book by Peter Robinson on Uncommon Knowledge: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.