NEW YORK Those convinced that liberals make up a disproportionate share of newsroom workers have long relied on Pew Research Center surveys to confirm this view, and they will not be disappointed by the results of Pew's latest study released today.
While most of the journalists, like many Americans, describe themselves as "moderate," a far higher number are "liberal" than in the general population.
At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets: 23% liberal, 12% conservative. At Web sites: 27% call themselves liberals, 13% conservatives.
This contrasts with the self-assessment of the general public: 20% liberal, 33% conservative.
The survey of 547 media professionals, completed this spring, is part of an important study released today by The Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Committee of Concerned Journalists, which mainly concerns more general issues related to newsrooms (an E&P summary will appear Monday).
While it's important to remember that most journalists in this survey continue to call themselves moderate, the ranks of self-described liberals have grown in recent years, according to Pew. For example, since 1995, Pew found at national outlets that the liberal segment has climbed from 22% to 34% while conservatives have only inched up from 5% to 7%.
The survey also revealed what some are sure to label a "values" gap. According to Pew, about 60% of the general public believes it is necessary to believe in God to be a truly moral person. The new survey finds that less than 15% of those who work at news outlets believe that. About half the general public believes homosexuality should be accepted by society -- but about 80% of journalists feel that way.
When the question of which news organizations actually tilted left or right, there was one clear candidate: Fox News. Fully 69% of national journalists, and 42% of those at the local level, called Fox News "especially conservative." Next up was The New York Times, which about one in five labeled "especially liberal."
Not surprisingly, views of how the press has treated President Bush break down along partisan lines. More than two out of three liberals feel the press has not been tough enough on Bush, while half the conservatives feel the media has been too tough.
Still, a little over half of national journalists (53%) give national media coverage of the administration an A or B rating.
While the sample of 547 interviewees is not large, Pew says that this selection represents "a cross-section of news organizations and of the people working at all levels of those organizations." Newspapers were identified and circulation ranked using the 2003 Editor & Publisher International Year Book.
In an essay accompanying the survey, the directors of the sponsoring groups -- Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell --declare that broad conclusions about the political findings should be tempered by analyzing some of the details in the findings. For example, they identify strong "libertarian" leanings among journalists, including doubts about the role of "big government."
"The Secret Service has announced it is doubling its protection for John Kerry. You can understand why — with two positions on every issue, he has twice as many people mad at him." —Jay Leno
posted on May 25, 2004 01:47:59 AM new
Well...I've been saying that all along.
It's quite clear to see when you read the same issue/subject on both a left leaning and right leaning news source. The articles are more like op-ed pieces that just news reporting.
It's the same in our colleges - liberal professors being the large majority. Just read an article about a college graduation speech given by an anti-Bush speaker. [I thought graduation speeches were supposed to be uplifting - sending them off in a positive mode.] Anyway.....near the end of his speech the audience boo-ed him. But the professors, and a few students, stood up and gave him a standing ovation.
I was surprised that they'd made it through four years of liberal brain-washing and still boo-ed him.
posted on May 25, 2004 04:44:28 AM new
Hello Bear1949, Thanks for this post its GOOD NEWS. It shows the democrats are going to get ya this time around. Bush's Iraq speech was a big flop last night. More and more people are not believing the republican lies any longer. Keep posting! Your helping to elect John Kerry with your posts almost everyday.
posted on May 25, 2004 09:18:27 PM new
Republican Commandment...
X. Thou shalt call the media liberal, so that people forget that the media is owned by corporations with a conservative fiscal agenda. The media shall be as another branch of the Bush administration.
posted on May 26, 2004 03:34:39 PM newNonbeliever call thine self by thine true name..Helen
"The Secret Service has announced it is doubling its protection for John Kerry. You can understand why — with two positions on every issue, he has twice as many people mad at him." —Jay Leno
posted on May 26, 2004 03:59:34 PM new
Bear says,"Nonbeliever call thine self by thine true name..Helen"
As he copy pastes his diatribes of contempt and derision, bear is gracious and full of compassion -- slow to anger and of great mercy. The bear is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works. Bear is a believer.
posted on May 26, 2004 04:47:25 PM newThe New York Times apologizes for not being as rigorous as it should have been when reporting for the Bush administration.
Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.
In doing so — reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.
But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.
The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.
Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.
On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified.
On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that American officials took that defector — his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri — to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers.
On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."
Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons". The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.
On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American troops into Iraq, another front-page article declared, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." It began this way: "A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said."
The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda — two claims that were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi "scientist" — who in a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence — had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.
The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the attempts to verify his claims.
A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.
We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.
posted on May 26, 2004 08:26:11 PM new
And don't you forget it, Helen..
"The Secret Service has announced it is doubling its protection for John Kerry. You can understand why — with two positions on every issue, he has twice as many people mad at him." —Jay Leno
posted on May 26, 2004 08:47:05 PM new
Go here for a Page of links to Bush flip flops.Bush flip flops
Just for the record, it seems to me that George W. Bush has unambiguously flip-flipped on the crucial issue of fiscal policy (used to oppose budget deficits, then said they didn't matter when trying to pass his 2003 tax cut, and now may or may not oppose them), foreign policy (used to favor being "humble" and avoiding nation-building, now favors arrogance and inept nation building). He opposed McCain-Feingold during the campaign and then signed it. As governor of Texas he opposed an HMO Patients' Bill of Rights then after it passed over his veto he tried to claim credit for it on the 2000 campaign trail, but once in office he tried (successfully) to get it killed in the House, but indicated that he would sign it if it passed. He favored free trade, but also steel tarrifs and the farm bill. All this in the past five years alone. Readers can probably think of more examples.
Matthew Yglesias
Opposed the creation of a Homeland Security Department. Then favored creation of a Homeland Security Department.
Was definitely going to call for a second U.N. vote and let the chips fall where they may.
Didn't call for a second U.N. vote.
Opposed increasing SEC scrutiny. Then flopped.
Preached keeping his hands off the Social Security lockbox. Then decided it would be too profitable to do so.
Opposed creation of independent 9/11 commission. Then flopped.
Said he was a Uniter, not a Divider.
Then divided the country by saying the constituion was the proper place to exlude rights from American citizens.
"Opposed creation of independent 9/11 commission. Then flopped."
Then flipped back and refused to cooperate with the commission he appointed. That one counts double!
You may go here and read a lot more flip flops by your incompetent president.
