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According to a UCLA study Fox News is centrist

Trajan Octavian Titus

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U.C.L.A. has done a study which is set for publication next week that states that Fox News, long accused of being a right wing media propaganda machine is in actuality the most centrist news network. The study also claims that the majority of major media outlets do indeed slant to the left here's a passage and a link to read the full summary of the publication set for release next week:

This is just further evidence that my previous assertion that the majority of the media is liberally biased and there for Fox only looks like it leans to the right by comparison.
 
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Nice try, but I don't think so.... UCLA analysed the FOX NEWS SPECIAL REPORT, they did not analyse the overall political bias of FOX NEWS CHANNEL.

There is a difference.

So I am still confident that the overall content of the Fox News Channel is conservative, whilst some shows maybe centerist.

Now you have claimed that on your heading of this post, that Fox News is centerist, when infact it should state the the Fox News Special Report is centerist.

:twocents:
 

Go to the link which is just a summary of its findings the full report is due for release next week and the study only analyzed real news and omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample and still found that even with the real news the majority of the media is still slanted to the left.
 

The conclusions found that the media outlets all of the media outlets except Fox news special report and the Drudge report is slanted to the left:

Although we expected to find that most media lean left, we were astounded by the degree. A norm among journalists is to present “both sides of the issue.” Consequently, while we expected members of Congress to cite primarily think tanks that are on the same side of the ideological spectrum as they are, we expected journalists to practice a much more balanced citation practice, even if the journalist’s own ideology opposed the think tanks that he or she is sometimes citing. This was not always the case. Most of the mainstream media outlets that we examined (ie all those besides Drudge Report and Fox News’ Special Report) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than they were to the median member of the House.
 
Read about that study elsewhere, it's a fantasticly done report, incredibly meticulous and above board in nearly every way.

But, the results are counter-intuitive, so most people will conveniently forget them.
 
RightatNYU said:
Read about that study elsewhere, it's a fantasticly done report, incredibly meticulous and above board in nearly every way.

But, the results are counter-intuitive, so most people will conveniently forget them.
Click to expand...

Oh they've already started to deny it all though I don't see how anyone can deny it once they've read the link I gave which is why I'm fairly sure that they haven't read it and probably refuse to . . .

"Fox News is centrist waaaa it must be another propaganda ploy *click*. (sarcasim emphasis added)"
 
Trajan, are you lazy with your post headers?

You put Fox News is centerist, this could imply the Fox News Channel. You header did not state Fox News Special Report as being centerist.

I am sure that the research is accurate, and that the Fox News Special Report is most likely centerist.

So are you stating the Fox News Channel is centerist, or are you stating that the Fox News special report is centerist?
 
Well as a ignorant Swed I just wondering if it's good way to meause news bias by meause news from bias thinktanks. Because any good newschannel shouldn't have a significant part of there news coming from who's sources.
 

The same study also said that Drudge leaned to the left. Uh uh:roll:
 
W-w-wait. A liberal university's study is being used to show proof of something that would fall under a conservative ideal? I'll bookmark this thread for future use.
 
I'm not sure that the methodology is the best. It seems that there're some assumptions therein that need more careful examination:

To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks. We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. By comparing the citation patterns we can construct an ADA score for each media outlet.
​
(Among other things) This assumes that all think tanks are of equal value and that the only criteria used for choosing among them is the ideological bent of the chooser. It's not clear that either one of these assumptions is correct.

Feel free to see this academic criticism of a study's methodology into a partisan motivated comment if you can't help but do so.
 
shuamort said:
W-w-wait. A liberal university's study is being used to show proof of something that would fall under a conservative ideal? I'll bookmark this thread for future use.
Click to expand...
He's not a liberal.

GROSECLOSE, TIMOTHY J
ENCINO,CA 91436
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
12/29/2003
$250
Cain, Herman

www.opensecrets.org
 
How The Liberal Media Myth is Created - Part 5

Part 5: Using "think-tank" citations

This is a continuation of a series on how the "liberal media" myth is created. Previous installments covered myth-creation using "tone" of media coverage (Part 1), "catch-phrases" like 'right-wing extremist' v. 'left-wing extremist' (Part 2), "newspaper headlines" (Part 3) and "topics" covered (Part 4). This part highlights an unusual, indirect approach that uses "think-tank" citations.

<SNIP>

When controlled for other factors, the more fundamental determinant of bias in news reporting is accuracy -- not whom the news reports cite. To the extent that news reporting could become inaccurate by citing certain think-tanks over others, one may have a case that think-tank citations could influence the accuracy of the reports. But, G-M have fallen into the trap of assuming that the part is the whole. Think-tank citations are merely one part of the whole - which is the media's accuracy in news reporting.
 
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Quarken said:
He's not a liberal.

GROSECLOSE, TIMOTHY J
ENCINO,CA 91436
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
12/29/2003
$250
Cain, Herman

www.opensecrets.org
Click to expand...
I didn't claim that the author of the study was a liberal, I humorously interjected that the university was liberal (since there is a constant conservative drum group that likes to lambaste ahd broadbrush universities and colleges as liberal ivory towers.)
 
I don't really care to argue semantics, but universities can't be liberal. Only its administrators/professors/students can be.
 
[MOD MODE]

Quarken,
I appreciate your response; however, Per Forum Rules:


8. Copyrighted Material -

All material posted from copyrighted material MUST contain a link to the original work.

Please do not post entire articles.

Proper format is to paraphrase the contents of an article and/or post relevant excerpts and then link to the rest.

Best bet is to always reference the original source.
Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107 http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
​
In the future, please paraphrase the important parts of what you're citing.

[/MOD MODE]
 
FWIW you're going way overboard on the copywrite issue, but it's your board. IMO, it makes it impossible to reasonably discuss the information presented.

I'll keep posting at every other board I visit (all allowing posting of whole articles).

Have fun.
 
Quarken said:
I don't really care to argue semantics, but universities can't be liberal. Only its administrators/professors/students can be.
Click to expand...
Sure they could be. Just as a party like the DNC can be liberal.
 

You liberal bastard j.k. :mrgreen: but that issue was also brought up in the study and if you took the time to read the full report under the methodology section the issue was addressed:

Like we did in Table 1, for the remaining think tanks in our sample we computed the average adjusted ADA score of the legislators who cited them. Next, we split the think tanks into a liberal group and a conservative group, based upon whether the average score of legislators citing the think tank was above or below 42.2, the midpoint of the House and Senate averages.8
 
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Somewhat circular.
They decided if the legislators were liberal or conservative, then they sorted the think tanks based upon the scores of the legislators who cited them. Then they used this as the basis for saying that the news outlets who cited them were liberal or conservative.

Yet, as I mentioned previously, this assumes that the only criteria or most important criterion used for choosing among think tanks is the ideological bent of the chooser.

Yet, as I mentioned previously, this assumes that that all think tanks are of equal value and accuracy.
 

They made the assumption that Democrats are liberal and Republicans are conservative their findings agreed with this assumption:

In Table 4 we list how frequently members of Congress cite the conservative and liberal groups, based upon total sentences. The entire Congress cited the two groups of think tanks approximately evenly. Specifically, of the total sentences that members of Congress cited, 43.1% were from the liberal group. As expected, if we confine our analysis only to Republican members of Congress, then we find that they cite the liberal think tanks less frequently than the entire Congress. Specifically, they cited think tanks from the liberal group, 16.6% of the time. Finally, of the total sentences that the Democrats cited, 81.5% were from the liberal group.


That's why they used I think 200 think tanks; furthermore there research techniques are of the same standard as any empirical political research.
 
This "study" admits it already had cognitive dissonance in it. It doesn't differentiate in what light a think tank was cited. Whether or not it was in support of or debunking a think tank. This would also have you believe that every news story cites a think tank. It doesn't address what stories are run and which aren't, which would have a lot to do with bias. All this suty proves is that the author had an agenda.
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
They made the assumption that Democrats are liberal and Republicans are conservative their findings agreed with this assumption
Click to expand...
Which is my point in a nutshell. The premise is a part of the conclusion.

Trajan Octavian Titus said:
That's why they used I think 200 think tanks; furthermore there research techniques are of the same standard as any empirical political research.
Click to expand...
W/o getting into the various more intricate issues w/ what you posted above, but this in no way rebuts or addresses the issues I raised about the use of the "techniques."

I've worked at a peer reviewed journal. Trust me that the findings, while interesting (which may be the main characteristic that got the study accepted), are hardly conclusive nor are they particularly authoritative. There're obvious methodological flaws that need to be addressed. Pehaps in later studies these issues will be.
 
UCLA study debunked

I thought I smelled something fishy.

FAIR - Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting took a look at this study here and found that the methodology was tweaked to meet the desired results:

I can't post the data here, but it's on the link here:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2534


* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg
 

I addressed your issue Simon you're turning this into a partisan issue even though the authors (not me) directly steered clear of that to ensure the accuracy of this research report; this report is above board and it has been done by UCLA not by some Conservative think tank and for you to turn a serious Political Scientific research paper proved through empirical analysis into partisan propaganda through your own partisanship is simply unconscionable and will only prove the claim that you originally made as a joke that you are so partisan that you will not except fact unless it corresponds with your own point of view:

In Table 4 we list how frequently members of Congress cite the conservative and liberal groups, based upon total sentences. The entire Congress cited the two groups of think tanks approximately evenly. Specifically, of the total sentences that members of Congress cited, 43.1% were from the liberal group. As expected, if we confine our analysis only to Republican members of Congress, then we find that they cite the liberal think tanks less frequently than the entire Congress. Specifically, they cited think tanks from the liberal group, 16.6% of the time. Finally, of the total sentences that the Democrats cited, 81.5% were from the liberal group.
 
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