Journalism Should Own Its Liberalism -Veteran reporter Thomas Edsall

www.cjr.org...

The mainstream press is liberal. Once, before 1965, reporters were a mix of the working stiffs leavened by ne'er-do-well college grads unfit for corporate headquarters or divinity school. Since the civil rights and women's movements, the culture wars and Watergate, the press corps at such institutions as The Washington Post, ABC-NBC-CBS News, the NYT, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, etc. is composed in large part of "new" or "creative" class members of the liberal elite -- well-educated men and women who tend to favor abortion rights, women's rights, civil rights, and gay rights. In the main, they find such figures as Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Pat Robertson, or Jerry Falwell beneath contempt.

In a UCLA study of media bias, reporters were found to be substantially more liberal and more Democratic than the public at large. Hoyt, in a column last year, acknowledged this finding: "Being human, journalists do have personal biases, and a long line of studies has shown that they tend to be more socially and politically liberal than the population at large. There is no reason to believe Times journalists are any different."

From the horse's mouth! Not that this will convince the deniers.

I disagree with most of the article actually. I just posted it because its a liberal asking the media to admit its liberalism. He of course then goes on to claim its just because liberals are the more intellectual side of the coin. I disagree.

He would probably agree with White House communications director Anita Dunn who praised CNN as "real news" during a CNN interview about critics of Obama.



The irony is that CNN is currently running an Anderson Cooper commercial where a woman says, "I'm a lifelong Democrat and that's why I watch Anderson Cooper.". Also that Cooper will "hold "right wing" conservatives accountable". Yeah, why hold the people in charge accountable?

Liberals in the media are their own biggest fans. They kid themselves in to believing only they care about freedom, peace, being intellectual and open minded, or taking care of people. Its not true. Its only true in the majority media world where they work to discredit and attack Democrat's opponents, while claiming to be the "real news".

"Fox News is opinion journalism masquerading as news"

The opposite is true. Can anyone reasonably say they had no idea many of the folks on Fox are bias. I think Fox News is blatantly opinionated because they are trying to open themselves up to a side of society that has been neglected by the journalism world as a whole.

CNN, MSNBC, etc are all opinionated news, they just can't recognize their own opinion and when Fox points this out, they get huffy and puffy.

I watch BBC World News America (surprisingly less bias than other news orgs), CNBC (Kudlow speaks the truth!.... most of the time), and read online.

As a side, CNBC does have some decent interviews. Maria Bartiromo will call anyone out on anything anytime. I was just watching the tickers a few days ago and she had some congressmen on and took him to school. They are definitely bias, but they have balls.

reply to post by Wimbly


What do these things even mean? Liberalism versus conservative in journalism can't exist if people just report the facts. People talk about what topics journalists choose to cover or what quotes they use, but still, they aren't inventing things!