In this post I discuss a companion paper for Left Turn, “Hands are Shaky and Knees are Weak? Are Journalists Really Dupes of their Corporate Bosses?”. Here’s how the paper begins:
“There are NO liberal media outlets: they are ALL owned by corporations. I can’t even comprehend how you managed to deny that fact in your head.”
That’s what “Heir” wrote in the reader comment section of an article posted on politicalwire.com. “Heir” was responding to “passerby25,” who had written that he or she believes that the media, on the whole, are slightly more liberal than conservative.
“Heir” is what I call a “corporate media theorist.” This is someone who asserts that the views of journalists are largely irrelevant to how they report. Instead, much more important are the views of their corporate bosses. Here are a couple more typical claims of corporate media theorists:
- “You’re only as liberal as the man who owns you.” –Eric Alterman. (This is the title of chapter two of his book What Liberal Media?.)
- “The press is the hired agent of a moneyed system, set up for no other reason than to tell lies where the interests are concerned.” -Henry Adams, quoted in Robert McChesney’s The Political Economy of Media, p. 28.
- “[I]n reality, most journalists have about as much say over what is presented by newspapers and news programs as factory workers and foremen have over what a factory produces.” -Robert Parry (quoted in Robert McChesney’s The Political Economy of the Media, p. 58.)
I’ll return to corporate media theory in a moment. But first, I want to make a brief digression about the notion of falsifiability in science and religion.
Karl Popper is responsible for introducing the notion of “falsifiability.” His notion asks: “With a particular belief or theory that I hold, can I imagine a set of events that would cause me to abandon it?”
Many people—including two famous pupils of Popper, William Bartley and Antony Flew—assert that religious views are unfalsifiable.
I don’t believe that is quite true, especially if the views are strengthened to belief in a particular religion. For instance, suppose Muhammed floated down from the sky, and once he reached earth, performed several miracles, then proclaimed, “I have been sent by God to tell humans that Islam is the true religion.”
Although I am a Christian, if I witnessed that, I’d abandon Christianity and become a Muslim. Thus, my Christian beliefs are falsifiable.
I also believe the opposite is true: If Jesus floated down from the sky and did something similar, then I believe most Muslims would convert to Christianity.
But now suppose Jesus and Muhammed floated down from the sky, performed some miracles, then said, “You know, corporate media bosses really aren’t that conservative, and they really don’t exert much influence over how their journalists report.”
Then I’m sure the corporate media theorists would immediately scream at Jesus and Muhammed and tell them why they’re wrong.
Thus, in many ways, corporate media theory is more religion than most religions are religion.
Accordingly, my paper maybe was a waste of time. There’s really no chance, no matter how sound its arguments and evidence are, that it will persuade any corporate media theorists.
Nevertheless, if you are sympathetic to such corporate media theories, I still hope you’ll read it. And I hope you’ll consider three quick thoughts, in addition to the arguments and evidence in the paper.
First, if corporate bosses are so conservative and so powerful, then why do they hire so many liberals?
Second, if journalists really are such dupes of their corporate bosses, why do they—especially the liberal ones—seek jobs in journalism?
Third, consider my earlier post, where I examined the L.A. Times article about UCLA admissions. Recall that the bias was not due to false statements. The bias was due to statements that the journalist failed to report. Specifically, I listed several facts that she omitted—facts that a conservative would want readers to learn but a liberal would not.
Suppose you were the journalist’s corporate boss. And suppose you had complete control over what she wrote. Even if that were true, how would you know the facts that she failed to report? And if you didn’t know those facts, how could you force her to report them?
joe says:
It might too hopeful of me, but if there was a single issue I wish Groseclose would address, it is the findings that his entire analysis hinges on his particular choice of sample, and that things as small as the inclusion or exclusion of a single think tank can lead to vastly different findings.
September 1, 2011, 6:10 pmAnon says:
I’ve tried to read these posts with an open mind. I really, really have. I’m liberal, but I believe the media probably does have a liberal slant, on average. But COME ON. This has surely descended into parody. I thought the gay marriage guest blogger was pretty bad. But this must be an all-time low.
September 1, 2011, 6:23 pmstrech says:
What purposes does a bizarre and unsupported ad-hominem targeting people that disagree with you, suggesting that they treat their position as deeper than a religion, serve?
You then ask people to buy your book to see your arguments, before finally posting 3 quick thoughts that at least in some way are relevant to the issue at hand, but don’t actually consist of an argument.
September 1, 2011, 6:34 pmTed says:
Prof. Groseclose;
Have you considered that the liberal slant in the media may be due to consumer selection? Isn’t it likely that liberals are smarter, more creative, and more interesting people than their conservative media counterparts? Compare Limbaugh and Stewart for instance; both intelligent people, probably, but who comes off as smarter, more artistic, and more interesting?
Shouldn’t you at least consider that if conservative journalists provided a better consumer product, that behavioral economics suggests they would be more popular, and that a conservative bias would develop as a result?
To test this hypothesis, you should commission a study to conclusively determine whether liberals are smarter, more creative, and more interesting than conservatives. Shouldn’t be too hard, you’ve already definitively proven how media affects the minds of people.
September 1, 2011, 6:36 pmSteve says:
Why is the Washington Post so gung ho for education reform? There are many theories. Maybe Mohammad came down from heaven and told them to do it.
September 1, 2011, 6:39 pmgab says:
I weep for my alma mater…
September 1, 2011, 6:40 pmSenX says:
That’s interesting and we get those “corporate media theorists” here all the time commenting.
Oh but wait though I am not an expert in this subject I don’t like your methods and don’t want to read your book so waaaaaaaa waaaaaa.
(repeat for 100 comments)
September 1, 2011, 6:40 pmjab says:
Really? REALLY? I have new found respect (more so than I already had) for Orin Kerr… I am truly amazed that he can remain so civil, diplomatic, and conciliatory. It’s one thing if Prof. Groseclose was just another internet crank posting this drivel in comments to more serious posts, but Eugene trumpeted him as an esteemed UCLA colleague and a serious political scientist, and has given him a platform to expound on his theories… all we have been subjected to is pablum. Seriously, I would expect more from an undergraduate senior thesis.
September 1, 2011, 6:40 pmChris Travers says:
So, here’s my question for Groseclose:
The concern I have with all this talk of media bias isn’t so much a question of whether the media is biased— they are because in fact everyone is biased as a basic epistemological fact. Rather the question is when one asserts a specific bias (whether it’s pro-Liberal or pro-Corporation, or whatever) what neutral point are you comparing to? Is there even a neutral point or is that neutral point a product of your own biases?
Put another way, isn’t it tautologically true that for every conceivable bias that the media could possibly exhibit, they in fact are exhibiting that bias from some point of view that someone could assume to be neutral?
September 1, 2011, 6:42 pmboss tweed says:
People who talk about “corporate media” are almost always Pacifica types. They’re very conspicuous about, e.g., never reading the NYT. But did you ever ask them to specify how news coverage in the NYT should be different? They never can.
September 1, 2011, 6:45 pmTed says:
What if Jesus floated down, performed some miracles, and then told you that he didn’t exist and that there was no God? What does that suggest about your interpretation of falsifiability?
September 1, 2011, 6:47 pmyankee says:
Seems like we could identify two different corporate media theories:
1) Media enterprises are owned by corporations and therefore offer a slant that supports the interests of their corporate owners.
2) Media enterprises are owned by corporations that want to maximize profit, and therefore offer a slant that maximizes eyeballs (with an edge toward attracting “desirable” readers/viewers with more disposable income who are therefore more attractive to advertisers).
I skimmed the article and it seems you are only interested in criticizing corporate media theory 1. Is that correct, or are you addressing theory 2 as well?
(FWIW, I am not remotely impressed by theory 1 and am quite the believer in theory 2.)
September 1, 2011, 6:49 pmJosh Bornstein says:
I find the good professor’s premise simply incredible. He thinks that (I assume, liberal) believers in some corporate theory conspiracy will hold on to those views in the face of tangible “proof,” MORE so than religious zealots (be they Christian, Islamist, etc.). Really? REALLY??
He is, of course, entitled to his views, since he’s not claiming (one hopes) that this premise has any foundation in reality–at least, not in any tested or testable reality.
But wow. It certainly gives me an insight into his belief system, and to what extent I think those beliefs are grounded in reality.
I think it’s a bit unkind to label his postings as parody. But I have to admit; when I read this particular post, parody was the first thing that came to my mind as a possible explanation.
September 1, 2011, 6:49 pmDC says:
I particularly like the part in the companion paper where Groseclose argues that Fox News’s practice of instructing the staff on what slant to apply to the news is in fact evidence against corporate control over media.
September 1, 2011, 6:50 pmjoe says:
So you think that studies with a non random sample and where sample selection has been shown to lead to different results are valid?
September 1, 2011, 6:55 pmLN says:
Yes Professor. “When you control the mail, you control… INFORMATION.”
I do have a question though. How is that you were able to arrive at your conservative beliefs, given that information is controlled by the journalist cult and not even their bosses can penetrate their facade? How do you see through the charade?
September 1, 2011, 6:56 pmSarcastro says:
Yeah, folks who disagree with me often argue about principle or interpretation or even what the facts are. Now I know not to bother arguing with them. I’ll just type this –
NOT FALSIFIABLE! – THEY ARE ALL CULTIST ZEALOTS!!
The caps are ’cause they are probably too dogmatic to read carefully.
Though I will note that a protracted hypothedical about Jesus and Mohammed is another acceptible tactic.
September 1, 2011, 7:03 pm4C says:
“There are NO liberal media outlets:”
Ever hear of MSNBC ?
September 1, 2011, 7:11 pmSteve (CT) says:
Is it that Fox instructs them on the slant, or they only hire people that give them the desired slant? Obviously not 100% true when you have employees like Shep Smith & Geraldo Rivera going off the reservation occasionally.
September 1, 2011, 7:16 pmrpt says:
Rhee-dux.
September 1, 2011, 7:22 pmyankev says:
Or, if you were Jewish, you might just look at Deut. XIII and say – “Oh. G-d already warned me that might happen and not to pay any attention to it.” Keeping in mind that those who don’t accept Deut. XIII, even if they claim to, may then try to slaughter you and your family for not being convinced.
September 1, 2011, 7:27 pmrpt says:
The most prison shows of any network, Joe Scarborough, Michael Steele and so on. Maddow, Schultz and Sharpton (?) don’t quite balance the rest of the programming. Alan Greenspan’s wife and the rest of the morning hosts are pretty middle of the road. Matthews is all over the place.
September 1, 2011, 7:28 pmMark says:
I have to say that Professor Groseclose is by far, far the worst guest-blogger on the Conspiracy. His posts are much more appropriate at RedState than this great site. My conservative college mates had better arguments than Professor Groseclose. Whom is he trying to persuade? I guess noone.
September 1, 2011, 7:30 pmrb1971 says:
But now suppose Jesus and Muhammed floated down from the sky, performed some miracles, then said, “You know, corporate media bosses really aren’t that conservative, and they really don’t exert much influence over how their journalists report.”
Then I’m sure the corporate media theorists would immediately scream at Jesus and Muhammed and tell them why they’re wrong.
Thus, in many ways, corporate media theory is more religion than most religions are religion.
Accordingly, my paper maybe was a waste of time. There’s really no chance, no matter how sound its arguments and evidence are, that it will persuade any corporate media theorists.
Well, I’m not a “corporate media theorist”, but I’ve been reading these posts with interest hoping to find a reason to buy the good professor’s book. This bit just convinced me – but not, I think, in the way Prof. Groseclose would hope.
September 1, 2011, 7:30 pmSigivald says:
LN: You… you do realize that the Prof. Groseclose is making a point about a belief he does not hold, right?
“Given your belief X , how do you explain Y?” is not a claim that requires the speaker to believe X.
Indeed, it’s most commonly used by people who, as the Professor here, do not believe X.
Yankee: I believe that the Professor is speaking only of Version 1 in your taxonomy.
Version 2 seems quite plausible in terms of a real-world explanatory theory.
I’ve run into the sort of “theorists” Prof. Groselcose is talking about, and they’re almost all of Version 1, which makes me think that’s his target.
Version 2 has far more explanatory power, thus making it a preferable hypothesis, all things considered.
Unfortunately, it lacks political utility as a weapon, since it doesn’t present the holder’s side as unfairly disadvantaged or allow him to simply reject all media.
(Though, oddly, I’ve never run into a Version 1 holder who actually did reject all media – they just somehow think that the little outlets they prefer are immune somehow.
I guess Some Corporations Are Not-Corporations for their purposes. Convenient.)
September 1, 2011, 7:32 pmjustin says:
Sarcastic hacked volokh and this is just a play on the “hypothetical hypocrisy” discussion. Right?
September 1, 2011, 7:36 pmgooners says:
Wow, if these zealots would question Jesus himself what chance does a poor Poli Sci professor have?
September 1, 2011, 7:38 pmjustin says:
Sigi – one of us has poor reading comprehension skills.
September 1, 2011, 7:39 pmcampanile says:
The good Professor should’ve posted his provocative work on a dumber, less artistic and more prosaic non-Liberal blog with big print and lots of pictures instead of wasting everybody’s time dealing with the genius kids here who will tell you their IQs and school credentials if you ask them real nice and acknowledge you’re a sorry cretin conservative and think they’re real sexy and can’t imagine why you weren’t smart enough to think of the swell idea of becoming a Liberal so that you, too, could be intelligent and fascinating and be real ugly to others not of your kind.
Oh, I see Mark has already suggested a place.
September 1, 2011, 7:42 pmjustin says:
Besides Groseclose’s other flaws, he’s awfully verbose. That took what, 500 words to say “my opponents are so dumb they won’t listen to facts?”
September 1, 2011, 7:44 pmnoblesse says:
so much depends
upon
an LA Times
article
about some black
people
but not the
September 1, 2011, 7:48 pmNCAA :(
justin says:
Camp, when I think liberal, I think vc. Kerr and Volokh would have been nominated over Sotomayor and Kagan except those commies would have been filibustered by Hatch and Cornyn.
September 1, 2011, 7:48 pmjustin says:
Camp, when I think liberal, I think vc. Kerr and Volokh would have been nominated over Sotomayor and Kagan except those commies would have been filibustered by Hatch and Cornyn.
September 1, 2011, 7:49 pmjab says:
Seriously… read THIS post again…
He LITERALLY is saying that even if Jesus came down and performed miracles and told them the media is biased to the left, they wouldn’t believe him… That’s it… no proof, no justification, no science… just an idiotic ad hominem declaring that his opponents are immune to reason and God almighty himself personally telling the doubters.
Frankly, Prof. Groseclose is a hack… he can’t even be bothered to put together a coherent post… his attitude all along has been:
“don’t judge a book by its cover” and “I don’t need to provide facts because even if God did himself, they wouldn’t believe me, so why bother.”
Professor Volokh would have been better off picking a conservative commenter at random and turning the blog over to them for a week… I guarantee we would have had a more useful discussion.
September 1, 2011, 7:54 pmtarheel says:
I’m sorry. I’ve read each of Groseclose’s posts, most of the comments, and each of Orin’s queries. I’ve stayed silent, hoping to give the guest a chance to redeem himself from a highly inauspicious start.
But this is just ridiculous. Does this kind of garbage even pass for analysis at a research university (yes, I know that sadly it does)? I daresay that if an African-American or Women’s Studies professor tried to get away with the level of shoddy research, writing, and thinking that Groseclose is trying to foist on us, folks here would be calling for blood. This guy is Cornel West without the cool hair or Ann Coulter without the sense of humor.
I mean, my god . . . he actually started a story with “This one time, my black girlfriend . . .”
Groseclose does at least confirm that ideological affirmative action is alive and well at UCLA, because the school must have lowered its standards to hire this guy and call him a professor.
September 1, 2011, 7:57 pmcampanile says:
jab, “idiotic ad hominem” is what I’m reading in the threaded comments, not his posts. And colorful hypos and expression are the mortar to the masonry here; without them, the place would fall down.
September 1, 2011, 8:04 pmBilly Bo Bob says:
If Muhammed descended and told a fundamentalist Christian that Islam is the one true religion, the fundamentalist would likely believe this was a trick performed by the devil or a test of his faith. Of course, no event like this will ever happen.
September 1, 2011, 8:06 pmMark says:
Campanile,
You haven’t addressed any of the criticisms of Professor’s so-called “research”. His “research” is provocative all right; I have no problem with provocative research that contradicts my deeply held beliefs and causes me to re-evaluate my views and positions. I am all for that and believe that only fools don’t re-evaluate their views in face of evidence. However, Professor Groseclose’s posts (I haven’t read the book, I admit) are not just provocative, they are extremely unpersuasive, full of questionable assumptions, condescending, snobby, illogical and seem geared to people with no ability to think critically. This is what makes his posts different from posts by others on this site. His posts bring the level of Volokh Conspiracy down.
September 1, 2011, 8:11 pmJohn A. Fleming says:
yankee proposes two business theories of corporate media ownership
I don’t see much difference between #1 and #2, except that #2 is contained in #1. If I may, I’d like to riff on #2.
Media corporations want to be dominant in their markets, or in a dominant oligopoly (e.g. ABC/NBC/CBS). Big corporations don’t want to waste their time on small niche markets. As big corporations, they are also in a dependency embrace with their news sources: governments. They won’t piss off the small number of newsmakers and lose access.
To be dominant in a media market then you have to capture two of the three segments: lefties/indeps/righties.
If a media corporation is always publishing articles that are truly critical of Government, they will lose their dominant market share composed of L/I. Why the I’s? Because the I’s just want the government to work, they are rationally ignorant, they are busy with their own lives, they don’t want their time wasted and have to worry about an out-of-control government, government is just a necessary burden, take my taxes and leave me alone. And then the media corporation will also lose its access to newsmakers.
The Righties, I am assuming, are the people who are both highly skeptical of any new grant of power to the government, and very vigorous in punishing government misdeeds. If a media corporation pushes that line, it will only have the R’s, no L/I, and no newsmakers access
Thus, media corporations will reward L/I bias, and discourage R bias, among its employees. To retain that dominant market share.
September 1, 2011, 8:15 pmgooners says:
Corporate media arguments are religion.
Evolution is religion.
Global warming is religion.
Liberalism is religion.
Support for Obama is religion.
I think I sense a pattern.
So, how exactly does a person arriving on earth from heaven falsify religion?
September 1, 2011, 8:25 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Today’s contribution — Jesus, Muhammad, and a dancing bear?? — indicates Professor Groseclose’s work is useful primarily as a punching bag.
Unfortunately, liberals and libertarians couldn’t get much work in because the Conservative Kid, Orin Kerr, was putting on a clinic for most of the week.
September 1, 2011, 8:29 pmHere come the Judge: says:
To recap, so far we have joe who complains of the “sample size,” Anon whose comment is an ad-hom, stech whose comment is also an ad-hom and makes this guest blog about an attempt to flog a book, Ted who thinks that consumers demand a liberal slant, leaving unexplained the reason that the MSM is losing customers while FOX is gaining, jab who goes for the ad-hom, Ted-2 who asserts that since everyone is biased, bias can’t be determined, Ted-3 who gives us the old chestnut about “can God create a rock so big that he can’t move it” in another form, yankee who tell us that the MSM is going out of business because corporations want to maximize profits, Josh Bernstein who goes for the ad-hom, LN that maintains that there is not chance for independent thought when in a society with a biased media, Sarastro who goes for the ad-hom (but I repeat myself), yankev who goes for the cheap shot at the old testament, Mark who goes for the ad-hom, rb1971 who also thinks that Groseclose blogged here to sell his book (I thing that these people give this site too much credit), Sigivald is incoherent (I think he’s using academic-speak), campanile has an elevated idea of the denizens who gather here (as a way of bragging about himself without mentioning himself).
This is for those who want a quick summary of the comments here and anywhere else Professor Groseclose chooses to post at VC. It’s a tightknit community and dissent is not welcomed. In the real world long ago, Groseclose would have been run out of this town on a rail. In this community stupid comments are the alternative.
But like a trainwreck, you can’t not watch.
September 1, 2011, 8:30 pmChrisHo says:
They are not liberal, they are simply insane.
September 1, 2011, 8:33 pmHarry Eagar says:
Professor Groseclose, have you ever been in a newsroom, attended the daily news budget meeting, listened in when an assignment editor gave out a task or listened as a reporter told his editor what his work was turning up?
I understand, I guess, you consider that social science questionnaires can result in valid ‘research data,’ but if you were interested in how a thing works, wouldn’t you rather see it work than ask somebody how it works?
September 1, 2011, 8:35 pmnoblesse says:
Harry Eagar: No, but he has slept with a black woman (at a Holiday Inn Express).
September 1, 2011, 8:38 pmJohn L says:
I said, “You know they refused Jesus, too”
September 1, 2011, 8:39 pmHe said, “You’re not Him.”
joe says:
You get that the comment had nothing to do with sample size, right? That if, in a non random sample, one finds that there is sample selection bias, it is pretty much the same as invalidating the findings in toto, right?
That someone wouldn’t get this very basic point, that if a sample is non random and results vary greatly on the inclusion or exclusion of individual data points the results are invalid, is a sign of incredible dishonesty.
September 1, 2011, 8:39 pmcampanile says:
Mark, I’m not going to wade through the specifics of the Professor’s methodology or metrics just now- am too busy, was just grazing the threads here a bit. But I’ve read enough of his posts and the comments to be able to sort out fair questions and exceptions from the piling-on nasty tone of many of the comments. To my mind, he hasn’t been condescending, snobby or inherently illogical (although logical counterpoints, some convincing, others not, have been brought up.)
If you are actually suggesting Prof. Groseclose’s posts are the only ones that have prompted such an ugly backlash, then I suppose you haven’t been here long. Every time, though, it’s impossible to take the comments or commenters seriously when they act like pirahna in a feeding frenzy. I suspect it’s a form of performance art that the hosts believe confers a bit of edgy cachet to their site and that’s why they’re fine with it. It’s up to them, after all, not me.
BTW, there’s rampant liberal Progressive bias throughout the media and entertainment industries, because I and studies I agree with say so. I’ve seen worst categorical statements of fact and logic on the part of above commenters in other threads, other days :)
Last, I’m going to buy Groseclose’s book and read it, not only because it looks intriguing but because commenters here are intent on savaging it (and him)!
September 1, 2011, 8:43 pmhjg848dju74ior says:
I would have thought the media bosses are just as biased as the front line journalists. I remember hearing reports of embedded journalists in Iraq trying to report something different from the usual narrative only to have their editors rewrite the story to fit the public expectation / company line etc.
This happens with some frequency in other areas too – there is some editorial policy and stories are rewritten as necessary to conform to it.
I also hear rumors of how media organizations are influenced by shadowy powers to stay away from some stories or spin others.
I think the obama eligibility / birth certificate story is a good example. A number of forensic document experts think the birth certificate the whitehouse put on their web site is a forgery. It is composed of layers with some pixels having color in each layer, you can’t get that from scanning and automated processing. You have to hand manipulate the document for that to happen. There are a number of other anomalies – but no media outlets are covering this. Liberal bias doesn’t explain why Fox news has been avoiding the story. Outside influence does.
I think there is just as great a need for investigating / publicizing outside influences on the news media as insider bias.
September 1, 2011, 8:52 pmtarheel says:
Winner of the comment of the week award.
September 1, 2011, 8:54 pmuh_clem says:
Prof Groseclose,
This is what’s known as a strawman argument. If you have any hope of convincing anyone other than those who already believe your conclusions, you might just want to think about using methods of argumentation that are logically sound.
September 1, 2011, 8:55 pmReader says:
Jab’s comments are hilarious. You should make HIM a guest blogger.
“Groseclose made ad hominem attacks! Groseclose is a jackass!! Are you serious about this post?! It’s SO stupid! I hate Groseclose! I know you are but what am I?! I just peed in my pants ’cause I’m four.”
Keep em’ coming Jab. In the meantime, I like Groseclose’s writing style. That is all.
September 1, 2011, 8:56 pmcampanile says:
Nice recap, all. As to the parenthetical above, I make a mean spaghetti, how’d you know?
Just two points, though:
A. I tacitly admitted to being a cretin conservative, while others self-described as smarter, artier and interestinger by virtue of their being Liberals.
2. Right back at you re the citation, er, Here come de Judge.
September 1, 2011, 8:57 pmHere come the Judge: says:
Joe, I have not read Groseclose’s book, just the posts and the comments. The comments are mostly bunk. If you feel yourself aggrieved, VC does not seem to be the place for you, so please don’t try the injured tone with me. Your comment says that his conclusion is based on his “particular choice of sample.” So you are accusing him of picking his data to determine his particular conclusion; an accusation also aimed at the global warning scientists. I have stated before that most social science is not science as much as it is political and cultural affirmation of the scientists involved. What I find risible is the defense of the indefensible: the lie that the MSM do not have a strong liberal bias. And to Groseclose’s point their main lie is omitting information.
September 1, 2011, 8:59 pmBen P says:
I like how the normally highly conservative and also very intelligent community suddenly gets decried as liberal and unthinking because they bother to challenge bad research that’s on a pet topic of some people.
September 1, 2011, 9:04 pmMark Field says:
Please reassure me that this story does not end with a flute.
September 1, 2011, 9:06 pmuh_clem says:
No, the accusation is that he chose his sample of 200 “think tanks” arbitrarily (according to his own description, he just went to a website run by some guy and used the list he found there.) Whether it was intentional or not is another matter and at this point he should be given the benefit of the doubt since there’s no evidence that it was intentional.
But it does appear to be arbitrary, and he’s given no reasons why he chose that particular list. Moreover, the conclusions are quite sensitive to the composition of the list – omitting a single one out of the 200 gives very different results. Given how sensitive the results are to the composition it’s natural to ask why that particular list was chosen.
He’s been asked repeatedly to justify why that particular list was chosen and the best he can come up with is that it’s somebody else’s list so its composition is not his responsibility. I find that to be a curious evasion of taking responsibility for one’s work.
September 1, 2011, 9:10 pmjoe says:
I don’t feel aggrieved at all. I just thought that, given the opportunity and the space, Groseclose would defend his methods, given that recently published articles using his data have shown that the inclusion or exclusion of certain think tanks from his analysis completely changes the results. In particular, Groseclose uses a non random sample of 200 think tanks that excludes some pretty big organizations, and a published article shows that if you do so much as exclude a single organization from his sample (making it 199), the results will then show that the media is actually balanced.
Now, if you think that social sciences in total are bunk, but still is here defending the work in question, it speaks more to your integrity than anything else. If you don’t care about the logic of an argument, only that it agrees with you, then there is not much to say, is there?
You may very well be certain that the media is biased, but that is not why Groseclose is here (at least not particularly). He is here because he has a specific method that is supposed to show evidence of that bias. As such, nothing more natural than examining that method. Otherwise, Groseclose’s book is irrelevant, no?
September 1, 2011, 9:12 pmeyesay says:
Prof. Timothy Groseclose wrote, “Suppose you were the journalist’s corporate boss. And suppose you had complete control over what she wrote. Even if that were true, how would you know the facts that she failed to report? And if you didn’t know those facts, how could you force her to report them?” This “argument” fails to disprove the theory he ascribes to a “corporate media theorist.” To see why, consider that Communist China is quite successful in censoring its media and preventing coverage that puts the government of China in an unfavorable light. This shows that it’s possible for those who control the media to decide what gets covered and what does not.
September 1, 2011, 9:13 pmHere come the Judge: says:
Campanile, It was fun because the comments were so … how should I put it … Nancy Pelosi? My wife and I just made a great sausage and peppers which we prepared for dinner guests as the hurricane was passing. Of course sausage and peppers are always served with spaghetti at our house, along with crispy garlic bread.
Speaking of cretin conservatives whose knuckles are raw from dragging the ground, I can hardly wait to find out what our brilliant President will propose to solve the economic problem that has put millions of his fellow citizens out of work. Perhaps its more investment in solar power to replace the three solar power companies that got federal loan guarantees and just went belly up, throwing a few thousand more out of work. That will be part of the speech, count on it. Who do you like in the game right afterward?
September 1, 2011, 9:17 pm976fchxd574 says:
I wrote: “Why is fox news considered conservative and msnbc considered liberal? If it is not due to the corporate bosses what is it due to?”
You can also look at many newspapers and see that some are liberal and some are conservative. If it isn’t due to the corporate bosses what is it due to?
September 1, 2011, 9:21 pmjoe says:
also, to reiterate uh_clem’s post, I am not accusing the professor of intentionally picking the think tanks. But the point remains that it is an arbitrary list and that minor modifications to that list lead to completely different results. That is something that not only must be addressed, but can be relatively easily addressed.
Which is, of course, the ironic part of this post. One of his measures has been falsified, and yet here we are…
September 1, 2011, 9:26 pmAlex says:
If Muhammed descended and told a fundamentalist Christian that Islam is the one true religion, the fundamentalist would likely believe this was a trick performed by the devil or a test of his faith. Of course, no event like this will ever happen.
Almost word for word what I was going to post. That’s the great feature of most religions. Not only are they difficult to invalidate, they generally contain defenses against it should anybody actually appear to do so.
Suppose you were the journalist’s corporate boss. And suppose you had complete control over what she wrote. Even if that were true, how would you know the facts that she failed to report? And if you didn’t know those facts, how could you force her to report them?
In this post, the boss is given the benefit, without evidence, of ignorance of all facts (therefore how could they know what was missing) while it is, without evidence, assumed that the reporter has all facts and therefore any elision must be evidence of bias.
That doesn’t quite seem fair. Especially since I’m guessing no one has any idea what the original text of the UCLA admissions article was when the author submitted it and before it was edited. Maybe half the missing facts actually were there and someone else edited them. Of course, we then don’t know if that was because they felt the article needed more bias or if it was because the article was half a column inch too long.
First, if corporate bosses are so conservative and so powerful, then why do they hire so many liberals?
Because they dominate the pool of employees available to them? Because, like most reporters, they don’t intentionally seek to introduce a systemic source of bias but unconsciously do so through their control of purse strings and setting of coverage priorities?
Second, if journalists really are such dupes of their corporate bosses, why do they—especially the liberal ones—seek jobs in journalism?
Because like most employees they think they’re smarter than their boss and are successfully working around any constraints. Because they convince themselves that even if the environment sucks, it is the environment you have to play in to be heard (a defense I recently heard Juan Williams give for working in cable news while flogging a book that is essentially about how awful cable news is). Because they don’t understand the corporate constraints they’ll work under until they’ve completed a college degree and worked their way some ways up the ranks within the profession by which time their options are relatively limited.
Now, I have no idea if any of that is correct. But it all sounds, to me as a thought experiment, more likely than replacing rebutting over simplified interpretations of the media (as corporate tool and conservatively biased) with a mirror reflection of “nuh uh, it’s actually an over simplified interpretation of the media (as leftie commie and liberally biased).
And maybe the introduced biases of conglomerate ownership and liberal individuals have a non-simple interplay where different biases demonstrate themselves in different arenas so that perhaps university admissions articles end up a bit liberally slanted (because the conglomerates don’t much care one way or another and reporters have more personal experience in addition to the primary sources) while coverage of corporate tax policy ends up being more conservatively biased (since the institutions care more and the reporters have less knowledge and greater reliance on institutional sources of information).
September 1, 2011, 9:26 pmKen Kukec says:
I don’t believe that your take on Popperian “falsifiability” is quite true, Professor (at least as it applies to religion). It seems to me that what you’re getting at is that religious non-belief is falsifiable — which seems correct. By and large even the so-called “New (or Gnu) Atheists” concede that there exists some set of facts that, if proved, would cause them to abandon their non-belief and embrace faith in God. (I recall an extended on-line discussion a few months ago between Jerry Coyne, P.Z. Myers and other adherents of this view on precisely this topic.)
But would your hypothetical in fact falsify Christianity for you? Would it cause you to deny the divinity of Jesus? Or would it instead cause you merely to concede a truth claim of some other religion? I don’t think that Popper, Bartley, Flew et al. maintained that all tenets of every religion were necessarily beyond falsification. (Most believers, for example, would be willing to concede that new evidence of evil behavior could convince them that a saint had been erroneously canonized.)
Instead, Popper’s point was that religious adherents tended to have some essential core beliefs that could not be falsified — that no amount of evidence (and especially no lack of evidence, even where one would expect to find such evidence plentiful) could persuade them that their core beliefs were incorrect, that for such religious adherents core beliefs are evidence-independent (are, indeed, completely resistant to contrary evidence).
September 1, 2011, 9:27 pm976fchxd574 says:
When you talk about media bias as being liberal or conservative are you over generalizing? There are social conservatives, religious conservatives, economic conservatives, constitutional conservatives, foreign policy conservatives. Is it useful to lump all of them together?
Are media outlets equally biased in all these sub-categories?
Are voters equally influenced in each of these sub-categories?
September 1, 2011, 9:32 pmjukeboxgrad says:
judge:
No one can say for sure that he picked his data for that purpose, but there are definitely some important questions that have been ignored (http://bit.ly/pGxu9K). Then again, maybe you can be the one to finally explain why it makes sense to treat the Geonomy Society and Third Millennium Ministries as “prominent” while ignoring most of the top-spending big-business policy groups (e.g., the US Chamber of Commerce, Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America [PhRMA], American Petroleum Institute, National Association of Home Builders, National Assn of Realtors, American Bankers Association, Edison Electric Institute, Business Roundtable and dozens of others).
That’s deeply ironic, since it seems that Groseclose was able to get his desired result by “omitting information:” the citations which reference the major policy groups I mentioned.
Then you should explain why Groseclose said this:
That sounds like a claim that what’s being presented is “science.”
You’ve mentioned global warming and unemployment. Could your feeble attempts at changing the subject be any more transparent?
September 1, 2011, 9:34 pmHere come the Judge: says:
Clem, my friend, you state the accusation is “that he chose his sample of 200 “think tanks” arbitrarily.” That may be your interpretation, but that’s not what joe said. Furthermore you claim that “omitting a single one out of the 200 gives very different results” but other than your assertion – and joe’s – you cite no evidence for this. This is not a peer review site and if you and joe wish to provide other data disproving his research feel free. At which point we can take that study apart. That’s how it’s done.
Joe, in his reply to me seems to assert that the media is not biased, an assertion that not even the media organs in question are no longer willing to defend, with the exception of a few outliers.
And joe, you seem to be totally missing Groseclose’s research. It’s not designed to prove media bias, it’s as acknowledged as the fact that the earth is round. Groseclose is coming up with a way of measuring it and its effect on the people and the way their view the world. To put it another way, he’s trying to come up with a methodology for measuring the effect of propaganda in a culture while immersed in that culture.
September 1, 2011, 9:39 pmTrying to maintain that there is not media bias is like K-Daffy in Libya. That war is lost, the only question is the cleanup and the aftermath.
Here come the Judge: says:
It’s been fun. Good night.
September 1, 2011, 9:43 pmuh_clem says:
Granted, it is true that it is difficult if not impossible to control everything ones employees do. For instance, I am not always asked “Would you like fries with that, sir?”, but it happens with enough regularity that I can conclude that employers can influence the behavior of the workers on their payroll, at least most of the time.
Admittedly, this is anecdotal evidence. Perhaps you could do a study?
September 1, 2011, 9:43 pmHere come the Judge: says:
It’s been fun. Good night. Apologies for the grammatical errors.
September 1, 2011, 9:44 pmjukeboxgrad says:
judge:
If you follow the link in the comment I posted just before yours you’ll find that evidence. But I have a feeling that evidence doesn’t really interest you, unless it’s congruent with what you already believe.
September 1, 2011, 9:45 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Like the butterfly wing-flap that precipitates a hurricane, perhaps the Groseclose Affair will be the first flutter toward Republicans wringing the anti-intellectual elements out of their party, eventually restoring that party to its needed position as a useful contributor to America.
If nothing else, this episode identified part of the fault line.
September 1, 2011, 9:45 pmjoe says:
I said that the sample is non-random. Statistically that is an important aspect of it. If a sample is non random and the results are sensitive to sample selection, then the results are unreliable. If he arbitrarily or intentionally picked the 200 is irrelevant, as long as it is non random.
As for evidence, others and I have already cited John Gasper’s paper in the quarterly journal of political science many, many times. In that particular paper he shows that using Groseclose’s own methods, the simple exclusion of the National Taxpayers Union shifts the mean PQ of the media from 62 to 53. So using Groseclose’s own methods, excluding the NTU shifts the findings from a strongly liberal media to a pretty neutral one. If the exclusion of one organization leads to that, then the exclusion of many other prominent organizations either has to be defended or changed.
September 1, 2011, 9:48 pmjukeboxgrad says:
SenX:
It’s not about “don’t like your methods.” It’s that certain things about this “methods” are transparently wacky, in ways that matter a lot. If you can explain why this is wrong, right now would be a good time to do that. Otherwise, your comment is a waste of electrons.
And “don’t want to read your book” is a complete red herring. His book is based on his study, and the complaints that have been described are about his study, which is available online. You have no reason to assume that anyone describing problems with the study has not read it.
September 1, 2011, 9:54 pmjukeboxgrad says:
Steve (CT):
The former. This has been explained in many places, including the paper Groseclose linked above.
September 1, 2011, 9:58 pmrpt says:
Scarborough or the people in the prison shows? Could you even get hired as Dr. Maddow’s (Ph.D. Stanford) research assistant?
September 1, 2011, 10:03 pmuh_clem says:
This bears repeating. It’s a major logical flaw in Groseclose’s methodology, but perhaps correctable – i.e. perhaps it is possible to defend the sample choice, or perhaps by re-running the analysis using a different (more defensable) sample the results would stand.
Those who wish to prove liberal media bias should be eager to fill this hole. Alternatively, if you’re satisfied that as long as the results comport with your expectations it’s good enough regardless of whether it logically sound, then by all means give Prof Groseclose a pass on defending his methodology.
September 1, 2011, 10:06 pmSChaser says:
Considering the success of conservatives in talk radio, and the failure of liberals except in deep blue markets, it’s pretty clear that, when the criteria is consumer preference, conservative journalists DO provide a better consumer product. Note also the dominance of cable news (nowdays, news and opinion and tabloid topics) by FOX News.
No such study is required.
September 1, 2011, 10:15 pmKen Arromdee says:
Perhaps a better question is why a corporate owner would want to censor what its reporters produce. The corporate owner may be right-wing, but he’s interested in money, not in ideology. He doesn’t care what the reporters say unless it actually affects him personally, not just if it contradicts his beliefs. The reporters, on the other hand, are interested in ideology (or rather, they’re interested in spreading the truth but they have a specific idea of truth). So there’s really no reason for the right-wing corporate boss to reign in his left-wing reporters unless the reporter specifically says something bad about the company itself or tries to influence the law in a way which would directly affect the company. He’s not going to care that the reporter published some story about Wal-Mart unless he owns Wal-Mart, and if he does, he’s still not going to care if the reporter publishes a story about Target instead.
September 1, 2011, 10:18 pmKen Arromdee says:
If Muhammed came down from the heavens and did miracles, I’d admit that someone was capable of coming down from the heavens and doing miracles. If he expected me to believe he had the other attributes of a divine prophet, such as being good and spreading truth, he’d have to demonstrate that independently. It doesn’t automatically spill over from his ability to do miracles.
September 1, 2011, 10:21 pmjukeboxgrad says:
There are plenty of right-wing corporate owners who are interested in both money and ideology. If this was not the case, Heritage et al would not exist, because they would have no funding.
September 1, 2011, 10:22 pmrpt says:
This is coming from the “Moneyrunner” whose blog reads like a chain love letter to Ann Coulter? Who is omitting whom?
September 1, 2011, 10:23 pmKen Arromdee says:
I wish the people questioning him on this would be a little more specific on why they think it’s so improbable.
Of course, I suspect the answer would be something like “I know that conservatives hate blacks, so you couldn’t possibly have a black girlfriend. And if you did, I know that all black people like affirmative action, so she couldn’t possibly have only started liking it when it helped her.”
September 1, 2011, 10:25 pmjukeboxgrad says:
campanile:
I know that you don’t like the comments insulting him, but no comment has been as insulting as what he has done: present poor work and then ignore fair questions regarding that work. To call it condescension would be putting it mildly. He has earned the reaction he’s getting.
Then maybe you can show us where the answers to those “fair questions” are hidden. Ignoring someone’s questions is a pretty basic way of insulting them. I think most of us learned that in kindergarten.
September 1, 2011, 10:28 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Afternoon talk radio is for people who lack demanding employment and engaging lives.
The network news programs obliterate Fox News. Fox News is extremely profitable because it has conquered narrowcasting . . . but it’s still narrowcasting. Fox News dominates a minnow pond. If Today’s bookers hit a dry spell, and a host makes questionable fashion calls for a week or so, NBC loses more viewers than Fox News has.
September 1, 2011, 10:29 pmjustin says:
His story made no sense because at the time, the way one told an admission committee one was black wad by checking off a box. The story was fabricated, like the professor who made up a student whose brother died in Iraq.
September 1, 2011, 10:33 pmKen Arromdee says:
You have proved that there are some right-wing corporate owners interested in ideology. You haven’t proved that the ones owning the corporations with the reporters are.
Besides, there are still two important factors:
September 1, 2011, 10:34 pm– “interested in ideology” is not binary. There are degrees of it. It takes more than a certain degree of interest to start micromanaging the company. I’d suggest that reporters have “telling the truth” as a far more central focus of their life than corporate owners have spreading right-wing ideology, even if it’s literally true that corporate owners want to spread their ideology to some degree.
– the possibility that the right and the left don’t go around spreading their ideology in equal ways. The left seems to have a belief that the personal is political far more than the right, except maybe for issues associated with religion (which probably not many right-wing corporate bosses are heavily involved in).
Northern Dave says:
Or perhaps the false dichotomy stems from the failure of the liberals to realize that their weltanschauung is a failure, but a useful failure to those wishing to exploit them monetarily.
If I am a Corporatist who worships money I am going to favour the promotion of a worldview which:
A: limits my prey’s ability to defend itself, and
B: doesn’t constrain my own vices.
Ergo sum I hire liberal (meaning socially liberal – pro-perversion, pro-death, etc.) journalists trained at schools which guarantee the filtering out of anyone outside of the cadre. The love-in is never ending…until Judgement Day (but that will be a suprise as neither CNN or FOX are particularly comfortable with the concept).
On another note a young person asked me about patent law (which is outside of my experience). Any thoughts on issues or schools – especially regarding international work?
Prof. Groseclose, my apologies as while the discussion on the Volokh is usually robust it is rarely rude to the Conspirators themselves and the comments here are mostly ad hominem attacks based on a disagreement with worldview rather than critiques, methinks….
September 1, 2011, 10:36 pmjukeboxgrad says:
judge, one more thing.
Joe has already answered you, and he definitely doesn’t need me to speak for him. But I want to add something to what he said.
Honest people usually use quote marks to indicate the actual words that someone actually used. The first person in this thread to use the phrase “sample size” was you.
As he pointed out, the issue he raised has nothing to do with “sample size.” Why did you indicate that he said something he didn’t say?
There are generally just two explanations for this sort of thing: stupidity and/or dishonesty. Either way, what you’ve done it put yourself at the same level as the person you’re defending.
September 1, 2011, 10:37 pmuh_clem says:
Let’s not jump to conclusions. I doubt that the story was “fabricated”. Like most anecdotal evidence recalled 20 years after the fact, it is subject to embellishment, so the fact that it makes no logical sense is not evidence of deliberate “fabrication”; merely that he remembers it the way he wants to remember it, rather than as it actually happened. Witnesses do this all the time.
Memories are funny things. A wise person once said “Never ascribe to mendacity that which can be explained by incompetence.”
September 1, 2011, 10:45 pmRobert says:
If God or any representative thereof floated, sashayed, or otherwise moved into view and started trying to set people straight, people would say, “We never thought you were real. The one we had in mind was different. If you think these things, we’re getting ourselves another god.”
September 1, 2011, 10:49 pmjab says:
Actually, people have been specific in the other threads:
(1) It is a useless anecdote that proves nothing. Anecdote is not data.
(2) It is suspect because he claimed that it occurred in 1991. His claim is that his girlfriend was concerned that the graduate admissions officers wouldn’t know she was black, so she felt the need to slip it in the resume in some not-so-subtle way. But the problem with this is that back in 1991, affirmative action was pretty widely practiced… there was no prop 209, no Ward Connerly… no huge backlash to affirmative action in admissions… at that time, EVERY undergrad and grad school application would have had a series of check-boxes for applicants to state their race… there would be no need for his black girlfriend to panic and fear that admissions committees wouldn’t know she was black unless she slipped in into her application package in some other way.
(3) Honestly… it was just a hilarious anecdote that REAKED of convenience and/or desperation… its one of those funny things when some white conservative, trying to prove that his motivation is not racial animus starts off with “I have a best friend who is black, so i can’t be racist.” By the way, I certainly don’t think at all that’s his motivation, and no one else has either… it just sounded funny.
September 1, 2011, 10:56 pmTJ says:
John Moody, a Fox News VP: The so-called 9/11 commission has already been meeting. In fact, this is its eighth session. The fact that former Clinton and both former and current Bush administration officials are testifying gives it a certain tension, but this is not “what did he know and when did he know it” stuff. Don’t turn this in to Watergate.
Prof. Timothy Groseclose: Second, many of the incidents were not that meddlesome. For instance, many people would agree that … the problems that the 9/11 commission ascribed to the Bush and Clinton administrations were not as bad as Watergate, … If a corporate boss wants to run a truly fair, balanced, and unbiased network, maybe he should direct his employees to act in the above ways.
http://www.timgroseclose.com/downloads/Left.Turn.Companion.Corporate.Media.Theory.Debunked.pdf
September 1, 2011, 11:07 pmuh_clem says:
There’s a scene in The Brothers Karamozov (The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor) that deals with this exact scenario. Apologies for the spoiler, but in the story Jesus returns to Earth and is arrested. The Grand Inquisitor visits him in his cell to tell him that he is no longer needed on Earth.
I’m not sure how this affects the topic at hand, but you’re not the first person to put forth this idea.
September 1, 2011, 11:08 pmRandolph says:
It’s good to have more paragraph and blank lines in blogging than most writing, but breaking after each sentence is almost as annoying to read as a “wall of text.”
September 1, 2011, 11:14 pmuh_clem says:
Agreed, but the only people who seem to do that on this blog are Debra and Prof Groseclose. Separated at birth? (c:
September 1, 2011, 11:28 pmlazy plagarist says:
I had two thoughts on reading the above:
1. And uh…. how do your propose we falsify YOUR particular theory? I’m pretty sure actual divine intervention would convince most people to change their views on anything, and don’t find your hypothetical remotely persuasive.
2. Wait, you think your religious beliefs are falsifiable because you’re willing to admit you have the identity of the sky god wrong? How do you propose falsifying the existence of a sky god generally? You can’t.
Sorry, sir, but I just don’t think you’re that smart. Then again, I’m willing to be proven wrong. ;-)
September 1, 2011, 11:38 pmlazy plagarist says:
Really? Ever heard of marketing?
September 1, 2011, 11:39 pmobi_juan says:
Thought I’d mention that Fox tried to bring a conservative Daily Show like program to their channel. It was called the Half Hour News Hour. It was a flop.
September 1, 2011, 11:59 pmRandy says:
Northern Dave: “Prof. Groseclose, my apologies as while the discussion on the Volokh is usually robust it is rarely rude to the Conspirators themselves and the comments here are mostly ad hominem attacks based on a disagreement with worldview rather than critiques, methinks…. ”
Rarely rude? Dude — you need to check in on any thread that deals with SSM or gay issues. I can list a bunch of commentators who go out of their way to insult Prof. Carpenter and those who support gay rights.
September 2, 2011, 12:02 amjoe says:
If that is the case, then why care about “bias” at all, or compare the views of the media with the views of the population as a whole? If the owner is only interested in profits, not ideology, and they hire the people that will bring the most profits, rather than promote their ideology, wouldn’t that suggest that it is the ideology of the consumers that “bias” the media in the way most profitable, rather than the argument commonly presented with the “bias” claim that the media biases people? In other words, if whatever bias exists is simply the case of a self interested owner maximizing profits, wouldn’t that pretty much kill the discussion over bias? Or are Groseclose and those suggesting that this “liberal bias” (if it exists) is important and deleterious suggesting that the media should tailor their stories to satisfy non consumers as well, forcing the owners to be “altruists” and cease to maximize profits to be “unbiased?”
Because to me there is no other alternative. Either the media owners on average are all interested in ideology over profit (and since they make the hiring decisions, it is their ideology that matters), or they are interested in profits over ideology. If they are interested in profits over ideology, whatever “bias” one may perceive is simply the outcome of a free market, of catering to people who had that bias to begin with. If they are interested in ideology over profit, it is their ideology, as the ones with the power to hire and fire, that matters.
September 2, 2011, 12:25 amClark says:
Dave N, you think Prof. Groseclose is a liberal, and you are apologizing for your own remark in that very same comment?
September 2, 2011, 12:44 amClark says:
And things got so bad EV was forced to tip his hand, even.
September 2, 2011, 12:49 amRicardo says:
That doesn’t make much sense. Why is the relevant criteria “consumer preference” only with respect to talk radio and not newspapers, news weeklies (Time, Newsweek, etc), Hollywood films, and other sources produced by profit-making corporations that are frequently accused of having a liberal bias by conservatives?
Moreover, according to Pew, only 17% of the public regularly listens to talk radio and the listeners are a demographically distinct group that is mostly middle-aged and mostly male. That suggests it is just one of many niche media products rather than a broad reflection of the consumer preference of the American public.
September 2, 2011, 1:04 amjukeboxgrad says:
ken:
I don’t have to, because the one making the affirmative assertion is you. You said this:
What a nice example of an unwarranted assumption. Simple question: how do you know?
It’s actually quite logical to surmise that rich right-wingers who invest in an entity like Heritage because they’re interested in promoting their ideology would invest in media companies for precisely the same reason.
I think you don’t understand how big, authoritarian companies operate. Everyone knows who’s in charge, and everyone knows the basic elements of the corporate agenda. People who want to survive understand the importance of staying within the parameters of that agenda. This process has nothing to do with “micromanaging.” The company is successful at implementing its agenda because it has a system of management and controls that make it unnecessary for the big shots to inspect every cubicle every night.
For reporters and most other people who rely on a regular paycheck, this is the “central focus of their life:” making sure they do nothing to endanger their paycheck.
September 2, 2011, 1:22 amRandy says:
“There’s really no chance, no matter how sound its arguments and evidence are, that it will persuade any corporate media theorists.
Nevertheless, if you are sympathetic to such corporate media theories, I still hope you’ll read it. ”
Translation: The crazies are beyond hope, but I’m happy to take their money anyway.
September 2, 2011, 1:29 amGrover Gardner says:
Never, ever underestimate the capacity of a corporate CEO to micromanage.
September 2, 2011, 1:43 amSenX says:
Ok I just read the paper and I can tell most the commenters here have not. Unfortunately the paper is much better than the post.
He goes through the strong and weak theories of corporate-media theory and addresses why it appears the bias is at the journalist level and not at the boss level(nor the financial level – see the surveys by journalists and executives on this).
I wonder if the book goes into why journalists typically have this bias. Schooling? Group dynamic?(presenting to groups inclines the writer to group think vs. individual?), psychological factors for people who go into this field? What?
September 2, 2011, 2:09 amzuch says:
Prof. Groseclose:
But why are you a Christian? Jesus didn’t float down from the sky and perform several miracles. I’d say your Christian beliefs are not “falsifiable” but rather “unwarranted”. To put it more strongly, the fact that you require a different Gawd to float down in order to “falsify” your Christian beliefs yet you don’t require your own preferred Gawd to do so in order to hold them is a curious asymmetry. And the third possibility — that there is no Gawd — cannot be proved under your ontological scheme, as there’s no “not-Gawd” that could possibly “not-float-down”. In this sense, your belief is not “falsifiable”, except by specific conditions or circumstances that do not completely encompass the actual negation of your beliefs (specifically, that there is no Christian Gawd).
Cheers,
September 2, 2011, 2:19 amjukeboxgrad says:
SenX:
I read the paper. It’s painfully bad. The arguments are so stunningly weak I couldn’t believe my eyes. As an example, let’s just look at the very first one:
Stop the presses: it’s possible to produce quotes of “owners and top executives of media companies” who deny that they impose ideology on their employees.
QED. Why bother with the rest of the paper? Surely this is enough to prove his point. And in other news, Nixon said he’s not a crook.
And it goes downhill from there.
September 2, 2011, 2:23 amcaptcrisis says:
I’m glad my McDonald’s analogy from the other thread got some traction.
I’ve read the paper and understand how sometimes the owner can find it hard to make changes in what happens lower down. Bureaucratic inertia is one of the basic laws of the universe. But the first story cited undermines the professor’s point. Katherine Graham wasn’t helpless as she maintained. She knew exactly what she was doing. She knew very well that she could sack her trouble-making reporters but hid behind the wall of denial. We saw this in accounts of how she stuck with Woodward and Bernstein, bravely, in an era when no one else in the media was touching the story and opposing Nixon had certain “consequences”.
I also don’t believe that corporate interest is directly financial, insofar as a specific media outlet is concerned. My main example is the New York Post –which has always lost lots of money, but which Rupert Murdoch uses as a right-wing mouthpiece. And GE is not going to have a show on its network that trashes GE. In fact, you don’t see ANY Big-Business-owned outlet trashing Big Business, except for maybe the three or four hours liberals are allowed nightly on MSNBC.
Finally: media owners have no problem firing reporters when they have a mind to. Ask Jayson Blair, or (to pick a more serious example) Judith Miller, or Phil Donohue (whose anti-Iraq War show, when it got terminated, was the highest-rated show on the network).
September 2, 2011, 3:02 amfreemansfarm says:
“But now suppose Jesus and Muhammed floated down from the sky, performed some miracles, then said, ‘You know, corporate media bosses really aren’t that conservative, and they really don’t exert much influence over how their journalists report.’
“Then I’m sure the corporate media theorists would immediately scream at Jesus and Muhammed and tell them why they’re wrong.”
How is that not the ultimate “straw man” argument? The author here is literally putting words in the mouths of his opponents. And, because his hypothetical is so outrageous, because it bears no relationship to any known actual occurence, he can’t even possibly claim that anything that they’ve said or written justifies his extrapolation.
It is also an appeal to emotion, specifically, to ridicule.
Basically, it could be used against anyone who strongly believes in anything…”why, my opponents are so sure of their position XYZ, are so dogmatic, are so immune to counterargument, no matter how conclusively devastating, that they would reject the word of God Almighty Himself if he said they were wrong…” Any passionatley held viewpoint/belief/whatever could be substituted for “XYZ” and the argument would be no different than what the author here is doing.
Why would anyone make this claim, much less highlight at the beginning of his article? It is like a red flag, promising fallacies to follow….
September 2, 2011, 3:36 amRadegunda says:
captcrisis: Jayson Blair was not fired for his leftist slant, but for outright fraud. So that example says nothing about “corporate” control of the NYT ideological slant.
Anybody who compares how the dominant media report on Barack Obama vs. how they report on his critics cannot honestly deny that they have a leftward tilt — unless those people are themselves too far left to notice the tilt.
Here’s a little test: See how often you read or hear the qualifiers “far right” vs. “far left.” MSM reporters seldom use the latter term because nothing looks very far left from their perspective.
They use the term “moderate Republican” but not the term “moderate Democrat,” because from their perspective Democrats are all “moderate” and don’t need to be qualified as such, unless they’re “conservative Democrats.” The latter term designates Democrats who are to the right of the reporters, while “moderate Republican” designates someone who is barely tolerable to the reporters.
They also use the qualifiers “conservative” or “right-wing” more often than “liberal” or “left-wing” because in their view the latter are simply normal and thus don’t need to be labeled in a way to warn readers or listeners that “they’re not on our side.”
September 2, 2011, 4:15 amragebot says:
The MSNBC libs draw fewer eye balls than some infomercials. My analysis is the reason there is not more big business bashing has more to do with lack of eye balls willing to watch than orders from the boss. Blair was a fraud pure and simple; no matter which side of the aisle you sit on it is a tall order to defend him. I never understood why Miller was fired, but I always felt both sides had cards they were not showing. I assume you are talking about Phil Donahue (not Donohue, who I am not aware of); and lots of folks claim the reason he was fired was the bosses at MSNBC were acting at the behest of Chris Matthews who made it clear he was the big star there (making the big bucks) and was not happy MSNBC was spending money on Donahue and his show instead of spending it on Matthews’ show. As an aside saying someone has the highest rated show on MSNBC is like saying “you do not sweat much for a fat girl” a real left handed compliment. To wit: “Though his viewership had risen lately, Mr. Donahue averaged 446,000 viewers a night, compared with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who attracted 2.7 million, according to the latest Nielsen numbers”
September 2, 2011, 4:57 amWatson Ladd says:
So I am not familiar with any examination of the corporate media bias other then Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky and Hellman. That examined news biases in terms of what was covered and what was not in Central America and Indochina. The results were that crimes committed by US allies were not reported as widely as those involving enemies of the US, even when US citizens were the victims.
September 2, 2011, 5:15 amThat’s a form of bias that looking at sources will not reveal, as what counts is what is not published as much as what is. It could be that both are correct: what is published uses left-wing sources to promote the official US policy view.
Stephen Lathrop says:
Professor Groseclose is so pickled in political partisanship that the notion that American media consistently hew pretty close to corporate interpretations simply can’t occur to him. It isn’t highlighted anywhere on the D-R dipole. And if it were true, what would that do to “far-left”—that term to which he is so fatally attracted.
Here’s a thought experiment for you, professor. Imagine that you enjoyed the private means (private, because in reality you could never find paid employment doing this) to build a career as a relentless journalistic critic of corporate business practice, and even of the corporate form itself. Your well-researched stories add up to a root and branch indictment of the corporate organization of business and government. You are an I.F. Stone for our time, and celebrated by actual leftists around the world.
Can you imagine any such person being offered a job at any major newspaper or electronic media outlet in the nation?
September 2, 2011, 5:16 amClark says:
I think the weakest link in this thesis is that it is not anchored by an anecdote from an ex-girlfriend.
September 2, 2011, 6:16 amalan_forrester2@yahoo.co.uk says:
Is somebody flew out of the sky claiming to be Muhammed flew out of the sky and started to do miracles, then claimed Islam was true, I’d be looking for a good explanation rather than accepting what happened at face value.
On a more general note, there is a lot more to a good test than the fact that it seems to conflict with some idea you have. Rather, Popper required that the test should be repeatable and that the explanation of how the test works should itself be independently testable. (See, for example, Sections 20 and 29 of “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”.) Your “test” of Christianity fails on both counts. If god exists then it’s up to him whether Muhammed flies out of the sky again to allow you to repeat the test, so the test is unrepeatable. There is no way you can act that is guaranteed to result in a repetition of the same conditions. The explanation of how the test works also is not independently testable. For the test is entirely compatible with your explanation of the test being completely false, Muhammed could have been sent to test your faith, or Satan might have sent him or…
The best book to read to understand the philosophy of science is “The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch, which also has some comments about why explanations in terms of god are bad explanations.
September 2, 2011, 6:48 amMichael P says:
I do not follow the analogy. Are you referring to the flap that Prof. Michael Bellesiles got caught in, where independent parties confirmed that the student told the story as Bellesiles related it — and eventually the student admitted to having distorted the truth? Where Prof. Bellesiles should have done more to verify a story before treating it as gospel, but told the truth as he understood it?
If that is what you were thinking of, I think your own error proves quite a different point than the one you tried to prove.
September 2, 2011, 7:55 amMarcus says:
I’m sure this has been said in one form or another, but here it is anyway.
First, I support you in being so conciliatory and accepting in regards to evidence disproving your faith, and your readiness to accept the tenets of another faith so quickly. I just don’t believe for one second that there are that many more out there who will toss away a lifetime of belief when confronted with opposing facts (see “evolution”). in fact, I believe it is far more likely, on appearance of Muhammad, that there would be many suicides and many people running about screaming, “What have you done with Jesus?!?”
Second, what is most bothersome about the professor’s theories is this penchant for inventing scenarios that supposedly demonstrate the reasonableness of his viewpoint and the intransigence of the opposite viewpoint, despite no supporting evidence whatsoever. My impression of this:
“An old black lady and an old white man at a street corner are unable to cross the street because of the deep puddle blocking their passage. The conservative would walk up to both of them, describe how, if they both laid their coats in the puddle, they could both cross on their own without getting their feet wet. He’d even go so far as to help both of them off with their coats. The liberal would walk by, carry the old black lady across the street on his back and leave the old white man stuck on the other side. So as you can see, liberals are the real racists.”
Even if the professor’s premise is 100% correct- that there is provable, incontrovertible evidence of intentional liberal bias throughout our media- he has thus far proven to me that he is incapable of presenting a cogent, fact-based argument that is able to persuade anyone who does not already agree with him.
September 2, 2011, 8:11 amBrianMac says:
This was the best thought-experiment since, I don’t know, that one with the camel getting its legs chopped off. Or was that just a metaphor? Is there even a difference? The scary thing is that Groseclose can do all this thought-provocation without even trying.
September 2, 2011, 8:22 amMichael P says:
Those “important questions” assume — for no obvious reason — that the amount spent on lobbying correlates to influence on journalistic reporting.
It is a fair question to ask how the list of 200 policy groups was created. It is not fair to strike elements of that group arbitrarily, and redo the study from there: If the groups were chosen because (say) they were the most frequently quoted or cited groups in a population of articles, removing arbitrary elements would lead to less valid results. The selection of the groups would definitely be non-random; but if the underlying article population were appropriately drawn, the policy group selection would not be biased; and it might be the most meaningful way to select policy groups.
Making questionable assumptions about somebody else’s questionable assumptions seldom leads to terribly useful conclusions.
September 2, 2011, 8:23 amFloridan says:
On a related note, I would like you all to know that some of my best friends are Jews.
September 2, 2011, 8:49 amMarcus says:
I say to those who whinge about the unfair treatment the professor is receiving:
I think the idea was for the professor to come here, present a sketch of his ideas, and try to tease us into buying his book. If all he wanted was a few additional sales to capture a handful of folks who believe as he does, well, he probably did so. If his intent was to be provocative enough to get other people with other viewpoints to purchase his book, I don’t think he accomplished that as much as he might like. And I think that because, rather than present his book as a work of rigorous scholarship, something that might interest a wider range of people, he presented it and himself as “partisan with axe to grind” over some perceived lifelong mistreatment at the hands of liberals. Not one of his postings was without some “example” of how kind and rational conservatives are as compared to their vicious and irrational counterparts. As such, criticism is going to follow. Worse, broader sales will not.
The reason I will not purchase this book is not because I am afraid of the ideas in it or worried about having my personal apple cart upended. It’s because the professor has given me the impression that the book actually proves nothing, and that it contains anything I cannot get from reading Power Line blog comments for five minutes. And why would I spend money for that?
September 2, 2011, 8:50 amBen P says:
I think that raises another interesting question. Why can’t the media have both a liberal and a conservative bias?
I don’t think many would dispute the media has a sort of bias, or at least underlying assumptions. Particularly the big national papers, the NYT, Washington Times, LA Times etc, all present from a viewpoint that is cosmopolitan and big-city oriented. The same is true of most of the big television networks.
Just as a interesting example, take David Brooks. I don’t doubt David Brooks sees himself as a conservative, but he’s very much the sort of conservative that new yorkers wouldn’t object to inviting to cocktail parties. Rick Perry or Michelle Bachman or Mike Huckabee on the other hand…
The same is true on the other end of the spectrum. Articles are written from a certain perspective that is arguably liberal, but at the same time, no one’s quoting Howard Zinn.
But at the same time, all those news agencies report within a relatively narrow band of “mainstream” opinion on society that I’d say is fundamentally conservative. (More in the Edmund Burke sense than the political sense). If you want an example all you have to do is find the alt-weekly in any big city or college town. The most liberal content of the “big papers” is tame by comparison. THAT’s the corporate influence
September 2, 2011, 8:56 amRicardo says:
In fact, G&M do indeed strike elements from the study in order to show that their results are robust. For instance, they remove what they consider the “right-wing” half of RAND that studies the military and also drop the ACLU from their sample to see if that shifts the results. If they can do this to confirm their story, other people can do it to undermine the same.
But let’s look at the numbers: National Taxpayers Union (a right-wing group by G&M’s measure) was cited 566 times in Congress in their sample but only 63 times by the media. On the other hand, Brookings (which is further to the left according to G&M) was cited only 320 times by Congress but 1,392 times by the media. G&M’s study is only valid if you assume that the main reason why NTU gets mentioned so few times and Brookings gets mentioned so many is because of the media’s liberal bias (since both get mentioned hundreds of times in Congress, they both should carry high “valence” scores).
But this assumption is unjustified. Brookings has many highly-qualified experts working for it and produces original, policy-relevant research. NTU, on the other hand, is basically an ideological lobby group that appears to have a very small staff and does not seem to produce much if any original research. So there is a very plausible reason why the media cite Brookings more than NTU that has nothing to do with bias. G&M ignore this reason even though it fatally undermines their study given the huge weight placed on the NTU data point.
September 2, 2011, 9:07 amClark says:
All documents are equal. Context free counting is the truth. Groseclose is the ultimate postmodernist and geokstr, schaser, volokh etc. are members of his church.
September 2, 2011, 9:45 amjoe says:
But the groups were not chosen because they were the most frequently cited groups. If he got the 200 most cited groups, the sample would still be non random, but given the sheer size of the group in comparison to the population, that wouldn’t matter. But he got the 200 group list from someone else, and only defended it in that regard.
If the group is not selected based on any defensible rationale, saying that someone else picked the list is not a defense. If the results are sensitive to the group size, then he has to defend why, say, the NTU is in and the US Chamber of Commerce isn’t.
Also, another less striking feature of the paper criticizing him is
September 2, 2011, 9:54 amthat the years chosen also have a in impact (that is less pronounced, but still there).
Diana says:
>’I don’t believe that is quite true, especially if the views are strengthened to belief in a particular religion. For instance, suppose Muhammed floated down from the sky, and once he reached earth, performed several miracles, then proclaimed, “I have been sent by God to tell humans that Islam is the true religion.”’
Remember this actually happened in the form of Jesus the Jew born of an immaculate birth, who performed several miracles, proclaimed he was son of God, and then rose from the dead to prove it. Did these demonstrate to his fellow Jews that their religon was false? Evidently not, even though Jesus seems to have proved a fairly convincing messiah for millions of other people. I would say the pesistence of Jewish communities living within Christian communities and not converting convincing demonstrates that religion can’t be falsified, and the fact that it can’t be falsified has bedeviled Christian and Jewish relations for millenia.
September 2, 2011, 10:11 amjosh says:
“But now suppose Jesus and Muhammed floated down from the sky, performed some miracles, then said, “You know, corporate media bosses really aren’t that conservative, and they really don’t exert much influence over how their journalists report.”
Then I’m sure the corporate media theorists would immediately scream at Jesus and Muhammed and tell them why they’re wrong.
Thus, in many ways, corporate media theory is more religion than most religions are religion.
Accordingly, my paper maybe was a waste of time. There’s really no chance, no matter how sound its arguments and evidence are, that it will persuade any corporate media theorists.”
Sir, I know Jesus and Mohammed, and you are no Jesus or Mohammed.
Seriously, this really typifies the good prof’s thinking. Thread after thread of people pointing out the “soundness of his arguments and evidence,” and he concludes his conclusions are the word of G/d that people won’t accept b/c they’re worse than religious zealots.
File this under “How to do your best not to persuade people”.
September 2, 2011, 10:23 amJon Rowe says:
If Jesus & Mohammed came down and performed miracles, why should we not believe they were advanced material beings like aliens? We are getting to the point — no we are already there — where we can fool native folks with our science into believing that we can perform magic.
September 2, 2011, 10:23 amjosh says:
edit
pointing out the LACK of “soundness of his arguments and evidence.”
September 2, 2011, 10:34 ama_non says:
Isn’t this a textbook example of assuming one’s conclusion? Perhaps maybe there’s a small chance that the journalists hired by corporate-owned media outlets are not monolithically liberal? Maybe the surveys that show reporters voting Democratic are not particularly revealing, because there’s lots of reasons beyond ideology for party preference, or those surveys are not representative?
This is just stunningly unpersuasive, and, as others have noted, betrays a superficial view of how news is gathered and reported. A great example of how influence is wielded in a corporate media company is “Those Guys Have All The Fun,” the recent oral history of ESPN. In that book, it’s obvious how ESPN’s relationships with the NFL and MLB color their news reporting, and there are many anecdotes of journalistic malpractice that result. Substitute “GE” or “TimeWarner” for the NFL, and you have a better grasp of what the corporate media critique is getting at.
My conclusion from this week is: when you assume your high school-aged political opinions are immutably true, you’re going to produce some really bad political science.
September 2, 2011, 10:47 amClark says:
FOR. THE. WIN.
September 2, 2011, 10:51 amKen Arromdee says:
If the owner is not committed to spreading an ideology, he’d just market whatever the reporters do. It’s true that he could try to market an ideology contrary to the reporters’, but again, why would he bother?
September 2, 2011, 11:47 amKen Arromdee says:
In context, I was providing a alternative explanation to your own. For that purpose, I don’t need to know it, I just need to be able to point out that you haven’t ruled it out.
Perhaps I used the wrong word then. The point is that a corporate boss who isn’t interested in ideology has no reason to expend the effort to keep the company matched to his ideology.
Of course, we’re both wrong if you take it that literally: the central focus of their life by this definition is breathing. If they can’t breathe, they won’t care if they continue to get a paycheck.
However, if spreading ideology is a strong motivator for them, but only a weak motivator for the boss, you can have a scenario where the reporter is more willing to slant the news one way than his boss is in the other. Since spreading ideology is far down on the scale of the things his boss wants, the reporter won’t lose his paycheck (unless he says something directly about the boss’s company).
September 2, 2011, 12:01 pmCheckEnclosed says:
Now suppose Jesus, Mohammed and the Bhudda all float down and say: “Professional Wrestling is Real”.
How would that change your feelings about Jesse Ventura?
September 2, 2011, 12:28 pmnewshutz says:
“If you come today, you could have reached the whole nation, Israel in BC had no mass communication”
Since Prof Groseclose obviously believes that the “media are controlled by corporations” conspiracists cannot be reached by reason, I do not see why he should not make arguments that make them squirm.
Besides, its fun to watch their contortions.
I do wonder why no-one has yet pointed out that GE is regularly ridiculed by the entertainment shows on their networks. If they cannot muzzle Tina Fey, how could they possibly constrain Chris Matthews? Certainly, the far left freak show that is MSNBC would have long ago been changed (for profit concerns if nothing else) if the bosses at GE really were supporters of capitalism.
September 2, 2011, 12:29 pmnewshutz says:
Yep, all those consumer advocate reporters are just figments of our imagination.
And they would certainly never win Pulitzer prizes for such reporting
September 2, 2011, 12:48 pmjukeboxgrad says:
That page you cited lists about 30 Pulitzers that have been awarded since 1985 for Investigative Reporting. Almost all them are regarding some kind of government misbehavior. The number where the subject is “corporate business practice” is either zero or a number quite close to zero.
So thanks for bringing evidence which helps prove the point that was being made. It does indeed seem to be the case that reporters who attack “corporate business practice” will most likely “never win Pulitzer prizes for such reporting.” Those reporters who won those prizes are indeed mostly “figments of [your] imagination.”
September 2, 2011, 12:59 pmRich Rostrom says:
In 2004, Peter Chernin, the President and COO of Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, became an active participant in the U.S. Presidential election.
Mr. Chernin endorsed a candidate, donated money to his campaign, and made several campaign appearances with him.
The candidate was John Kerry.
September 2, 2011, 1:42 pmKen Kukec says:
In the nation? How about at The Nation?
Oh, you said “major”…
September 2, 2011, 1:58 pmKen Kukec says:
See Clarke’s Third Law.
September 2, 2011, 2:03 pmSenX says:
Juke “I think you don’t understand how big, authoritarian companies operate. Everyone knows who’s in charge, and everyone knows the basic elements of the corporate agenda. People who want to survive understand the importance of staying within the parameters of that agenda. This process has nothing to do with “micromanaging.” The company is successful at implementing its agenda because it has a system of management and controls that make it unnecessary for the big shots to inspect every cubicle every night.”
And yet, you appear to be wrong. Numerous example are given that show this to be false.
September 2, 2011, 2:03 pmyankev says:
So they have read Deut. XIII?
September 2, 2011, 2:25 pmYankev says:
And his fellow Jews (except for a handful who were grossly ignorant of Jewish law and tradition) said — “Oh; we were warned in Deut. XIII that this would happen. Must not be Messiah (whom we would be forbidden to pray to anyway even if it were); better not to pray to him or believe in him”. At which point, in one of the earliest known instances of rebranding, his followers decided to spread their new sect among non-Jews instead, and enjoyed tremendous success once the Byzantine emperor climbed on board and made non-acceptance extremely hazardous.
Except that that man said he came to fulfill it not to repalce it; if he came to fulfill a false religion, doesn’t that create a bit of a contradiction for his followers?
Very few of whom were Jewish or well versed in what Judaism had to say about the Messiah. Or about much of anything else.
September 2, 2011, 2:37 pmYankev says:
Certainly no network TV reporter would run an expose on exploding cars. And even if they did, they wouldn’t dare rig the cars to explode.
September 2, 2011, 2:41 pmjukeboxgrad says:
No one ever said that there’s no such thing as a reporter investigating corporate behavior. I know you’re having fun with your straw man, but you should scroll up and pay attention to the claims that were actually made, not the ones that exist only in your imagination.
September 2, 2011, 2:47 pmDiana says:
I think Yankev nails it. wouldn’t Deut.XIII apply to every floating-down-from-heaven vistitation? Once you’ve got a text claiming nothing can falsify your religion, you’ve got a religion that can’t be falsified.
Simple logic….
September 2, 2011, 3:16 pmYankev says:
With the possible exception of a mass public revelation, comparable to Sinai, in the presence of the entire Jewish people.
September 2, 2011, 3:56 pmYankev says:
Also no pun intended, I hope.
September 2, 2011, 4:04 pmjukeboxgrad says:
michael:
It’s pretty obvious, as a matter of common sense, that if a group increases “the amount spent on lobbying” that there will probably be an increase in the number of times this group gets mentioned by lawmakers and reporters. But let’s put that aside, because it’s not too important. Let’s go back a couple of steps.
Groseclose says his study included “200 of the most prominent think tanks and policy groups in the United States.” He never tells us what he means by “prominent,” but I’ll suggest that this is a reasonable interpretation of “prominent:” mentioned often in the press. So I’d like to pose the following question: is it true that the 200 “think tanks and policy groups” he included are “prominent?” Is it fair to describe each one of them as among “the most prominent think tanks and policy groups in the United States?”
I decided to investigate this question by doing a little study of my own. It was easy to collect the data automatically because I’m a pretty good programmer.
As I said, let’s assume that “prominent” means ‘mentioned often in the press.’ To measure ‘mentioned in the press,’ I did (via computer program) a site search at wsj.com, to see how many times the group is mentioned on that site. Yes, I know there are many other ways to do this that might have been better (include other sites, search google news, search the Congressional Record, etc.). But for the sake of simplicity, I picked wsj.com, and I think that was a perfectly adequate choice, in this context. Let’s treat that number (i.e., the number of times a group is found when searching for it at wsj.com) as a measure of prominence.
Now please consider this list of 28 policy groups:
Alexis de Tocqueville Institute
Banneker Center for Economic Justice
Bionomics Institute
California Institute for Rural Studies
Center for Paleo Orthodoxy
Center for the American Woman and Politics
Center for the New West
Center for Urban Policy Research
Committee on Nuclear Policy
Common Ground USA
Competition Policy Institute
Education Policy Institute
Electronic Policy Network
Ethan Allen Institute
Freedom of Information Center
Geonomy Society
Institute for the Study of Civic Values
Interhemispheric Resource Center
International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism
Koch Crime Institute
Marshall European Center
National Center on Fathers and Families
National Committee for an Effective Congress
National Policy Association
Pioneer Institute for Public Policy
Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies
Third Millennium Ministries
Washington Institute for Public Policy
Let’s call that List A. And now please consider these 13 groups on List B:
American Bankers Association
American Hospital Association
American Medical Association
American Petroleum Institute
Business Roundtable
Cellular Telecom Industry Association (CTIA)
Edison Electric Institute
Investment Company Institute
National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Manufacturers
National Association of Realtors
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)
US Chamber of Commerce
Now here’s an interesting thing to know about List A. All those groups are included in the Groseclose study. Can you guess the corresponding fact about List B? All those groups are excluded from the Groseclose study. And here’s another interesting thing about List B: it’s basically a list of the top business lobbying groups (as measured by money spent on lobbying).
Here’s another interesting thing about List A. When searching for those items at wsj.com, they are found this number of times, in aggregate: zero. That is, it’s hard to picture how any of them can be viewed as among the “most prominent” policy groups in the US. Now compare that to the prominence scores for List B. This is the total score: 14,471. This is the maximum: 4,280. This is the minimum: 141. This is the median: 793. This is the mean: 1,113.
It’s interesting to compare those numbers to the numbers for the complete Groseclose list of 200. This is the total score: 24,899. This is the maximum: 2,590. This is the minimum: 0. This is the median: 13. This is the mean: 124.
By the way, I said that all the members of List B spend a lot of money on lobbying. So these numbers tend to demonstrate what I said: if you spend a lot on lobbying, you will probably get to see your name in the paper.
Anyway, did you know that Groseclose scores WSJ as more liberal than NYT? Do you think this result would come out the same way if major business groups mentioned at wsj.com 14,471 times were not mysteriously excluded from his study? Keep in mind that the sensitivity of his results has already been demonstrated. That is, it has been shown that his results change dramatically just by including or not including a single group. So surely there would also be a change in the results if List B was not ignored.
Here are a few other things to notice. The least prominent member of List B is more prominent than 83% of the groups he decided to include. And the 13 members of List B, in aggregate, have prominence equal to the aggregate prominence of 194 of the items on his list of 200. That is, the total prominence of his list would have increased if he had removed his 194 least prominent items and replaced them with just these 13. Then he would have a list of 19 items with greater aggregate prominence than his list of 200.
Here’s what this all means: his list is packed with junk. It sounds impressive to hear that his study took into account “200 of the most prominent think tanks and policy groups in the United States.” Trouble is, it didn’t. And it’s not just that some of his items fail to meet a fair definition of “most prominent.” It’s that a majority of his items fail to meet a fair definition of “most prominent.” And of course what he left out is a bigger problem than what he included, because he left out most of the top business lobbying groups.
Exactly. That’s the whole point. Because you could probably get any result you wanted, based on how that list is designed.
You’re turning the problem inside out. The problem seems to be precisely that the groups were not “chosen because … they were the most frequently quoted or cited groups in a population of articles.” What I have demonstrated is that his list would look quite different if he had actually picked “the most frequently quoted or cited groups.” And “removing arbitrary elements” is exactly what seems to have been done, and that did indeed “lead to less valid results.”
Hopefully you’ll point out where I’ve made “questionable assumptions.” I don’t think you’ve done that yet.
September 2, 2011, 4:15 pmNorthern Dave says:
I think that oddly demonstrates Prof. Groseclose’s point about people being stiff-necked when it comes to evidence.
You get kicked out of the Promised Land for 70 years for being totally evil (sacrificing your kids to Moloch etc.) and get returned under righteous dudes like Nehemiah….so what did you do to get kicked out for 1800? Ah, wait, the prophet Malachi warned of what would happen if the Messiah was rejected.
September 2, 2011, 5:04 pmOne last Scene to the Age. Someone who comes in their own name as Messiah and will be (at least at first) lauded by everyone as the real deal…
Netanyahu is looking for a secular messiah and the religious are looking for someone who’ll let them rebuild a temple…the gentiles are looking for “peace” (without righteous living) and cash.
Going to be a wild few years….
Northern Dave says:
As a thought to the comments on this and the other blogs by Prof. Groseclose it seems to me to remind me of something my first year Poli-Sci prof said decades ago, “Oh, the Reader’s Digest is just another right-wing shill.”
Much depends upon the relatively vague terms “Left” and “Right” and “Liberal”.
My Poli-Sci guy saw the Comintern as a centrist party association and took it from there…
Someone above listed the Founders of the USA as “Left” which is unorthodox at the least because the core of “Left” political theory is godless humanistic philosophy incompatible with pretty much everything Washington et al believed in from the Spiritual to distribution of public funds.
Groseclose begins his article by quoting folks who see the standard Western free market system as endemically reactionary extreme right wing politics. This places Warren Buffet in the same category as the journalist who thinks government universal health care in the context of a free market economy isn’t a bad idea.
For such a “Media Conspiracy” is self-evident as anything opposed to their Marxist-based worldview is either “Reactionary” (freedom based) or occasionally “Radical” (too severe an advance of the cause…for now).
One thing Americans can be VERY proud of is the freedom of the press they have. If I want to start a paper or blog I just do. If no one buys it, it sucks to be me :-)
September 2, 2011, 5:33 pmIt does allow for the hidden to be brought to light, though and I appreciate the VC’s dedication to the principle of continuing freedom of speech and press – even though to the left that will make them part of the media conspiracy :-) (freedom of the press being incompatible with leftist states – and the only ones we’ve seen are Albania, the USSR, N.Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia etc.)
rilkefan says:
Reading over the names in list a, I’m inclined to believe your overall point, but isn’t your list b distinct in not being composed of “think tanks and policy groups” but rather advocacy and lobbying groups? Does the C of C, for example, do any research in-house?
September 2, 2011, 5:33 pmYankev says:
First temple – destroyed because of idolatry, blood shed and
gay marriagesexual immorality of all kinds. Second temple – because of causeless hatred among Jews. You can look it up.We were also warned what would happen if we followed a false messiah. That man did not fulfill any of the criteria, so his followers simply rewrote them.
September 2, 2011, 6:00 pmjukeboxgrad says:
rilkefan:
Those are fair questions.
Apparently it does (http://bit.ly/pH8iSr):
And it commissions research, which I think amounts to the same thing. Example: http://bit.ly/nqAfzW.
Another major item on my List B is the American Petroleum Institute (http://bit.ly/q35PV9):
Another major item on my List B is the Business Roundtable (http://bit.ly/rsgV8b):
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Now look at it from the other direction. He seems to have no problem including groups that don’t do research. He includes NRA. Do they do research? Not as far as I can tell. Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)? Same thing. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)? Same thing.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
I think it would be pretty hard to draw that line (“think tanks and policy groups” on one side and “advocacy and lobbying groups” on the other). And I don’t think he attempts to draw any such line. And I don’t think there would be any point to drawing such a line. Aren’t all those categories equally meaningful, from the perspective of what he is trying to measure? I think they are.
So he just kind of lumps all those categories together, which I think is probably fine. The problem is the omissions, which are extremely glaring, material, inexplicable, and slanted. (It’s pretty ironic when someone studying bias is this careless regarding bias in their methodology.)
By the way, I’m not saying that I know the list got slanted deliberately. Maybe the list somehow got slanted by accident. But it doesn’t matter, because the results are just as phony.
September 2, 2011, 6:27 pmchiMaxx says:
But that only supports jukeboxgrad’s point over several comments. Wouldn’t you define the National Taxpayers Union as an advocacy/lobbying group rather than a think tank/policy group since they produce no original research and define themselves on the About Us page of their website as an advocacy group: “National Taxpayers Union (NTU) is America’s independent, non-partisan advocate for overburdened taxpayers.”
As Joe says above “Using Groseclose’s own methods, the simple exclusion of the National Taxpayers Union shifts the mean PQ of the media from 62 to 53. So using Groseclose’s own methods, excluding the NTU shifts the findings from a strongly liberal media to a pretty neutral one.”
Others have claimed that removing this group is arbitrary, but you argue that the list should contain only think tank/policy groups and not advocacy/lobbying groups, and by both your definition and NTU’s own self-definition, it falls in the second category.
September 2, 2011, 6:32 pmjukeboxgrad says:
And here’s the other ironic thing about his omissions: he likes to say that media bias is often expressed by what they choose to omit.
September 2, 2011, 6:33 pmchiMaxx says:
I think jukeboxgrad’s answer over all is better than mine, but I do think it’s worth noting that if you were trying to distinguish think tank/policy groups from lobbying/advocacy groups, NTU–the centerprisece of a statistical reevaluation of Groseclose’s work–would fall on the lobbying/advocacy side by pretty much anyone’s definition (including their own).
September 2, 2011, 6:38 pmjukeboxgrad says:
Well, not exactly. Part of NTU is NTU Foundation (http://bit.ly/p1EmIA):
But of course you’re right that they also call themselves “America’s independent, non-partisan advocate for overburdened taxpayers.” So the point is that there’s no easy way to separate research groups from advocacy groups (because NTU and lots of other groups are both), and I don’t think Groseclose makes any attempt to do so.
September 2, 2011, 6:40 pmjukeboxgrad says:
Oops, didn’t see this before I posted.
I think this is a fair point. Yes, they do some research, but the advocacy part of what they do seems more dominant. So if we had to choose to put them on just one side of the line, it would probably make sense to call them an advocacy group. But again, I think Groseclose doesn’t try to draw such a line, and I think this is probably fine.
September 2, 2011, 6:45 pmchiMaxx says:
And looking at his discussion about the LA Times story, his understanding of the word “fact” seems pretty dubious. Only one of the “facts” he mentions would stand up to a journalistic understanding of a fact–the fact that, including transfers, the number of black students went up slightly that one year. Of course his omission of the related fact that the percentage of black students continued to decline was curious, but should in no way be taken to indicate his own bias.
Everything else he presented in his bullet point list would have been seen by a responsible journalist of any political orientation as conjecture by one party, admissible as a quotation from that person, but in no way reportable as a fact without independent corroboration.
September 2, 2011, 6:51 pmrilkefan says:
Re the C of C, my cursory google suggested that research was directed at measuring their effectiveness as advocates, not policy, but anyway, pointing out the NRA is on the A side makes this line silly.
However, I still want to address the above: citing a think tank which does peer-reviewed scholarly work, even The Heritage Institute, is pretty different from citing the C of C or even the AMA, and comparing the way politicians and the press reference the the former type is probably subject to different and perhaps smaller biases than the latter. (Consider how you would feel if Groseclose repeated the study excluding advocacy groups at your suggestion.) Though as a physicist the whole project makes me feel literally queasy.
More generally, I would think the political science literature has a few standard lists for such studies – either Groseclose used one of those, in which case I think there’s a good answer for your (admirable) check, or he didn’t, in which case one should find out why not, unless the data points towards this being quixotic.
September 2, 2011, 7:15 pmjukeboxgrad says:
That could be. I don’t really know.
Yup.
This is a fair point, and in his study there is some discussion about this issue. But in the end he just lumps everything together. All the entities on his list of 200 are treated the same way.
I have no idea if it’s true that “the political science literature has a few standard lists for such studies.” But what’s clear is that he definitely did not use any such ‘standard list.’ He used a list he found (actually that coauthor Milyo found) while searching the internet. They decided they liked the list even though they knew nothing about how it was created, or about the person who created it.
I think I’ve made it clear enough that there are serious problems with the list, although I don’t know if those problems are the result of bias, accident, sloppiness or something else. But either way, the problems will lead to bad results. Groseclose has taken the position (when responding to a critic seven years ago) that any problems with the list should be ignored, because someone other than him assembled the list. I don’t see how that argument makes sense.
I don’t know what you mean by this.
September 2, 2011, 8:40 pmjukeboxgrad says:
There’s a related issue I want to mention. The Groseclose study has lots of language like this:
It’s really easy to read the study and get the impression that he really did select the “most-cited groups.” But he didn’t. Many of the truly “most-cited groups” are excluded from his study. That’s precisely the problem I’ve been describing. When he says “the 44 think tanks that were most-cited by the media” what he really means is ‘the 44 think tanks (from within our dataset of 200) that were most-cited by the media.’
It would not be that hard to help the reader not be misled, in this regard. He could insert that key phrase (“from within our dataset of 200″) just like I did, or he could lead the reader to that language with something like an asterisk or a footnote.
I demonstrated that some quite heavily-cited groups are pointedly absent from his dataset. It’s a problem that they are absent, and he compounds the problem by repeatedly using language which implies that they are not absent.
Imagine a random reader of the Groseclose book being asked the following question. ‘Groseclose says he used a list of 200 of the most prominent think tanks and policy groups in the United States. How do you think that list was created?’
A) He studied his media and Congressional material to see which groups were cited, and how often. Then he picked out the 200 groups that were cited most often.
B) He used a standard list that political scientists use for this kind of research.
C) He found a list while searching the internet, and he decided to use it even though he knew nothing about how the list was created or the person who created it.
I think most readers would choose A or B, and would be surprised to hear that the correct answer is C. His study uses lots of language implying that the correct answer is A, and he doesn’t make it easy to find out that the correct answer is C. I don’t think this helps his credibility.
September 2, 2011, 8:42 pmrilkefan says:
The above followed a sentence saying that one should find out from him why they didn’t do something standard and sensible, and simply points out that no one here has had any luck repeatedly trying to do the equivalent.
I’m still trying to process the info that they used a list of institutions found on the web somewhere. That’s not even wrong. Actually, it’s even worse, since of course one assembles multiple lists and studies the sensitivity of the analysis to variations. Really aggravating.
September 3, 2011, 1:02 amMoishe X says:
Looks like this Groseclose chap is the Obama of the right-wing legal world: you nattering nabobs of negativism just can’t comprehend his 11-dimensional chess in which what seem like weak, pathetic arguments and behavior are actually key elements of the Al-Akazam that’s just around the corner. Truly, in three Friedman Units or fewer. Maybe five FUs. But trust him, brilliance the likes of which your puny minds can’t imagine is slouching toward the VC to be born!
September 3, 2011, 3:28 amStephen Lathrop says:
I’m beginning to suspect the Groseclose affair could prove historic—the first instance in which blog commenters applied greater rigor to the evaluation of scholarly work than did the tenure committee of a major department at a major university.
September 3, 2011, 8:14 amjukeboxgrad says:
rilkefan:
Thanks for explaining. I thought maybe you meant that but I wasn’t sure.
Yup. I think it’s a pretty staggering fact. It’s one of the very first decisions they made, in the process of executing the study, and everything done and learned subsequently is highly sensitive to that decision (of course I know you know this).
So this goes back to what multiple commenters started saying in the very first thread, five days ago: garbage in, garbage out.
And the decision to rely on a list posted on the internet by an unknown person is a decision that most people hearing about the book and reading the book will never be aware of. Most people will assume that the list was assembled through some kind of thoughtful, scientific process. And I think Groseclose is happy to do whatever he can to keep it that way.
September 3, 2011, 8:40 amjukeboxgrad says:
Now I see it’s quite a bit worse than what I said above, because I failed to include certain important business advocacy groups. Like these 7:
Air Transport Association
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
America’s Health Insurance Plans
Financial Services Roundtable
National Association of Home Builders
Recording Industry Association of America
Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association
All these groups were excluded from the study, even though each of these groups has more prominence (using the wsj.com measurement I described above) than about 80% of the groups that Groseclose did include. So I’d like to update the numbers I posted, to include these groups. My List B, above, consisted of these 13 groups:
American Bankers Association
American Hospital Association
American Medical Association
American Petroleum Institute
Business Roundtable
Cellular Telecom Industry Association (CTIA)
Edison Electric Institute
Investment Company Institute
National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Manufacturers
National Association of Realtors
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)
US Chamber of Commerce
I’d like to update this list to include those other 7 major groups that I overlooked. So now List B looks like this (20 groups, instead of 13):
Air Transport Association
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
America’s Health Insurance Plans
American Bankers Association
American Hospital Association
American Medical Association
American Petroleum Institute
Business Roundtable
Cellular Telecom Industry Association (CTIA)
Edison Electric Institute
Financial Services Roundtable
Investment Company Institute
National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Home Builders
National Association of Manufacturers
National Association of Realtors
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)
Recording Industry Association of America
Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association
US Chamber of Commerce
This updated list B has a prominence score of 18,762. Which means that the 20 members of List B, in aggregate, have prominence exceeding the aggregate prominence of 196 of the items on his list of 200. That is, the total prominence of his list would have increased if he had removed his 196 least prominent items and replaced them with just these 20. Then he would have a list of 24 items with greater aggregate prominence than his list of 200.
This is just to emphasize that it’s not just that he has a hole in his study: he has a hole in his study that’s enormous. These 20 major business groups that he excluded have almost as much weight as his entire list of 200 (aggregate prominence of the former is 18,762, and aggregate prominence of the latter is 24,902). If he added these 20 groups, the number of citations he studied would have jumped by 75%. It goes without saying that this would have a dramatic effect on his results. Since removing just one group (NTU) is enough to shift the results to neutral, it’s reasonable to surmise that including these 20 major business groups would cause the study to show strong bias, except in the opposite direction.
Garbage in, garbage out.
September 3, 2011, 10:26 amPolitical economy of media « Entitled to an Opinion says:
[...] media-like jobs). So I figured I’d like to Making Friends With the Media from orgtheory and “Corporate Media” Theory from Tim Groseclose guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy. Advertisement [...]
September 3, 2011, 9:28 pmJamie says:
Meh.
The media has an authoritarian bias.
They report on people power. What happened recently? A huge cache of papers sent wide open. What was reported? Squabbling about when a speech would happen.
September 4, 2011, 11:11 pmBALDEAGLE 11 says:
Surely the proposer of this so-called think-piece on the bias and the social-orientation of the ‘writer and commissioner’ in the media, as opposed to the so-called ‘independent writer’ is fairly OBVIOUS?
September 6, 2011, 4:08 amThe former is commissioned to write, and in that relationship it is the commissioner bias is best perceived, which is self-evedently a desire to make money, and is therefor under a prior obligation to the source of any financing (and the media continues to claim [eg] that the press sales revenue is to low to cover costs) which comes from advertising, and the Advertiser’s own bias and disputable content is paramount!
Mister says:
So ‘corporate-media’ is like a religion because of a lack of being proven wrong? Perhaps there is simply overwhelming facts that suggest it is true, hence many people feeling as those ‘theorists’ do. The religion example is a poor one because the nature of media is something more tangible and can be seen in society by ownership, membership, company policies/procedures and various studies. The methods of delivery can be analyzed and so can the vetting of stories. This is a topic that is much more verifiable. I would argue the main reason mainstream media is overwhelmingly conservative is by virtue of the things that are never or rarely reported. Its not only about what is chosen to be reported but the scores of stories that are censored, that are taken or kept off the table. Alternatively, I would recommend a reading of any of this authors books to understand why our nation is turning far-right as it has (http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Parenti/e/B000APNF70/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1). His book on Democracy for the Few is a classic. I also highly recommend Super-Patriotism.
September 6, 2011, 7:28 pm