Recently and justifiably, Jonah Goldberg of National Review suffered barely controllable exasperation at the most recent example of the liberal bias in the main stream media. The proximate cause of Goldbergs pique was the media acquiesce and perhaps complicity in the extreme language used against Tea Party members who used their political power to block an increase in the debt ceiling without significant spending cuts. These politicians where referred to as “Hezbollah faction, “terrorists, and “traitors by liberal politicians and political pundits. These, in some cases, are the same people are the same who argued that the rhetoric employed in criticism of Obama is too extreme.
Liberal bias is hard to continue to muster anger about. It is an unfortunate calamity of nature, like high humidity in a Washington summer. It may be unhealthy and uncomfortable, but it seems as useless to complain about liberal bias as it is to shake a fist an an approaching high pressure system.
Nonetheless, it does bring to mind a sever year-old empirical study on liberal bias. We all feel we know bias when we see it, but it is hard to separate this assessment from personal biases. Tim Groseclose, professor of political science, published a clever technique to quantify such bias in the Quarterly Journal of Economics The study used the ranking of voting records by the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action to determine which legislators are the most and least liberal. The study then correlated these rankings with the number of times these legislators cited various think tanks and policy groups in their writing and speaking. To rank the liberal or conservative bias of news organizations, they determined the extent to which the citation patterns of different news organizations mimiced those of liberal or conservative legislators.
The final ranking was represented by a scored form 0 to 100, from least to most liberal. The political scores of legislators and think tanks were consistent with common wisdom.. The Heritage Foundation ranked 20, while the Children s Defense Fund scored an 80. There were a couple of surprises. The American Civil Liberties Union ranked a relatively moderate 49.8 and the National Rifle Association earned a 45.9. Representative Maxine Walters from California scored a very liberal 99.6, complemented by the very conservative Tom Delay (4.7) from Texas. Pretty much in the exact center was former Senator Arelin Spector (51.3) when he was Republican.
The study showed that the most liberal news organization study was the New York Times with a score of 73.7 (23.7 from an unbiased score). Most news sources scored distinctly liberal scores above 60. Fox News Special Report with Brit Hume ranked 39.7. The Washington Times score of 35.4, was still closer from an unbiased score than the New York Times. The most centrist news organization from this measure from the Newshour with Jim Lehrer with a score of 55.8.
Studies like this are interesting, but are not dispositive to those who religiously cling to the view that the main stream media are not titled toward the left. There are probably other metrics that one could devise that would demonstrated similar results. The value of studies such as these is that it gives news organizations a chance for introspection. Perhaps the New York Times could examine if they are ignoring conservative think tanks and policy institutions. The Washington Times could see if is are too insular. It is a shame that news organizations will find in necessary to attack such studies, rather than use them as a chance for self improvement.
Thoughts on Evolution and Republican Candidates
Friday, September 2nd, 2011By all conventional standards of the time, William Jennings Bryant was a liberal. He ran for president three times as a Democrat. He opposed the gold standard for limiting credit to farms in his famous and spell binding Cross of Gold speech. He was a populist who railed eloquently against oil companies and railroads. However, most people remember Bryant as the ardent and literalistic fundamentalist Christian who argued against the teaching of evolution in public schools in the famous Scopes Monkey trial.
How can we square Bryants liberalism with a position that many now associate with Republicans? The issue lies with the unfortunate extension of the meaning of the theory of evolution far beyond its legitimate scope. Some people perverted evolution into Social Darwinism, the notion that if some people do poorly in the economy is because they are not a socially fit as the successful. If the rich are more successful, it is consistent with the scientific notion of survival of the fittest. Ever the defender of the downtrodden, Bryant unfortunately conflated his Christian concern for the poor, with the necessity to dispute what he viewed as an anti-working-class ideology. At its heart, Bryant was not really making a scientific argument, but a moral one.
The problem for Bryant was he tried to unnecessarily take sides in a science vs. religion dispute. For many there really is no such conflict. Whenever there is an apparent conflict between science and the Bible, the problem is less likely to be science or the Bible, but rather Biblical interpretation or the inappropriate application of science.
It is the thesis here that for many Americans that disputes about evolution represent an unnecessary defense against people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens who who argue that science precludes serious religiosity. It is my suspicion that political figures sympathetic to Intelligent Design is less the result of thorough grappling with the scientific issues, an more a defensive reaction to what I call evangelical atheists.
It would be preferable to have Republican presidential candidates with more thoughtful positions on evolution. However, I prefer their faulty Biblical interpretation (from my perspective) to the Constitutional jurisprudence of Democrats who believe that the commerce clause of the Constitution that can extend to grant Congress virtually unlimited powers.
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