Accuracy in Media (AIM)
AIM Report: New Evidence of Liberal Media Bias – November A
AIM Report | By AIM Report | November 6, 2006
NEW EVIDENCE OF LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS
By Andrew G. Selepak
(Editor’s Note: This study found evidence that conservatives were more likely to perceive media bias than liberals, but that both conservatives and liberals detected bias in media outlets that leaned against their political perspectives. In the end, however, because conservatives were more critical of the media both in general and in response to specific outlets, the results seem most consistent with the claim that a liberal political bias exists in the mainstream news media.)
Conservative claims of a liberal media bias are having an impact upon public perceptions of news coverage.
Claims of media bias are not new, but increasing claims of bias, especially a perceived liberal media bias, have led to diminishing credibility ratings among news outlets, and an increased level of skepticism of all news coverage.
A 2004 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed that 53% of Americans agreed with the statement, “I often don’t trust what news organizations are saying,” and 48% believe that the people who decide on news content are “out of touch,” and those numbers are rising. In 1987, 62% of the public believed election coverage was free of partisan bias, down to 53% in 1996, 48% in 2000, and 38% by 2004….(Full Story)
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It is too bad that I was a bit hasty in posting the blog entry to which this comment pertains. I should first have taken much more time to read the AIM commentary more carefully.
It is necessary to consider what the AIM report on media bias actually reported on. The AIM study of media bias in fact did not examine media bias but nothing more than the existence of the perception by politically-partisan individuals as to whether they **perceive** a given news source to be biased.
The AIM report on media bias did not objectively examine whether media bias actually exists and the study it reports on was not designed to do that. AIM justifies that by asserting that “perception is reality”. That assertion is in itself a corner stone of liberal dogma. However, it is a false assertion.
Although, as AIM did in the subject article, it can justifiably be argued that perceptions influence reality, perceptions cannot be substituted for or exchanged with reality. Regardless of any liberal claims to the contrary, perceptions *are not* reality. To argue otherwise is comparable to claiming that rain is earth and that earth is rain, while the hard, objective and true reality is that rain can turn earth to mud, and that media bias (whether it is being perceived or not) will muddy the waters of reporting the truth.
Rain will without a doubt influence the condition of the earth upon which it falls, but it will never be earth, not even muddy earth. The relationship between the aspects of perceptions and the aspects of media bias is much the same. Perceptions create media bias and thereby muddy the waters of truthful news reporting.
The title of the AIM article, “NEW EVIDENCE OF LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS”, is wrong and seriously misleading. The title should have been written to read: “New evidence of the existence of the perception of liberal media bias,” because that is all that AIM studied and reported on.
It is too bad that the AIM report did not examine the existence of media bias and studied instead whether people perceive the media to be biased. Let’s hope that AIM will instead soon study the real thing, media bias and the extent to which it causes media sources to deviate from the absolute truth. That will do much, justifiably and necessarily so, to bolster the credibility of AIM.
By themselves, not even the perceptions of media bias are as important as is the extent of the gullibility of the public to having the wool pulled over its eyes.
The extent of the truth in reporting and the extent of the gullibility of the public to swallow lies can be judged correctly only by using the absolute truth as a measuring stick, to see how much of the absolute truth shows up in print or in the broadcast media and to see how many and what sort of lies the public can be made to swallow before it begins to object and to clamor for the truth.
–Walter