The Myth of the Liberal Media

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The words liberal and media go together like bacon and eggs—at least that's what we've been led to believe over the past 30 years. Indeed, to listen to any of the scores of conservative politicians and pundits in America, you'd think the New York Times and CBS News were run by snarling Marxists hell-bent on mobilizing the proletariat and and ushering in the next class war. But a recent survey by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), the progressive media watchdog group, unearthed little revolutionary zeal among reporters, editors, producers, and bureau chiefs in the major media—unless you count their fevered support for free trade.

'This survey calls into question the conservative claim that journalists' personal views are to the left of the public,” writes David Croteau in Extra! (July-August 1998). “On economic issues, the minority of journalists not in the 'center' are more likely to identify as having a 'right' orientation. When polled on specific economic policies, journalists were often to the right of public opinion.”

FAIR, in consultation with the Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University, polled nearly 450 Washington-based journalists in early 1998. The 141 responses revealed a pattern of opinions on national issues that clearly repudiates the liberal media myth (see accompanying chart). On major economic priorities, for instance, journalists leaned more toward the center (64 percent) and the right (19 percent) than the left (11 percent) when asked to identify their political orientation. So it was no surprise to discover they were much more likely than the general public to favor measures to slow the rise in spending for entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security; they also were much more willing to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to include other Latin American countries and less willling than the general public to make health insurance reform a top priority.

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