It's the Lifestyles, Stupids

THE HARD-CORE LIBERAL TRADE JOURNAL EDITOR & PUBLISHER is disappointed that the lates Pew Survey shows a small growth in the liberal orientation of the media: Pew Survey Finds Moderates, Liberals Dominate News Outlets. (A bit of heavy lifting to moderate that headline, what?)

But the article glosses over what the Pew survey only touches on:
It is not the proclaimed political affilation that clues you to bias in the media, but the lifestyle choices. That's why this small excerpt is more revealing of what is actually going on.

"The survey also revealed what some are sure to label a "values" gap. According to Pew, about 60% of the general public believes it is necessary to believe in God to be a truly moral person. The new survey finds that less than 15% of those who work at news outlets believe that. About half the general public believes homosexuality should be accepted by society -- but about 80% of journalists feel that way.

This is the real measure of how far from center journalists actually are.

Glenn Reynolds references this observation as well. In an email to him, I comment:

"You get towards it when you reference the lifestyle issues. The tone of the media is driven by lifestyles and not by self-defined political affiliations. Studies that ask the sample to describe their formal political affiliation will always under-report the level of bias in the newsrooms and editorial realms.

"Ask yourself if you think a similar study asking the same questions of a sample at academic institutions -- like, gasp, Harvard Law -- would really nail down the actual percentage.

"A better metric would be to study social affiliations -- who goes to what parties, who goes to what place on vacation, who sees what movies with whom. Who went to school where. Who was mentored by who.

"The point is that a biased mindset in the media is a result of lifestyle affiliations more than poltical identification. The media self-selects for a certain point of view and personality to start with. As in any other professional group, advancement depends on a certain set of social skills and attitudes and opinions. It's a kind of "bias Darwinism."

"In the end, people who think that a liberal mindset is "normal" would view those to the left as liberals and those to the right as conservative. The same would be true on the flip side of the equation.

"The problem with the Pew Study and why it "disappointed" E&P is that it assumes the center of the measure is indeed in the center. It's not. The lifestyle of the media skews liberal and hence is off-center."

UPDATE: SCOTT WRIGHTSON at Wunderkind has more on "liberals in moderates' clothing" and supplies some analysis by the numbers:

Now, few members of the media don't know about the theory of liberal media bias. I have a theory this makes them defensive about their own politics, and less likely to be open and honest about them. That explains why there was just as big a rise in the number of self-reporting moderate media members to the rest of the public (41% to 54%) as there was among liberals (20% to 34%). The telling sign, of course, is that while one-third of the American public describes themselves as conservative, only 7% of media members do.

But, again, what proof is there that self-reporting on political ideology might hide the truth about media bias, despite already significant increases for liberals and moderates?

Well it's always in the details, right?

Posted by Vanderleun at May 24, 2004 2:36 PM | TrackBack