Very interesting. I was one of those who responded (and I'm pleased to see I merit "elite" status!) Not to nitpick, but why is the BBC not elite and Salon is, exactly?

A more substantive point is that you didn't mention the issue of selection bias. Nearly every one of your readers will have responded to the survey becuase they saw it on a blog, which means your responses are going to indicate more blog-friendliness than really exists in the media. It's like doing a phone poll and asking respondents "Do you like taking phone polls?" You're going to record a 100% "yes" rate among respondents...

Another note - there's another reason why the survey may not confirm Alterman's hypothesis. Many people, myself included, love to read things that give me a not-unpleasant spike of righteous indignation. Liberals may read conservative blogs to get this kick (and vice-versa, naturally).

Respondent -- I defined "elite" media outlets as those "general interest intermiediaries of national standing" This is a judgment call, obviously, but I didn't include the BBC because it's not as visible in the US (this was the same reason I didn't include Voice ofAmerica).

I actually did mention selection bias -- but there are multiple forms of it, and I didn't mention the form you suggest. However, I wasn't testing whether blogs are generally popular with the media, but rather which blogs are popular among the universe of blogs. There I think I'm on reasonably solid ground.

I think you are right, but I think blogs with more entertainment like wonkette or This Bill Clinton Book Spoof will have more impact and eventually more readership. I was thinking, why would it be important what blogs are read by the media. Your readership makes more impact. Again going back to Wonkette. I think her blog being read by Washingtonian staffers does have an impact. Does influence agendas.

I have a different take.

Sullivan, Reynolds and Kaus are independent thinkers. Folks read because they are getting a thoughtful individual's take, and one in which supposed political co-travelers easily can come under fire.

(Instapundit also gets points for thoroughness, Kaus for placement.)

TPM, Kos, Atrios are echo-chamber crap. The Corner has some debate due to its collective nature, but too often that debate is: Are you a political R or an ideological one? There's nothing on those sites that you can't get from either a party briefing or an off-the-record chat with a party wonk.

Respondent:

I find your take on the 100% of people responding to a phone poll a little off. I hate taking phone polls but I often do just to get my voice on the ticket. If it's not anything seriously political I'll just screw with the telemarketer for fun.

"If you're not voting for candidate A or B, whom will you be voting for?"

"Gregory Peck."

/scrawlville.com

Insightful, Bonden. A quick translation: those I agree with are "thoughtful individual[s]" and everyone else is "echo-chamber crap."

AB

AB, you are correct that I was strong on the Kos crowd. But then again, I was only going from the list. If you want me to call a right-wing 'blog "echo-chamber crap," tee up Little Green Footballs or something. I'll swing. Or give me Kevin Drum, and I won't.

I read TPM and my mind says "partisan D interests." I read The Corner and my mind says "partisan R interests." Others have their clear, clear biases -- Sullivan, Reynolds and Kaus all have plainly-staked ideological hobby horses -- but they are driven by ideas more than parties.

Mr. Drezner:

I think your analysis is probably off. Given the recent Pew surveys and media behavior, a leftward bias is only too evident.

A simpler explanation is that the "elites" are reading these blogs because they are thoughtful, fair and give reasoned arguments for the "other side." As Sun Tzu said, "Know thy enemy."

Dan,

Nice note, and very interesting stuff. I've had some gut sense of this relationship for a while, but it's nice to see someone gather data to establish what's really going on.

However, I'd add this. Google treats blogs *very* well. If you Google a particular subject, you are just as likely to get blogs as you are to get encyclopedic entries or authoritative sources. This is great when blogs (like mine, I hope) provide links to those sources. But it's not so good if the blog just provides a rant. In any case, the effect on the media works like this: reporter gets assignment on new subject; reporter Googles subject; reporter finds blogs; reporter uses blogs to find entry points for stories. Judging by the number of media inquiries I've gotten lately on stuff like Abu Ghraib and private military contracting, it happens a fair amount.

What this means for the survey is that it might not count everything that matters. The survey seems to look at regular readership. It makes sense that the big blogs are the regularly read ones. But the survey doesn't really look at the effect of blogs on the way reporters gather information, or the way that blogs affect stories.

Sounds like a good project for a grad student in the field...

I care only for results. The liberal media bias is currently outrageous. for instance, please note the way the Ernest Hollings flap is being handled. It’s barely got any attention whatsoever. There is doubt that if this US senator were a close ally of President Bush---his barely subtle anti-Semitism would dominate the headlines. Today’s media elite editors subscribe to this unwritten rule: a story is only important if it can be slanted to harm George W. Bush.

It is indeed possible that a number of journalists are beginning to read views which contradict the elite liberal gospel. But I’m worried about the here and now. How long will it take before even a few of them are converted away from the cause of radical leftism? Nope, the real telling evidence is the far more important Pew study. 34% percent of journalists describe themselves as liberal while another 54% self identify as holding a “moderate” perspective. What is a moderate journalist? This is an individual who merely intensely dislikes the President. A liberal is someone who is candidly a Paul Krugman clone.

Dan,

What elite media do the top bloggers read ?

I monitor, er, read TalkLeft, Captain Kevin Drum, and Hit & Run. I used to monitor/read Hatrios and Lil' Mattie before I had problems with the moderators. I occasionally agree with H & R, but I mostly disagree with all of them.

Just because someone reads a left blog doesn't make them left, and likewise with the correct side.

I note that the mainstream journos read... mainstream blogs. Let me know when The Lonewacko Blog makes their list.

If the elite media are actually reading opposing points of view that will redound to the right's benefit. Most standard journalism outfits speak predominantly to each other. I do detect a sea-change among the few, but not the many.

Dan, I know you didn't mention this in your analysis, but I think an interesting story along the lines of "what liberal media?" is the emerging Judy Miller fiasco @ the NY Times. Several peices all seem to indicate that the Times sloppy journalism partly stemmed from Times editors trying to bend over way backwards to provide "balanced coverage". And look where that led us. So, while we are talking about media bias, I'd be curious to know what you think the slant of major news organizations are? (i.e. Fox, Wash Times, WSJ, NY Times, Wash Post, etc..). I'd guess that maybe the only real liberal media org there would be perhaps the Wash Post. Obviously Fox, The Wash. Times and WSJ lean heavily right.

Interesting, and no surprises in the top three. As a hack myself, I'd imagine both Sullivan and Kaus are regarded as having journalistic street cred by their peers, which would be a significant factor. Instapundit is linked to perhaps not because of his libertarian bent but his daily plethora of interesting links to stuff you might not have seen while copytasting the usual grist.

I started reading blogs as a kind of outcrop from news monitoring in the first place, because they tended to provide overlooked news and views from the metaphorical spike that keeps the daily news agenda pretty similar across the mainstream.

It is significant, for example, that I have seen more coverage of the Darfur atrocities as a result of tireless bloggers and their links than the mainstream has seen fit to provide. That should not be the case, but, sadly, such is the way of the world at the moment.

Thanks for the data, dd.

I think elite media members are curious as to what readers think of them as they have tin ears. They may not admit to looking for blog comments about them but probably do so to perhaps defend themselves. They cannot readily comment upon criticism as that would only encourage counter-comments, but I am sure they (or their staffs) are looking. I can just smell their ears burning.

If the "liberal media" is reading the conservative blogs than is that an indication that they are getting both sides of view of issues and writing them up the way they view as correct and balanced?

It seems that most of the argument that the media is liberal has been focused on the fact that they are concentrated in places like NY and DC which are significantly to the left of middle America. The elite media reading blogs should be a good way to counteract that bias.

So I wonder, what is the current justification for viewing the media as having an inherent liberal bias?

>A quick translation: those I agree >with are "thoughtful individual[s]" >and everyone else is "echo-chamber

Not really. DailyKOs won't allow people to make comments who don't agree with the party line. In fact...the software at DailyKOS is designed for approved members to "vote" on whether each comment is "worthy" or not to continue to be shown. So it is an echo chamber. Now it is true that Sullivan and Reynolds don't even have a comment section...which is what KOS should do....except that KOS depends on his leftist echo chamber format. Understand that there is NO WAY that an opposing viewpoint can seep into the KOS echo chamber.

I do read DailyKOS to get an idea on how the Moonbats are going to spin any event.

Alterman's argument is poorly reasoned. Having studied polls for years in an academic setting, I can tell you that self-selection is the number one problem by far in surveys that rely on voluntary participation.

No major left-wing blogs mentioned the survey, therefore, that automatically will skew the results rightward. Next you have the fact that most reporters would never bother taking the damn survey at all. The only ones who might do so are those who are very absorbed in the blogging world. Since there are more right-wing blogs on the net, it stands to reason that people who read blogs a lot would be reading right-wing blogs.

Here's something interesting but unrelated: although most blogs are right-leaning, the majority of the most popular ones are left-wing such as Kos, "wonkette" (who is far from being a wonk), Talking Points, Kaus, Blog for America.

One more thing: the number of journo types who responded is extremely small and ought not to be considered as a reliable demographically or numerically.

Keep this in mind, folks. This poll is about as reliable as any other online poll. Its primary value is amusement and not analysis.

>So I wonder, what is the current >justification for viewing the media as >having an inherent liberal bias?

Rich,

The justification for claiming liberal bias is, of course, the manner in which the media reports. If you get zero reporting on how much the Iraqis love their newfound freedom...and a thousand reports on Abu Graib...then you know that the media wants to hurt the war effort so they can get rid of a conservative president.

On the other hand...there are indications that the Abu Graib "scandal" has made it no longer a badge of honor for Sunni "insurgents" to go to American prisons in Iraq...and the insurgency has died down quite a bit since. Young Arab men don't want to be tainted by the idea that they were forced to conduct homosexual acts in the custody of Americans...so tough young Sunni males will choose to cooperate with Americans...and thereby hold on to their honor in a more reliable fashion (future insurgents who go to prison and get released will be seen as having become gay). Plus...Americans look good for having argued among themselves about the "scandal". Our media did the war effort a service by showing this. The American media did a similar service to the WW2 effort by getting Patton removed from command in Italy because he slapped a soldier in a hospital (the Nazis .

So...maybe our media reported on Abu Graib in order to *help* the war effort...making them less *liberal* (liberal is defined as being against American interests overseas).

My opinion: the media reported on Abu Graib in order to *hurt* the war effort (and get more soldiers killed) because they are more concerned about getting a conservative president removed from office than they are about democracy and human decency. It turned out that this treasonous media only inadvertantly helped the war effort as a result.

By the way: I started to say something about how the Nazis were so shocked that the Americans would remove their best general from his command in WW2 (Patton in Italy for slapping a soldier)...that they chose to disbelieve the whole affair as a way for the Americans to trick Germany into believing that Patton was NOT going to lead an invasion of Pas de Calais in France in June 1944. In the end...the Americans tricked Germany into believing that it was all a trick.

Coming forward to the present day...we have no way of knowing whether the media reporting on Iraq hasn't been against American interests or not. At high levels...all the negative reporting could end up having had incredibly positive effects...even though I still believe that the rank and file reporters are often jerks who have wanted to see more dead Americans and a failure for democracy in the Middle East as a way of gaining points for their sick ideological points of view.

new to this blog, U of C grad student. and, ahem, not really a conservative at all. but very interested in what conservative bloggers & readers are saying...

thanks Prof Drezner, for running an open comments section. contrary to what some of you may have heard, it's actually pretty easy for a reasoned, thoughtful conservative to comment on the boards at many of the most popular liberal sites. potty-mouths do get kicked off fast, but serious debate is welcomed. it took me a while to find the conservative equivalent.

back OT:
we had an 'elite' jounalist commenting over at Atrios for a while. he spent a lot of time defending his profession, arguing that the media reports what it can and doesn't seek to interject opinion in said reports, and that he and most of his peers really did want to find 'the truth' behind their stories.

and then someone 'outed' him for 'inappropriately' commenting on a liberal board. his boss promptly told him, "if we catch you there again, you're fired."

just one of many anecdotes i can share about why some of us are with alterman: there is no liberal bias in the media anymore, if there ever truly was.

Interesting survey but I can't take it seriously. I just left one of those `elite' media outlets after four years on two continents. The senior editors are overwhelmingly liberal in their outlook. A mid-level editor was asked why he was suddenly producing a raft of pro-Kerry features. He replied with a nod upward that he doesn't make the decisions. This company is considered one of the most conservative of the ones you mentioned. And the bias isn't restricted to the news staff. Once, when the chairman visited our office in London and told us about his visit to Congress, he inserted a crack about Bush's stupidity. It got a lot of laughs and caused a British colleague to pipe up that he was encouraged to see that the chairman shared ''our'' beliefs. But it was an uncomfortable moment for the chairman, for he had exposed, however briefly, the great lie.

Jennifer -- the Kos post-rating system doesn't filter out opposing viewpoints, it filters out trolls. There is a difference.

Erik, Jenifer is a good little member of The Party. You'll never convince her of that. Even copying and pasting threads of heated give-and-take between Kossacks and Kos won't convince her of it.

These are people who literally believe that there are three options in the world: you can agree with me 100%, or you are an incorrigible moron, or you are Eeeeville.

Self-doubt, objectivity, and empathy don't exist in their moral universe.

As a traditional conservative, and definetely not a neo-con, I look for good news on Iraq everywhere, including the rightwing press and blogsites, and even the righties don't report it! So don't complain, please, until you can point to sites that report Iraq successes in depth and breadth. Otherwise the complainers about 'liberal media' just sound like whiners who want someone else to do their work (which corresponds to my view of the bushies, who I regard as lazy people who are unwilling to do the hard work of governing and just want to use ideology as a shortcut so they don't have to think.)

B

I worked as a reporter for more than a decade. I did not see people going out of their way to put a liberal spin on the news at all. During the time I was a reporter in the South, the conservatism of newspapers there was quite apparent. The worst thing employees could do was mention unionizing. Anyone who said the 'U' word was out on his ear within days. Women reporters and minorities were treated as wallpaper largely. The best beats were nearly always assigned to white males. Babbitry was common, with the abuses of big business ignored. I believe that American journalists are largely typical middle-class Americans. The notion that there is some farm in Lefty Land that grows journalists is ludicrous.

Jennifer Peterson is asking that opinion replace facts in news stories. The facts are that the abuses in Abu Ghraib are real and significant. Furthermore, the Bush administration is mired in a mess of its own creation -- the occupation. The responsibility of the press is to report the facts about the occupation and the prisons, not to appeal to the far Right sensibilities of Peterson. (Or Leftist sensibilities, either.) She is right to read mainly blogs if it is opinion she wants, since most blogs consist of just that. But, the news out of Iraq is not good. If the press were to spin the facts the way she wants it to, it would no longer be reporting news.

If I return to journalism, what I write in articles and what I post to my blog will be quite different. The articles will consist of facts, as well as they can be determined. Opinion and analysis of those facts are what will appear on the blog. Too many people fail to grasp the difference between fact and opinion in the blogosphere.

So many other people have pointed out why Drezner's survey is not reliable that I'm just going to ditto them. It puzzles me that he hasn't admitted the limitations of his methodology.

Jor, I work at The Wall Street Journal, and I challenge you to demonstrate how our news pages (as opposed to the editorial pages) lean to the right. Obviously you can take my insider view with a grain of salt, but I find our news coverage to be quite scrupulously middle-of-the-road.

Just thought I would throw in something that I think is indicative of the so-called 'liberal media'. I don't think it is as much the reporters as it is the editors, and their superiors.

I often like to read articles posted on the web as soon as they are first released, and then refresh once in a while and see how they transform.

Today I was watching the evolution of an AP story posted on Yahoo News, which was talking about the Iraqi delegation at the United Nations. When I first opened the article the headline touted that the Iraqis requested a continued US troop presence, and the meat of the story was about how the interim Iraqi government wants US troops to stay. It included quotes from Iyad Allawi in his national address to the Iraqi people, about how they should stop attacking coalition soldiers, and that the coalition troops were 'offering the blood of their sons' to provide security, despite continued attacks on them meant to drive them out.

Within about 20 minutes, the same story at the same link was highly transformed. The headline was then more along the lines of 'Iraqis demand more sovereignty', and the meat of the article was mostly about Iraqi disillusionment with American promises, and interviews with members of the Mehdi Army. There were a couple of lines buried in the article about the Iraqi request of continued coalition troop presence, but it was quite obviously no longer the focus of the article. There was no longer any mention of Allawi's national address.

Now, this article is no longer a top story on Yahoo News. It has been replaced by these:
1) Baghdad attack kills five U.S. soldiers
2) Pope urges Bush to hasten Iraq self rule
3) Bush late for Vatican meeting with Pope
4) Researchers track spread of soybean rust

I don't pretend to have any inside knowledge into how journalists operate. My closest encounter with the media was building a fictitious news facility for a movie prop. And I am not so sure that it is as much a liberal slant, as it is a slant towards controversy, which seems to be universally accepted as the key to high ratings. I don't recall there being a shortage of stories critical of President Clinton while he was in office. I'm not too sure a liberal slant can be blamed for the incessant reporting on the Monica Lewinsky story.

And I can understand why the story about US soldiers getting killed would make the top of the list. But perhaps one of the other respondants can explain to me why the significant story of the Iraqi UN delegation requesting a continued US troop presence, has been replaced by a story about Bush being late to his meeting with the Pope... and soybean rust. And especially why a story like that would be so transformed over time.

Best Regards