Following up on an earlier post, I’m going to muse a little bit here on media bias. You don’t need to read a lot of right-leaning sites to encounter the ironclad conviction that the media lean left. On left-leaning sites there is an equal and opposite conviction—that the media lean right. There has even been a book purporting to prove that latter conviction. It leans heavily on the genetic fallacy, the mistaken belief that if it’s corporate it must be right-leaning (Sen. Elizabeth Warren is both corporatist and left-leaning), and that ironclad conviction.
How can that be? And why?
In one of my earliest posts on this blog I nade the observation, obvious to me but apparently not to others, that everyone sits at the center of his or her own universe. Consequently, they typically see themselves as more in the center than they actually are. Anyone to their right must be on the right; anyone to their left must be on the left.
I think that my political views defy characterization to some extent. I’ve variably been termed left-wing, right-wing, a classical liberal, a pragmatist, and—my favorite—eclectic. But I have empirical or at least quasi-empirical evidence that I’m smack dab in the middle. Every time I take the Political Compass that’s where I land. I’ve also been called both left-wing and right-wing for the same opinion—as good an indication of being in the center as any.
Consider the infographic at the top of this page, thoughtfully provided by All Sides. You may notice something about it. I, systematically and conscientiously, lean most heavily on sources they rate as “Center” which in their terms means balanced between left and right.
Quickly scanning through their ratings and tallying Left, Right, and Center resulted in about 40% of the media sites being Left or Left-Leaning, about 23% Right or Right-Leaning, with the remainder Center, i.e. balanced. That alone would seem to provide evidence to support the right-wingers’ view. All Sides does not do this but I believe that if you weighted the sites by reach and influence the effect would be even more pronounced with the Left or Left-Leaning sites over 50%, the Right or Right-Leaning sites under 23%, and the remaining sites Center.
How, then, could anyone whose views were to the left of center imagine that the media had a right-wing bias? I think it can be explained by the possibility that, once you have a certain level of conviction, anyone who doesn’t agree with you sufficiently must be right-wing.
