1213 Are the media liberal or conservative or balanced?

Ask someone who earns his living there. Callimachus, a journalist whose "co-workers sit at their desks talking about how much they hate Bush, how important it is to defeat him, how many people they saw at the anti-war rally they marched in, how criminal the Iraq war is, how "evil" the U.S. administration is, how brilliant and important Michael Moore is, how stupid Republicans are" writes:

"I find it amazing that people consider the media to have a "conservative" bias. If by that you mean, "Peter Jennings is not actively promoting Maoist revolutionary rhetoric," then yes, that's true. But according to a Pew Research Center survey reported in "Editor & Publisher," the official publication of the U.S. news media, the proportion of self-defined "liberals" in newsrooms is increasing much faster than that of self-defined "conservatives," and the ratio is well out of proportion to the nation as a whole.

At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets: 23% liberal, 12% conservative. At Web sites: 27% call themselves liberals, 13% conservatives.

This contrasts with the self-assessment of the general public: 20% liberal, 33% conservative.

Pew found that, over time, not only is the media more polarized, but the liberal voices are more numerous. Since 1995, at national outlets, the liberal segment has climbed from 22% to 34% while conservatives have inched up from 5% to 7%."

Done with Mirrors