The Media Equation: Challenging the Claims of Media Bias - the Media Equation

No, in their view, the mysterious drop can only be explained by the fact that the mainstream media have their collective liberal thumb on the scale, in terms of coverage and, more oddly, polling.

On Sunday, Mr. Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, got right to the point.

“It goes without saying that there is definitely media bias,” Mr. Ryan told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think most people in the mainstream media are left of center and, therefore, they want a very left-of-center president versus a conservative president like Mitt Romney.”

And ostensibly tendentious coverage was cited last Wednesday in a letter addressed to the “Biased News Media” and sponsored by the Media Research Center, which defines its mission as “holding the liberal media accountable for shamelessly advancing a left-wing agenda.” The letter said in part: “This election year, so much of the broadcast networks, their cable counterparts and the major establishment print media are out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda.”

It was signed by conservative royalty, including Brent Bozell, Gary Bauer, Ed Meese, Tony Perkins, Rush Limbaugh and Richard Viguerie. It included a list of chronic offenses and concluded, “It is time the American people turn you who are offending off, once and for all. You have betrayed their trust.”

The mainstream media are frequently indicted suspects when the rink tilts against conservative causes. But it seems worth pulling apart that notion, especially in a landscape where ownership of the megaphone is increasingly up for grabs.

Back when Spiro Agnew went after the “nattering nabobs of negativism,” most people got their news from three networks and a handful of national newspapers. Network news still pulls in more than 20 million viewers nightly, and newspapers still matter in spite of their business struggles, but their influence is waning as thousands of new sources of information bloom.

As the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press pointed out last week, digital news has surpassed radio and newspapers and is quickly catching up to television. Social networks are soaring as a source of news, and since 2010, the report said, “there has been a sharp decline in the proportion of Americans who got news yesterday only from a traditional news platform — from 40 percent then to 33 percent currently.”

Even if legacy media still maintained some kind of death grip on American consciousness, it would be hard to claim that the biggest players in those industries are peddling liberal theology.

Think about it. What is the No. 1 newspaper in America by circulation? Why, that would be The Wall Street Journal, a bastion of conservative values on its editorial pages and hardly a suspect when it comes to lefty news coverage. (Though it’s worth pointing out that the paper has published some very tough coverage of Mr. Romney.)

What about radio? Three of the top five radio broadcasters — Mr. Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the recently departed Michael Savage — have outdrawn NPR’s morning and evening programs by a wide margin. In cable television, Fox News continues to pummel the competition.

Many Republicans see bias lurking in every live shot, but the growing hegemony of conservative voices makes manufacturing a partisan conspiracy a practical impossibility.

Let’s be fair. It’s not as if everyone who believes there is a liberal bias needs to be fitted for a tinfoil helmet. But the trope is losing traction, partly because there are many robust champions of the right, which gives conservatives the means to project their message far beyond the choir.

It’s hard to picture conservatives as disenfranchised in the fight for attention from the news media, not after a campaign season in which the audition for the Republican nomination seemed to include some combination of hosting and making guest appearances on Fox News. Another thing about the media blame game? It doesn’t work. Newt Gingrich ran hard against the news media and that didn’t turn out so great.