Its an old argument:  Is the media biased to the Left or unbiased like they claim?  The Right says biased, the Left says either no or biased to the Right.  What has been missing has been a systematic examination of the the output of the media to quantify the reality of their bias or lack thereof.  A research team at the University of California at Los Angeles finally took up the massive task, developed a reasonable method to measure, and went to work for years to get a solid answer.  The results were just announced by the UCLA public relations department:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News’ "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN’s "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC’s "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren’t centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC’s "World News Tonight" and NBC’s "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox’s ‘Special Report’ as ABC’s ‘World News’ and NBC’s ‘Nightly News,’ then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC’s "Good Morning America," CNN’s "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News’ "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet.  Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.

There is more in the report itself at this link if you want to read the original.  On the whole the results are what i would have expected, with a few caveats.

I knew the news pages of the Wall Street Journal were liberal biased from my own experience reading and subscribing to the paper in the past, but for it to be rated as THE most liberal biased was surprising to me.  One wonders if it is a calculated business strategy on their part to reach liberals with the news section, conservatives with the opinion section, and the rest by the balance shown between.  Maybe its just not possible to hire enough reporters and editors who aren’t liberal to do both.  Its idle speculation but a strange juxtaposition nonetheless.

Finding out that Good Morning America and NewsNight with Aaron Brown are centrist in their reportage is also a surprise.  I will have to give Mr. Brown a look now and then, good work deserves attention.  I am just not around in the morning to see Good Morning America so I will have to take that one on faith.

On the other hand its nice to know you can rely on certain local institutions.  Once again the LA Times came through as expected near the top of the Liberal biased list.  It takes hard work distorting the news that much and they deserve the recognition.  Keep it up guys, with lots more effort and time you can spike it even further into the ground.

Whether you like this particular study or not the effort is worthy and deserves further study.  We can only hope others with an honest academic interest undertake other studies and provide all of the media with a reality based incentive to tune their output to acheive the unbiased perspective desired by most.

(Hat tip for the link to Tapscott’s Copy Desk)