# The Liberal Mass Media myth. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 3, 2008, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383 "2008-10-03T23:12:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/61 "2008-10-06T23:33:59Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Seldom has a myth been laid to rest more convincingly. Hey! I been to college. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/62 "2008-10-07T00:01:17Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > I take a similar approach when conservatives complain about liberalism in academia. > > I’ve always conceded that university faculty tends towards the liberal end of the spectrum, especially in my own discipline (history) and other humanities subjects. But rather than seeing some sort of conspiracy to keep conservatives out, i wonder whether it simply might be that liberals are more likely than conservatives to fulfill all the following criteria: > > 1. Be an “A” student (you won’t get into, or remain in, a decent PhD program without excellent grades, and you need a PhD to be an academic, in most cases) > > 2. Be willing to spend 4 years in college, then another 4-10 years in grad school (depending on the discipline, the subject of your dissertation, etc.). > > 3. After 8-14 years in post-secondary education, during which you’ve demonstrated consistent excellence in your academic work, an ability to teach, and to conduct and present original research, be willing to take a job that starts at $40,000 to 60,000, and that will probably top out (at full, tenured professor level) at about $100,000 to $140,000. > > When first year out lawyers are pulling in high five figure and low six figure salaries, when bankers and finance whizzes are making six figures in their sleep, when engineers are making high incomes early on, and when doctors have the possibility of seven-figure incomes down the road, it could simply be that it’s mainly liberals who are willing to spend over a decade in post-secondary education in order to take a comparatively low-paying job. One could test this theory by polling professors in engineering and hard sciences. If the poll is done anonymously, I predict that engineering and hard science professors turn out to be much less liberal than professors in humanities. ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/63 "2008-10-07T00:21:14Z")
I’m in contact with both engineers and professors (where do scientists fit in?), and I’m pretty sure the teachers are more liberal than the engineers. By quite a bit, in fact. This observation is anecdotal, but has value. I work in a oil company research facility. And I ask questions, and talk. ---
**Author:** ![vison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e47774/32.png) [@vison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vison)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/64 "2008-10-07T00:23:01Z")
Forgive me for asking what I suspect is a stupid question, but: do the moderators of the various debates draw up the questions themselves? I had assumed the questions were composed by a group of people, representing “both sides” of an issue. ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/65 "2008-10-07T01:02:47Z")
> [@vison](#): > > Forgive me for asking what I suspect is a stupid question, but: do the moderators of the various debates draw up the questions themselves? I had assumed the questions were composed by a group of people, representing “both sides” of an issue. At the beginning of the VP debate Gwen Ifill said she wrote the questions. I see no reason that wouldn’t be true. ---
**Author:** ![vison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e47774/32.png) [@vison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vison)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/66 "2008-10-07T02:39:52Z")
> [@mangeorge](#): > > At the beginning of the VP debate Gwen Ifill said she wrote the questions. I see no reason that wouldn’t be true. Wow. I find that very odd. I’m not saying it was wrong or that she did a bad job or showed bias or anything of that nature, but I assumed (as I said above) that although she was the moderator, the questions were the work of a panel or something. I don’t know how I missed it when she said she’d written them, I guess I was getting a cushion or something. ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/67 "2008-10-07T03:06:47Z")
Ah! you might be right. She said [chosen](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89FbCPzAsRA) by her. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/68 "2008-10-07T04:17:51Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > This is, of course, mere hand-waving. The handwaving appears to be all yours. As already noted, peer review does nothing to establish the validity of the paper. It is a relatively effective method to prevents cranks and idiots from getting published, but as long as the technical protocols are satisfied, many papers with serious errors get past peer review. You, on the other hand, have simply handwaved away an actual criticism of the study that took specific note of its underlying errors. Unless you are prepared to show the actual “peer review” that allowed the paper to be published with actual statements in the reviews rebutting the critique of the paper, you are really providing less anaylsis than I am–and far less than **mhendo**. Basically, you are saying, _Oooh! Ooooh! Look here, I found someone in academia who agrees with me. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain._ (I would not characterize your pet study as deliberately misleading, by the way. The authors may have made a good faith effort to be fair. However, the actual study has already been shown to have been hopelessly flawed (inadequate number of think tanks named, omitting several important ones, inadeqate definition of “liberal” or “conservative” think tank, etc.), and their methodology does not even make sense (associate the number of times an institution is mentioned, regardless of context, then correlate it to a similar number of references (regardless of context) in which it is mntioned by various congresscritters). ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/69 "2008-10-08T00:02:16Z")
Looks like conservatives have a new data point they’re trying to trumpet: SNL took down last week’s bailout announcement sketch (which drew attention to Democratic involvement in the meltdown, and featured George Soros, whom a caption called “Owner, Democratic Party”) for “quality concerns.” Frankly, that sounds like BS even to me. Of course, the sketch also featured an elder couple who participated in the financial shenanigans and profited mightily from it, with a caption saying they “should be shot,” and THAT may be the impetus. But conservatives are drooling over the assumption that Soros and/or the media’s Democratic masters demanded NBC yank the sketch. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383/70 "2008-10-08T16:20:37Z")
[Here’s](http://www.whatliberalmedia.com/) a good corrective to the LMMM. [Here’s](http://www.amazon.com/Republican-Noise-Machine-Right-Wing-Democracy/dp/1400048753) another. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-liberal-mass-media-myth/466383.md?page=3)