First, this is the best response on the side of the "liberal media" CT yet so thanks.
It's not just CNN.
The Media Elite: America's New Powerbrokers is a book written by S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter, published in 1986. It details a social scientifc study of the ideological commitments of elite journalists in the United States, and the consequences of those commitments on both the reporting itself and on its reception by the public.The book states that because of the political opinions of journalists, the elite media has a liberal media bias. The conservative Media Research Centre contends that The Media Elite is "the most widely quoted media study of the 1980s and remains a landmark today.
In 1986, both major parties had a liberal wing so the media could be liberal then without favoring a party. See, the media has a major *centrist* bias, for the obvious reason that their product is intended for mass consumption. And the other issue here is that the views of journalists themselves don't matter as much as the views of management, which tend to be far more conservative.
A 2008 joint study by the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that viewers believe a liberal media bias can be found in television news on networks such as CNN.
These findings concerning a perception of liberal bias in television news – particularly at CNN – were also reported by other sources.
Sure. If the question is, "do a lot of people believe the mainstream media is biased against them?" the answer is obviously yes. I note that you took your post from Wiki, in the section on liberal media bias. But you skipped a telling part here:
"A 2014
Gallup poll found that a plurality of Americans believe the media is biased to favor liberal politics. According to the poll, 44% of Americans feel that news media are "too liberal" (70% of self-identified conservatives, 35% of self-identified moderates, and 15% of self-identified liberals), while 19% believe them to be "too conservative" (12% of self-identified conservatives, 18% of self-identified moderates, and 33% of self-identified liberals), and 34% "just about right" (49% of self-identified liberals, 44% of self-identified moderates, and 16% of self-identified conservatives)."
So almost half of Americans (and a plurality considering undecideds) think that the media is biased toward liberals, with a strong majority of conservatives believing that and 15% of liberals believing it. This is consistent with what I've been saying--people naturally think that the media is biased against their own views, and conservative thought leaders (Limbaugh, National Review, etc.--kind of feels weird to call them that, but they are) promote the view more heavily, particularly as the right has diverged further from reality in its views lately (climate change, debt, inflation, general CT tendency, etc.). Take a look at what some of the participants in this thread believe. It's a lot of provably false stuff, but since the media ignores it, they think the media are biased.
