> From: Gautam Mukunda [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > No conspiracy. Just a lot people who think alike. > Those biases affect their coverage. How many > evangelical Christians do you think report for the New > York Times? For CNN? Does that bias their coverage? > A very high proportion of the population of the US - > something over a third - is evangelical Christians. > I'd be shocked if the equivalent proportion is 5% > among elite news organizations. Something around 40% > of Americans identify themselves as "conservative". > What do you think that proportion is at the Washington > Post - 10%? I'd be surprised if it's even 5%, > actually. >
So, the people who are trained to investigate and understand things, by the best universities in the country, given lots of time and money to do so, and undiluted access to real information, and the people actually making the decisions, end up having a left-wing bias (in your eyes at least)
Couldn't be that they are actually onto something could it?
Or, it could be a self-selection effect, frex, that ECs are not generally drawn to careers in news, or at least that those who are interested in news careers are not drawn to the NYT, the WP, or CNN. For instance, some genuine believers find the cutthroat competition required to reach and stay at the top levels of pretty much any profession is at odds with their Christian beliefs about how they should treat their fellow human beings, e.g., the "Golden Rule."
Or maybe it reflects that it is the case in news as well as many other professions that getting a job is frequently largely a matter of knowing the right people, or IOW the people who do the hiring tend to hire people they know and who are "like them", so ECs or members of any other group tend to get hired by news organizations where other ECs are already in positions of leadership, which presumably does not include the NYT, the WP, or CNN.
(Note: I am not claiming that either of these explanations is necessarily the correct answer, but rather just suggesting that the same factors may affect employment in the news field as affect employment in other fields.)
-- Ronn! :)
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