Given that much of the “scholarly world” suffers from the apparently incurable mental dysfunction that is left-wing politics, as does much of the world “outside the U.S.” - which I take to be your euphemism for the decaying societies of Western Europe - it is unsurprising that they join you in finding “libertarian” ideas so discomfiting. In less than a century Europe has gone from owning the world and inventing much it to dicing with arriviste tribal barbarians for control of their own national territories. The only thing of consequence Europe exports these days are subsidized aircraft, bad philosophy and - oh, yes - Europeans.

There are no “markets”

Utter twaddle. Yeah, there are markets. They’re everywhere. The word is not reserved exclusively to describe that neo-classical pile of stone in which stocks are traded in New York. And if you think the latter is just for “the wealthy,” we sure have a lot of “wealthy” then as over 50% of American adults have equity holdings of some kind. If you want to stalk imaginary animals often referred to in political discourse but not findable in nature, try “social justice,” “the common good,” and all the other unicorns of leftist cant.

Still, it’s interesting that at least a part of the reason for the coming collapse of the moth-eaten newspaper business is that at least a few fools out there find that it is not left-wing biased enough.

Philanthropists on the other hand normally get good press.

- a long way to go before we can claim a bias-free media, but we are getting there!

The facts will be in this form: X% of one party is identified in the first paragraph, but only Y% of the other party is identified in the first paragrah.

If X-Y > (10%)*X, I claim bias. (Let’s define how much bias is bias!)

I’m not sure if, under this definition, the NYT is biased — but Don Surber keeps talking about “Name that Party”. I’m pretty sure “Democrat” is often missing from stories about Spitzer, for instance.

However, how do we “measure” bias. While John Lott might not be the best source, his methodology is straight-forward to replicate. Economic news should just be economic news, but if the headlines are biased to be negative during Republican administrations and positive during Democratic ones, someone else should be able to verify that.

More serious is the trend, which is becoming more evident, that the Times business viewpoint has been taken over by libertarians. The evidence keeps mounting. I’m not talking about the usual Main Street Republicanism that was it’s hallmark for generations, but the support for ideas which have no standing in the scholarly world (especially outside the US).

The evidence includes two libertarian columnists from the same liberatarian economics department (George Mason) - Cowan and Tabbarok. I don’t see this amount of space being given to contributors from more highly respected universities.

Then there are the prominent places given to Brooks, Friedman and Kristol. They aren’t just neo-cons, they are libertarian inflected neo-cons. Then there is the space given to the libertarian clown Ben Stein - who doesn’t even have any credentials (scientific or economic), but feels free to make a film debunking Darwinism. Does the Times not have any criteria for the credibility of the people it gives space to?

Finally there is the subtle shift in the way “news” and analysis articles are written. Here’s an example from today.

Today’s paper has a front page article:
“Parties Differ on Whom Economic Aid Should Help”

There is only one “economist” cited in the article, and he’s from Cato Institute:

‘ “Democrats are more likely to propose protecting individuals, and Republicans are more likely to propose protecting markets,” said William A. Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group in Washington that champions smaller government.’

The meaningless phrase “protecting markets” is discussed further as if it meant something other than protecting the wealthy. There are no “markets”; there are people who participate in markets, and there are firms who participate as proxies for them.

Why would any (non-biased) columnist even think of soliciting a quote from somebody at Cato?

Liberal economists keep puzzling as to why the press goes with the misleading stories over the projections for Social Security and Medicare. If the “press” is seen as the libertarian press, everything becomes clear.

It’s not only the lack of objectivity that the press failed at over Iraq and the “war on terror”, but there is a similar ideological bias when it comes to economics and related social policies.

Papers have always been biased, that was why many were established, so their publishers could promote their viewpoints (Hearst, McCormick, etc.), but they made their position clear.

Over the past 50 years the majors have taken on a theme of impartiality which hasn’t been reflected in their actions. The myth that the viewpoint is restricted to the editorial page is another reason they are distrusted.

The key feature is that the measurement of “negativity” of the headlines is done SEPARATELY from determining who was president. That is, the criteria used to rate headlines was done by people who did not know if the headline was during a Republican presidency or a Democrat presidency. His results are statistically significant and his method appears scientifically valid. It’s worth a read.

http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~econ_bus/nerds_papers/2008/lott_mediabias_1_24_08.pdf