My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
My long-time friend Peter Robinson and my new friend Rob Long have asked me to be a guest blogger on Ricochet. They suggested that I discuss my new book Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. I am honored, delighted, and extremely grateful for the opportunity.
Maybe the best one-paragraph summary of the book is the following: Left Turn attempts to document media bias in a scientific way. That is, I use data and statistical methods to quantify the slant of the media. The book shows that, yes, the U.S. media really do have a liberal bias. Not only that, the bias really affects how people think and vote. Namely, it has shifted the Political Quotient (I’ll explain that term in a moment) of the average American voter by about 20-25 points. This is the difference between the average voter in a purple state (such Iowa or Nevada) and the average voter in a solid red state (such as Texas or Kentucky).
Longer summaries of the book are online, including a recent review by the Weekly Standard. Powerlineblog has posted the Preface and Introduction (which basically summarize the book). And if you’d like to see video summaries, you can watch my interview with Bill O’Reilly, Pat Robertson, or Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller. (A few more audio and video interviews are on my web site timgroseclose.com. And my favorite interview, with Ricochet’s Peter Robinson, for Uncommon Knowledge, should be online soon.)
To construct the main conclusions of the book, I first need to construct a series of intermediate conclusions—which can be interpreted as the building blocks for the main conclusions. One of the most important of such building blocks is the notion of a Political Quotient. This is a number, generally between 0 and 100, which says how liberal you are. If you’d like to compute your own PQ, you can take a 10-question which I list in the book (and here), or you can take a more precise 40-question quiz here.
I base the Political Quotient, or PQ, on roll call votes in Congress. As a consequence, I can compute the PQ of any member of Congress (who has served sometime between 1947 and 2009). Here are the PQs of some famous politicians.
- Michele Bachmann (R-Minn, 2007-09) -4.1
- James DeMint (R-S.C. 1999-2009) 5.1
- Newt Gingrich (R-Ga., 1979-94) 11.4
- Richard Nixon (R-Calif., 1947-52) 12.5
- Lindsay Graham (R-S.C., 1995-2009) 14.9
- John McCain (R-Az., 1983-2006, 2009) 15.8
- Joe Scarborough (R-Fla., 1995-2000) 16.4
- Jack Kemp (R.-N.Y., 1971-86) 20.4
- Charlie Stenholm (D-Tex, 1979-2004) 28.5
- Ron Paul (R-Tex, 1976-2009) 31.8
- Rick Lazio (R-N.Y., 1993-2000) 34.4
- Tom Ridge (R-Penn., 1983-1994) 37.4
- Sam Nunn (D-Ga., 1973-96) 39.5
- Susan Collins (R-Maine, 1997-2009) 44.2
- Olympia Snowe (R-Maine, 1979-2009) 47.9
- Arlen Specter (R-Penn., 1981-2008) 50.6
- Ben Nelson (D-Neb., 2001-09) 55.6
- Christopher Shays (R-Ct., 1987-2008) 61.0
- John F. Kennedy (D-Mass., 1947-60) 63.7
- Arlen Specter (D-Penn., 2009) 67.4
- Joe Lieberman (Ind.-Ct., 2005-09) 74.0
- Joe Lieberman (D-Ct., 1989-2004) 74.7
- Harry Reid (D-Nev., 1983-2009) 75.6
- Joe Biden (D-Del., 1973-2008) 80.5
- Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y., 2001-06) 87.6
- Barack Obama (D-Ill., 2005-06) 87.7
- Ted Kennedy (D-Mass., 1963-2007) 89.2
- Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y., 1965-67) 96.5
- Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif., 1987-06) 100.7
- Barney Frank (D-Mass., 1981-2009) 103.8
- Ron Dellums (D-Calif., 1971-97) 107.4
From these PQs I can construct Slant Quotients, or SQs. The book contains several tables, listing the SQs of various outlets. If you’d like to see a sample, without having to buy the book, click here. To get a basic idea of how I compute SQs, consider the SQ of the New York Times, which is 74. That number happens to be the PQ of Joe Lieberman. This means that the average Times article sounds about as liberal as the average Joe Lieberman speech.
Note that PQs basically force American politics to be one-dimensional—that every conflict can be placed a left-right scale. Of course, this is at best only an approximation. Many groups, such as libertarians, do not neatly fit on the scale. That is, for instance, Ron Paul’s PQ, 30, implies that he’s a moderate. However, he’s really not moderate on any issue. Instead, he’s extreme leftwing on some issues (especially foreign policy) and extreme rightwing on most others.
Nevertheless, I still believe that American politics is basically one-dimensional. That is, I believe that people like Ron Paul are more the exception than the rule. That is, I believe it’s generally the case that if you’re conservative on economic issues, then it’s a good bet that you’ll also be conservative on foreign policy, social, and other issues.
Tomorrow, I’ll discuss some evidence showing why that American Politics is approximately one-dimensional. Along the way, I’ll discuss Keith Poole, one of the creators of “Nominate” scores. Poole, like me, is one of the few conservative professors in political science. He also happens to be possibly the most interesting, smartest and most accomplished political scientist on the planet.
Later in the week, I’ll discuss some other topics, including (i) my feud with leftwing pundit Eric Alterman, and why he should especially hate Left Turn, and (ii) how Ronald Reagan indirectly helped me to get my book published. I’ve got some other ideas to blog about, but I also want to respond to reader comments. So if you have any questions, criticisms, or other comments, please note them!
- Comment (21)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (3)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
May '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Wow...Joe Scarborough. Talk about a victim of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He must have fallen asleep.
BTW, I'm in at 5.4
Edited on Aug 21, 2011 at 3:01pmSep '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Way cool. I read the excerpts at PLine and was fascinated that a scientific study had been done on the topic. As a statisticker, I was interested in your methodology, and am glad that you've provided insight here. Thanks also for all the links. I look forward to your discussion about Alterman; he's a vile person. Anything else you have to say about the left's response will be of interest.
I'll have to take the test. A quick skim foretells a right-of-Genghis score!
Jun '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Welcome, Tim. Looks like I need to buy this book. I agree with everything you said above and especially about Ron Paul. I have said in several other posts that Paul and the libertarians need to have an orthogonal axis to explain their weird positioning on your PQ scale. (It's probably not orthogonal but some sort of non-monotonic axis and it doesn't run through the zero point either.)
I hope you can find time to read a few posts by Charles Rapp on Breitbart's newly coined term -- the Democratic-Media-Complex. Charles has some very interesting takes on the history of the media, especially TV and how it is naturally structured to crank out liberal ideas and liberals as reporters, etc. Here are the three posts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
EJ Hill has some thought provoking criticisms of these posts and I would love to hear your take on these. EJ is in the business and we all love reading his informed perspectives but I am not comfortable with his explanations (excuses) for the liberal media.
Final point: What bothers me the most is this ridiculous notion that reporters can or should be unbiased.
Edited on Aug 21, 2011 at 3:53pmDec '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Professor G., I look forward to this discussion and am grateful that Ricochet brought it here. I first became aware of your new book at Powerline and I love the cross-pollination. I don't need to take the test, as I know I will wind up with a score below zero.
I just think it is wonderful that you are here for us to have this exchange and assume you will be informing us that you can provide digital signatures to plant on e-copies, as I just don't read paper books, any longer. I am vain and often perspiring; I don't like wearing glasses and they slip down my nose.
My father was a reporter and I always thought he was much more liberal than me, but never knew. I made a comment along those lines to my mom and she said, "Oh, Honey, you never knew," implying that he was not at all liberal. Well. That is what is currently missing.
Thanks, again, for visiting with us!
May '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Thank you for joining us, Tim. I look forward to buying your book - once it's on Kindle :)
I suspect my PQ of 11.2 is pretty crisp for a British subject.
I wonder if, as a result of your researches, you might know the answer to a question that has been troubling me: some years ago I read of an academic analysis of partisanship among broadcasters during a presidential election (2004? 2000?) which used a measure of positive versus negative language used to describe candidates of both parties. Any imbalance in the language was then scored by party to obtain an overall measure of partisanship for the broadcaster. The surprising conclusion was not that Fox tended Republican and the others didn't, but that Fox was *less* Republican inclined than the others were inclined to Democrats. In summary, while not impartial, they were Fair-er and less un-Balanced.
Am I hallucinating? Do you have any recollection of this study?
Again, welcome, and I look forward to reading your contributions to the conversation.
Dec '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Oh, I read the bio on your website, Tim.
My Erdos number is 2. Which is pretty good considering he died in my first year of grad school!
Jul '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Welcome to Ricochet.
I took Yer 10 question test and and scored 0. When time's available I'll take the 40.
Interesting, to say the least.
Aug '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
3 for me. The 40 question test was odd (you placed all or nearly all conservative answers on the bottom, mostly by swapping the 'favored' and the 'unfavored' answers.
Why not keep the answers in same order?
Aug '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Jimmy Carter: Welcome to Ricochet.
I took Yer 10 question test and and scored 0. When time's available I'll take the 40.
Interesting, to say the least. · Aug 21 at 5:49pm
Congratulations on your goose egg Jimmah.
Is it just me or is this scale penciling out like a golf handicap? Guess that makes you a scratch conservative.
I pulled a 12.4 on the 40-Q test, I beat Nixon by a nose, but I'm still Squishy compared to the 4 under Bachmann is clocking.
Welcome Tim, thank you for doing this, I am looking forward to learning more.
Edited on Aug 22, 2011 at 10:19amJul '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Squishy Blue RINO
Is it just me or is this scale penciling out like a golf handicap. Guess that makes you a scratch conservative.
· Aug 21 at 6:46pm
A lil' "foot wedge" doesn't hurt.....
Edited on Aug 21, 2011 at 8:27pmDec '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Am I winning with a 0.6 on the 40 question test?
Jun '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
There are no prizes, Prawn. Sorry
Oct '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
I was a 17.1. That's between John McCain and Jack Kemp. I pride myself on my Rob Long and Andrew Breitbart style squishiness; I must be doing something wrong if I'm in McCain territory.
Dec '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
I am also curious how the Paul-factor fits into your analysis. I scored in the twenties somewhere on the 40-question quiz.
When I saw the list of comparable politcos I was unsurprised to see myself in Ron Paul territory. But also in that same territory we have John McCain and Lindsey Graham, both of whom are very much unlike Rep. Paul.
Would you say this apparent anomaly is pretty much accounted for by the Gitmo questions?
May '11
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Welcome Tim. Good to have you here.
The 40 question test (I scored 11) had 3 questions on abortion funding, and none on foreign policy. There's something skewed there, IMHO.
On the main point, I think the bias is even worse than Tim calculates because I have noticed a tendency for liberals to consider their opinions to be "facts" and the opinions of the other side to be "lies" or hypocrisy (i.e., attributed to unstated motives, like racism or corporatism). In general, conservatives are far more likely to recognize that their own opinions are simply opinions; and that people of good faith could disagree with them. Thus, in addition to the fact that most of what is published as "news" has a liberal slant, the liberal news is far less likely to be "fair and balanced." It's hard to tell both sides if you don't even recognize that there is another side. That's why lefty journalists insist that they have no liberal bias. They think they are just reporting the objective truth.
Jun '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Larry3435: Welcome Tim. Good to have you here.
The 40 question test (I scored 11) had 3 questions on abortion funding, and none on foreign policy. There's something skewed there, IMHO.
On the main point, I think the bias is even worse than Tim calculates because I have noticed a tendency for liberals to consider their opinions to be "facts" and the opinions of the other side to be "lies" or hypocrisy (i.e., attributed to unstated motives, like racism or corporatism). In general, conservatives are far more likely to recognize that their own opinions are simply opinions; and that people of good faith could disagree with them. Thus, in addition to the fact that most of what is published as "news" has a liberal slant, the liberal news is far less likely to be "fair and balanced." It's hard to tell both sides if you don't even recognize that there is another side. That's why lefty journalists insist that they have no liberal bias. They think they are just reporting the objective truth. · Aug 22 at 6:51am
Yes, exactly -- truth has no bias. Facts are facts.
Dec '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
My score was 5.3, slightly less conservative than Jim DeMint. I'm good with that. I think the only question on which I agreed with the Democrats was the confirmation of Sotomayor. By my calculus though, she was the best we could hope for as an Obama nominee: 1) intellectually unconvincing to the other justices and 2) lacking longevity (is it un-Christian of me to notice she has health issues?). If the question had been the confirmation of Kagan, I think I'd have been in Michele Bachmann territory.
I heard you first on Dennis Prager's program, Tim. Yours is yet another book for my Amazon Wish List. Ricochet is busting both my time budget and my book budget!
Aug '11
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Interesting. According to what I understand about your methodology, if your metrics are valid and application of them objective, then there is a leftist bias in either (i) the corporate media or (ii) reality. Personally (by the way I scored a 90 on the short test), I have rarely noticed the former and generally believe the latter and understand that most conservatives generally observe practically the opposite. But I am eager to try to analyze these "observations" on a point by point basis to see what sort of underlying assumptions may be driving the disparity of perceptions on this issue.
Edited on Aug 22, 2011 at 9:31amAug '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Me too, but my reasoning was more "what goes around comes around"- if you don't want liberal judges, win more elections. Soon enough the shoe is on the other foot and you're (not you personally) the one bemoaning stall tactics and recess appointments. It's transparent and tedious.
Same goes for the shiv-em-in-shower tactics involving Senate rules, refuse to use them, or at the very least, don't writhe on the grass like a soccer star when they work against you. It's undignified.
Edited on Aug 22, 2011 at 10:34amDec '10
Re: My book, Left Turn, and a Special Thanks to Ricochet
Squishy Blue RINO
Me too, but my reasoning was more "what goes around comes around"- if you don't want liberal judges, win more elections. Soon enough the shoe is on the other foot and you're (not you personally) the one bemoaning stall tactics and recess appointments. It's transparent and tedious.
Same goes for the shiv-em-in-shower tactics involving Senate rules, refuse to use them, or at the very least, don't writhe on the grass like a soccer star when they work against you. It's undignified. · Aug 22 at 10:27am
Edited on Aug 22 at 10:34 am
I agree with your reasoning, Squishy. That was in the back of my mind too, but I think there are some nominees so radical, they receive and deserve bipartisan opposition. Kagan was borderline in this regard due to her insider status in the Obama administration on pivotal cases bound to reach the Court during her tenure. Like Obamacare.