Tim Groseclose Takes AIM at Media Bias

Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slants of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news and converting that content into an SQ, or “slant quotient,” of the outlet. To determine bias, he compares SQs of news outlets to the PQs, or “political quotients,” of voters and politicians.

Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points on a scale of 100, the diference between (i) the current political views of the average American and (ii) the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah.

With Left Turn, readers can easily calculate their own PQ—to decide for themselves if the bias exists. This timely, much-needed study brings fact to this often over-heated debate.