A little bit spin, a little bit substance

Interesting study. Conclusions obviously correct, methodology, eh. But I got a chuckle out of this bit in the rather nice press release that accompanies the release: "[THe]UCLA-led study . . . is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly."

Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Let's ask Billy C what you mean by "successful." In any case, there was another study released a few months ago that did something quite similar, using references to several think tanks (rather than scores created by just one) as a proxy for bias. In any case, keep working boys. It never hurts to document conventional wisdom, even if it's accurate conventional wisdom.