Sunday 7 October 2012

Is the media more left or right ?

University of Western Sydney student and social media player, Debski Bebski, whose pages include "Julia Gillard - Worst PM in Australian History", has just produced a startling graphic of Australian media commentators.


When selecting media personalities to appear in this list, they were chosen on being the most read and viewed in Australian media and journalistic content.

The left-hand side indicates those in the media with a "left-wing" agenda.

Those on the right reflect those with a more "right-winged" perspective.

When you have a look at the overall media as a whole, you begin to see how one sided it really is, Debski says.  Particularly when the only "right-wing" programme on TV is Andrew Bolt where as the "left-wing" media have an array of political programs on most TV stations. For some people, TV is the only way they get their information.

Interesting observation.

6 comments:

KitchenSlut said...

Ummm .... the photo of Phil Coorey is actually former Treaury Secretary Ken Henry! Koch and Van Onselen are 'left'? I find those weird and there are some equivalence issues and too many carefully selected identities. Nobody in the middle at all??

Can't find link now but suggest empirical reseach from Gans and Leigh on mejia bias .....

Leigh Dall'Osto said...

Interesting view of what could be considered 'left' media. Most of those are not who I would consider in that light at all. These do appear to be lists of those for or against same sex marriage however. A single issue and not representative of an entire slant. Odd really that none are considered 'centre'. It's as if the middle has completely disappeared. And those on the 'right' I would personally describe as 'far right's which is a whole other kettle of fish.

Wendy Davie said...

Considering the slant of the person who compiled this list maybe it could be considered non viable?
Thanks for posting it Michael we all need laugh on a Monday morning.

:Kevin-John: Morgan. said...

Left? Right? For a moment I thought I was back in the military.
Is there no shame left that people will still perpetuate?
It's bad enough that these worms of society (media) are the exact same people who divide those societies by their lack of facts coupled with the use of emotive language procedures.
The media of the entire world has much to answer for, but do you see any of them doing anything towards sustaining or even so much as protecting a society?
Not on your bloody nelly!
I believe something that is meant to fly straight and true, such as a government or a media outlet, must have both Left and Right wings working in cohesion.
We don't have that and never will as long as the media is given credence for their current efforts.

KitchenSlut said...

Gans & Leigh:

"We employ several different approaches to estimate the political position of Australian media outlets, relative to federal parliamentarians. First, we use parliamentary mentions to code over 100 public intellectuals on a left–right scale. We then estimate slant by using the number of mentions that each public intellectual receives in each media outlet. Second, we have independent raters separately code front-page election stories and headlines. Third, we tabulate the number of electoral endorsements that newspapers give to each side of politics in federal elections. Overall, we find that the Australian media are quite centrist, with very few outlets
being statistically istinguishable from the middle of Australian
politics. It is possible that this is because of the lack of competition in the Australian media market. To the extent that we can separate content slant from editorial slant, we find some evidence that editors are more partisan than journalists."

http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/MediaSlant.pdf

scarecrow said...

It is just silly to identify journos such as Laurie Oakes and Laura Tingle as being 'left'. Most of those of the 'right' in that picture are commentators not journalists and don't comply with any journalistic code of conduct of factual reporting.

The only one I agree with from the 'left' of that photo is Mungo MaCallum (who is one of the best and most witty commentators in Australia, but I'd agree he is left) it is interesting that the only other person I'd seriously put in the left commentator column is Philip Adams and he is not even mentioned.