October 09, 2007 06:28 PM UTC

Liberal Media Bias? Not So Fast...

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Jeff Bridges of State 38 writes:

The national Media Matters folks have compiled what I’ve just now decided to term a “bias list” for nationally syndicated OpEd writers, such as Ann Coulter, Bob Novak, Maureen Dowd, etc…  Not surprisingly, they’ve determined that conservative viewpoints get a lot more ink than centrist or liberal progressive ones…

…Some of their more interesting findings:

Sixty percent of the nation’s daily newspapers print more conservative syndicated columnists every week than progressive syndicated columnists. Only 20 percent run more progressives than conservatives, while the remaining 20 percent are evenly balanced.

The top 10 columnists as ranked by the number of papers in which they are carried include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives.

In three out of the four broad regions of the country — the West, the South, and the Midwest — conservative syndicated columnists reach more readers than progressive syndicated columnists. Only in the Northeast do progressives reach more readers, and only by a margin of 2 percent.