Topic: NewsBusters
It seems that no instance of liberal bias, real or imagined, gets past the eagle eyes of the Media Research Center. Why, even Twitter is biased!
No, really, An Aug. 5 NewsBusters post by Aubrey Vaughan declares that "Twitter has selectively crafted a list of suggested news accounts that suspiciously skip over any conservative news pundits." He continues:
The news list suggests 51 accounts. Populating that list are six ABC accounts, three NBC accounts, two CBS accounts, three MSNBC accounts, six CNN accounts, two NPR accounts, two PBS accounts, three BBC accounts, two NY Times accounts, two Huffington Post accounts, and a combination of other arguably liberal accounts including Newsweek, the Economist, Time Magazine, LA Times, WaPo, Chicago Tribune, AP, Reuters, ProPublica, Bloomberg News, and Slate. Excluding two government news accounts (FBI Press Office and West Wing News), two technology accounts (Digg and Wired's Gadget Lab), and three more specialized news accounts (Life.com, the Onion, and Al-Jazeera English), that leaves only two more accounts: Wall Street Journal and Fox News.
While liberal media outlets are greater in number and it makes sense to include all the major networks, Twitter does not promote the the media accounts equally. MSNBC's David Gregory and Rachel Maddow are suggested. CNN's Anderson Cooper, Larry King, Ali Velshi, and Jack Gray are suggested. Each network station also has a number of their TV personalities suggested. Absent from the list are suggestions to follow Fox News personalities like Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity, or radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, completely swaying the list in favor of liberal media outlets and their even more liberally inclined opinion journalists.
Vaughan seems to have decided that if a news organization is not explicitly conservative -- like the Wall Street Journal or Fox News -- it must be liberal. He doesn't offer the metrics by which he has decided this; we weren't aware that, say, the Economist was "liberal."
Vaughan then rather laughably fails to see bias where it's most obvious:
Admittedly, the suggested accounts on the government list are much less biased. It actually follows a greater number of Republican than Democrat politicians, but that can be explained by the fact that it follows all the major 2012 presidential contenders, and no Democrats are running against President Obama. In addition to following candidates, the Republican suggestions include former Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain, Ambassador Condoleezza Rice, House Speaker John Boehner, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The high-ranking Democrats on the list include Obama, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and press secretary Jay Carney.
A clear Republican bias is "much less biased" to Vaughan? That seems to confirm our theory that conservatives don't think there is such a thing as conservative bias.
