You are a liberal, correct? Regarding liberal left bias in the mainstream media, have you considered that because of your political orientation, you may be blind to the bias to which we are referring?
To turn this on its head, it is probably fair to state that business is a more conservative environment than much of the media. I would not expect most conservatives to feel ill-at-ease in such an environment, or even to notice whatever intellectual bias exists. Why? Because many conservatives feel at home there and share those values.
Returning to the media, conservatives are awash in liberal-left news and information all day long, coming from the daily newspapers (NY Times, Chicago Tribune, etc.) and newsweekies (Time, Newsweek) and other periodicals (Men’s Health magazine ran an endorsement of Obama; Men’s Health!), and many network news programs (NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, PBS). The sole exceptions are talk radio, one or two business publications and newspapers (WSJ, IBD), and Fox News; that’s it.

I am conservative, and I can tell within seconds whether I am watching a conservative outlet (of the ones listed) or reading a conservative publication, versus one of the vast numbers of liberal outlets – without reference to the channel or title! It’s not that I am somehow special, it is simply that the editorial positions of liberal outlets are so reliably of the political left, that I recognize them immediately. They are nothing if not predictable.

Since liberals are generally more likely to be found in the big city, and conservatives in the country, another way to imagine this is to go visit a small, conservative town sometime. As a liberal, you will probably immediately notice a contrast with your cultural values, just as someone from that town might feel “out of water” in a liberal big-city.

Ok, enough of that line of thought. You want hard data on the liberal bias in the mainstream media? Go visit Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center on the internet. The MRC has done a ton of very rigorous work collecting and analyzing the content of television shows, magazines and newspapers, and other media outlets. The proof you seek is there.

I can verify Dr. Hanson’s observations about the leftist orientation of our academic institutions, from the following perspective: I have taught in the public schools, and have been both an instructor and a recent student at the university level. The following observations are of course my own, but have been corroborated by others over the years.

While there are exceptions, primary and secondary education as a career field tend to draw more liberals than conservatives. This would not in itself be a bad thing, except that our public education system has become more and more ideological over the past two to three decades. Teachers are now being allowed or even encouraged to take “social justice” positions by their administrators, by government policy, and by schools of education. In some schools, this took the form of advocating openly for Barack Obama in the last election cycle. In other schools, teachers (even in non-science subjects)are taking sides in the global warming debate. I have seen both happen with my own eyes. What do these positions have to do with teaching the “3 R’s”? I have also heard of schools “taking a position” on things like gay marriage, with children as young as the primary grades. The reasons for this trend are arguable and many, but one possible reason is that education is a career field dominated by women, and therefore by “compassionate” values, and a nanny state mentality.

At the university level, I am studying for a second Masters (my first was in biochemistry), in history. Perhaps I am engaging in hyperbole, but I have never been around so many post-modernists, radical leftists, Marxists, extreme feminists, and other species of the left, as I have been in this program. Not a single faculty member self-identifies as a conservative, not one – while many conspicuously mention their “progressive” credentials. I had one historian try to insert global warming propaganda into his course on American history!
He planned to show “An Inconvenient Truth” but did not plan to show the opposing (conservative) point of view. Where I come from, that’s not called scholarship but indoctrination. Another bit of evidence about political orientation lies in the textbooks chosen by the faculty; prominent among them were books by Eric Hobsbaum, the noted Marxist historian. No one to my knowledge presented the opposite point of view, there was no ideological balance at all. A last thread of evidence lies in the fact that whenever the Middle East came up, the faculty took pains to criticize Israel, but excused violence, terrorism, torture by the Arabic/Islamic world – or failed to mention it at all.

The foregoing adds up to a leftist bias in the academy, public school as well as the university/college environment.

Did you catch that? ” . . . DETAILED Road to Recovery plan . . . ”

I should have been listening to VDH AFTER the fact – you know, when it needed to be spun out of its pathetic and embarrassing spiral -rather than take Boehner at his word during the fact.

Don’t you people get tired of setting aside your principles in order to defend idiots? (What am I saying . . . I’m on PJM!)

117. G.May: I agree that Dr. Hansen’s expertise provides him authority on the matter. And style-wise, it would be very boring to get into extreme detail on these matters. That written, I don’t buy that his expertise gives him a “pass” at having to provide independent evidence for bold assertions.

Now, something specific:
“it is widely known that the leftist bent is all pervasive in our education system.” Widely known does not mean true. Where is the proof, other than that the “expert” Dr. Hansen says it is? This seems like a doctrine of faith, rather than an exercise in critical thinking.

Thanks for a fun ride everyone.