Another stupid study

Matthew A. Roberts:

With the aid of many research assistants, Milyo and Groseclose conducted a ten-year study, in which they collected from news sources the citations of think tanks and policy groups. They then compared these media citations to how often they were cited by members of Congress, and accordingly assigned scores.

The results? The researchers expected to find a left-leaning bias, but were astonished at just how behemoth this left-wing bias is.

10 years ago would be around 1994. Anything special happen that year?

Oh yeah, Republicans took control of Congress, and began proposing their legislation. And if you are looking for support for your legislation, you'll want to quote research that backs up your proposal. And where best to get that information than from a right-wing think take completely predisposed to your position? No wonder the number of citations would be so high.

And without the corresponding numbers for left wing think tanks, there's no way to tell whether there's a bias at all. If the news media was quoting left wing think tanks (even though they exist in far fewer numbers) more so then the right wing ones, then maybe you can try and make this claim stick.

Besides, who claims that bias is the fact that a supposedly non-partisan media won't freely quote from right wing partisan think tanks?