Note however that most academic institutions are

Note however that most academic institutions are overwhelmingly liberal (which
is precisely why more cons researchers may escape from them and get jobs with think-
tanks)
 Though Chomsky doesn't include them, some regard academic institutions as
the equivalent of liberal think tanks
o
Flak

Lobby/activists/monitoring groups harass media if they don't like media coverage or
policy

Flak groups used to threaten some kind of legal action (back when there was a FD), now
the threat is more like bad PR, or some threat to profitability

E.g. Although entertainment, and largely 'grassroots' (not associated with a group), the
Reagan movie incident is a sample of media aversion to bad PR

A guy makes a website to boycott CBS for 1 week

The networks Sweeps Week affects what they can charge for advertising for the
entire year; hurting their rating for that 1 week will affect their profitability the entire year
 E.g. FoxNews parted ways with Beck because libs convinced advertisers they'd boycott
them if they continued to advertise in Beck's show (FowNews doesn't care that much if liberals
boycott FN…because they don't like FN…unless it is the case that they are an important part of
FN's market)

What you should really do is boycott the advertisers that are on Beck's show
 Two major flak providers are AIM (conservative) and FAIR (liberal)
o
Threat of being called a communist?

If it’s the 60s/70s and you're saying something against the system, you would be called a
communist

Maybe after 9/11, the equivalent might have the threat of being called sufficiently anti-
terrorist

If the media wants to be critical, some journalists won't be as critical because it is bad
for their career to be branded as a communist etc.

Informational Biases of Media
o
Argues re political biases are pretty stable:

Cons note overwhelming tendency of journalists to be liberal, cite FoxNews as only
reservoir of 'non-lib' media (and thus $ rewarded for serving market)

Libs…particularly Far left…say that even if media leans left on "Dems/Reps" spectrum,
corporate concerns and newsgathering rituals lean right

o
Some info bias issues, however, don't easily map onto political dimensions
o
We can think in terms of user habits and news industry habits
o
'Pew research center' and others track changes with:

Cable and internet (up) and everything else is down

Online news usage?
 Hindman observes: "Liberals dominate the audience for politics online. Across a
wide range of politically relevant activities…liberals outpace conservative by a wide margin"
 So Liberals have more sites and get more traffic with online news sources

'non-users' are twice as likely to self-identify as cons whereas "users" are nearly
equal in terms of libs/con self identification

Research on 'link-clicks' seems to support the 'echo chamber/cyber-
balkanization' hypotheses

Social networks and news consumption?