Assess the arguments for and against the claim the American news media Essay

Assess the arguments for and against the claim the American news media is inherently biased in favour of liberalism - Essay Example On the other side of the coin, it is possible that the media may have a liberal bias and since liberals get what they want to see that is why liberals are least likely to raise their voice against media bias in United States. This paper is an attempt to explore the same by assessing the arguments presented by critics, which are both for and against a liberal bias in the American news media (Anderson, pp. 62-68, 2005). Media bias refers to â€Å"perceived attribute of a news source whereby the individual news source, or the group the news source represents, has a clear ‘vested interest’ in a cause or action relative to maintaining or changing the status quo? (And) a biased journalistic perspective, then, would mean only one side, not two or more sides, of an issue is presented† (Alterman, pp. 210-212, 2004). Critics favoring the existence of a liberal bias present many studies which reveal that there are far more democrat journalists as compared to republican journalists. For example, a study conducted in 1999 by the American Society of Newspaper editors revealed that 61 percent of the newsroom respondents identified themselves as democrats or their thoughts bear the most resemblance to that of democrats. However, only a mere 10 percent of newsroom respondents identified that they either are republicans or believe that their thoughts are represented by the republican ideals. Furthermore, these percentages change when one considers the small newspapers. The number of democratic supporters’ drops down to 48 percent and the number for republicans rise to 21 percent. This debate received more heat when the figures of the amounts donated to democratic and republican party from the employees of NBC, CBS and ABC came on to the scene. The Democratic Party received the donations of over 1 million US dollars from approximately 1160