Shocking Journalist consensus: Media lean left

12.20.13

By DYLAN BYERS | 

12/18/13 11:48 AM EST

Top journalists from The New York Times, NBC News and CNN acknowledged Wednesday that, generally speaking, the national media have a liberal bias.

On a Playbook Breakfast panel, the Times' Peter Baker and Mark Leibovich, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell and CNN's Jake Tapper all said "yes" when asked if the news media lean left — though all agreed it was a nuanced issue having more to do with journalists' life experiences than with any particular agenda.

"Most of my colleagues, I have no idea what their politics are. ... But think about it: I live in northwest Washington, none of my neighbors are evangelical Christians, I don't know a lot of people in my kid's preschool who are pro-life," Leibovich said. "When you have conversations, at all the newspapers I've worked at, about politics — it doesn't happen often — but you see clues that there is absolutely a left-wing bias."

Tapper, the CNN host and former ABC News White House correspondent, said the bias was "much more complicated and complex" than "liberal" or "conservative."

"A certain type of person becomes a reporter, and generally speaking — generally speaking, I'm not saying every reporter in the world — the kind of person who is a reporter in Washington, D.C., or New York City has never worked a minimum-wage job outside of high school, has never experienced poverty, is not an evangelical Christian, like much of the country is," Tapper said. "There are a lot of experiences that the kinds of people who are reporters, editors, producers in Washington and New York City have not had."

"Most publications, you can get a sense of what the editors are thinking — and I would put a lot more on the editors and the senior producers than on the day-to-day reporters," he went on to say. "But you don't see a lot of coverage of poverty, you don't see a lot of coverage of troops, you don't see a lot of coverage of faith. It's simplistic to say it's liberal or conservative; it's about experiences and lifestyle."

Baker, the Times' White House correspondent, addressed a different kind of bias: "The bigger bias is the bias toward conflict, the bias toward sensation, the bias toward the quick and easy and the simplistic. That's our bias, and that's what we have to fight every day."

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