What media bias?

The media has not been biased in its coverage of the Iraq war, at least according to Columbia University's Project for Excellence in Journalism. This report appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald (Aus) today:

Media coverage of the Iraq war by the American media was not biased in favour or against the war, according to new research, despite claims the coverage was generally biased and negative.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington think tank affiliated with Columbia University's school of journalism, looked at more than 2000 stories in newspapers and on television and websites.

Most were "straight" news reports, according to the survey's director, Tom Rosenstiel, with 25 per cent of the stories positive and 20 per cent negative. The rest could not be classified one way or the other.

Fox news, BIG surprise, had twice as many positive stories as negative ones. CNN and MSNBC were basically even-handed.

Here's the methodology of the group's content analysis:

Those findings are based on 16 newspapers, four nightly newscasts, three network morning news shows, nine different cable programs, and nine Web sites examined for four weeks through the course of the year.

Conservatives, of course, continue to claim that the media is biased against them.

Progressives claim the reverse.

This blog, of course, reflects my personal biases. That's right, it's pro-Jayhawk, anti-Duke, and especially anti-New York Yankee.

I just wanted to be up front about that.