Why Talk Radio is largely conservative - (Was: Howie Carr, etc. etc. etc)

[Donna Halper]

At 07:37 PM 7/22/2008, Dan Billings wrote:

>In 2005, the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy 
>surveyed 300 journalists nationwide - 120 who worked in the 
>television industry and 180 who worked at newspapers and asked for 
>whom they voted in the 2004 presidential election. The results 
>showed Democratic challenger John Kerry over incumbent Republican 
>President George W. Bush by a wide margin, 52 percent to 19 percent 
>(with 1 percent choosing far-left independent candidate Ralph Nader).

At the risk of beating a dead horse, a person's PERSONAL views are no 
guarantee of anything.  Most reporters are Christian by birth, so by 
that logic, I guess they are only capable of covering politicians who 
were also born Christian?  Or how about universities, which are 
supposedly (according to my friends on the right) hotbeds of 
liberalism and radicalism (as if those two things are 
related).  Studies show that professors in some departments 
(sociology for example) tend to lean liberal, while in others 
(economics, for example) the professors lean conservative.  SO 
WHAT?  I may believe in X politically, but as a professional, my job 
is to be fair to both sides, whether I am in the classroom or whether 
I am writing an article.  Lots of journalists were pro-Bush during 
the first year of the Iraq war and the allegedly lib-rull NY Times 
was among the most pro-Iraq War of all.  Again, it's a pointless 
exercise to extrapolate a person's private views as being proof of 
how they will do their job.  Reporters were absolutely buddy-buddy 
with McCain till recently, and believe me, he has even called the 
press his "base" because he is friends with so many of 
them.  Conversely, the media hordes beat up on Al Gore relentlessly 
during the 2000 election, even putting quotes into his mouth that he 
never said (it's an urban legend that he claimed to invent the 
internet), and it was supposedly pro-Democratic reporters who beat up 
on him every chance they got.  I think most reporters try to be fair, 
except on networks where the show is all-opinion (Lou Dobbs, Sean 
Hannity, Keith Olbermann, etc).