Bias? What Bias? Only 7% of journalists identify as Republicans

By all accounts, CNBC's Republican debate was an unmitigated disaster. Not for the candidates, mind you, but for the moderators, the network, its parent company, and the left in general. What was obviously a planned attack on the GOP field blew up in the faces of its would be perpetrators - and it did so in spectacular fashion. Instead of making the candidates squirm, the network made the angry. Instead of looking weak, they rallied and went on the offense. Instead of goading the field into a circular firing squad, the moderators placed a spotlight on their own nastiness and made the media's left-wing bias a central issue of the 2016 campaign.

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None of this is new to conservatives. The right has been carping about the mainstream media for decades. However, at a time when faith in the media's objectivity and honesty is at an all-time low, the CNBC debate served as evidence of bias that would convince even the most casual political observer. If anyone's actually wondering why the media is so biased, the Washington Times has the answer. Most "honest, upright, unbiased, journalists" in America are card-carrying liberal Democrats.

A mere 7 percent of journalists identify as Republicans, and when they do give money to political campaigns they usually donate to Democrats, lending evidence to Republican presidential candidates’ claims that they are facing a hostile audience when they deal with the press.

So how do Democrat journalists stack up against Republicans?

...Self-proclaimed Democratic journalists outnumber Republicans by 4-to-1, according to research by Lars Willnat and David Weaver, professors of journalism at Indiana University. They found 28 percent of journalists call themselves Democrats, while just 7 percent call themselves Republicans — though both numbers are down from the 1970s. Those identifying as independent have grown.

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If you're among those who believe (rightly) that "independent" is most often a synonym for "I agree with everything the Dems say, but I'm not willing to call myself one," you're aware that a 4-1 ratio is extremely optimistic. According to the Washington Post, about half of "independents" are actually closet party-line voters, and in the last election Dems won the "independent" vote by an impressive 8%. That's almost double the margin of Obama's victory. At the moment, the most prominent "Independent" currently seeking the White House is a proud socialist, running as a Dem, who voted with Democrats 98% of the time. As TheSocialistWorker points out, that's a higher loyalty percentage than most actual Democrat party members. If that's the working definition of "independent," you can understand why conservatives are skeptical. Sadly, the 7% figure is the good news. Inside D.C., the spread is even worse. There, over 90% of journalists give their votes and donations to Democrats.

Among Washington correspondents, the ones who dominate national political coverage, it’s even more skewed, said Tim Groseclose, author of “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” More than 90 percent of D.C. journalists vote Democratic, with an even higher number giving to Democrats or liberal-leaning political action committees, the author said.

That means that the vast, overwhelming, majority of the allegedly unbiased journos who craft your daily political news are actively engaged with one of the parties they cover. Is it any wonder the people have lost faith in the media?

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